Does Any Of This Count?

It's the beginning of week three of NaNo, or is it the close of week three and we have five weeks this year? It's hard to really tell due to November starting on a Wednesday this year. On the one hand, "week one" could be November 1 - 7, which would mean week one finished when I posted my first November update this year. In which case, today is the close of week three. On the flipside, "week one" would start on the first Sunday, which meant it was November 5 - 11, kind of ignoring the first four days as.... week zero? Using that thought process, this is still only a few days into week three.

Eh, whichever week it is, between last Tuesday and this one has been kind of rough. As you might remember, last week I discovered that my story's file was corrupted, and a similar fate happened to my backup on my laptop. Over 16000 words were just gone after two weeks of work! It was devastating.

Well, thanks to the computer genius of my writing mentor Ali Luke, I didn't lose it all! She wasn't able to salvage the majority of it, so I still lost a huge chunk. However, she did manage to get me the first seven pages! I have almost the entire first chapter back, thanks to her. She saved me something like 4700 words. So, major, super, immense thank you to Ali!

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman Inc

I spent an entire day trying to catch up - on top of the first chapter that Ali salvaged - and got about 2800 words in by the close of day. It was mostly because my boss at work is awesome, knew what NaNo means to me, and kind of turned a blind eye when I did a bunch of writing during our slow time. I also had another sprinting write-in with my writing group, so I was able to get a nice chunk done then too. However, my netbook was starting to lag pretty hard-core, so I didn't get as much done as I normally would have.

However, the amount of concern everyone showed me was amazing. The empathy, the cheers to keep going, the endless advice on how I might be able to restore my works, everything was beautiful. I thank you all as well!

As my one friend Skippy pointed out, mine was the only status he has seen where there were over 10 reactions and EVERY SINGLE ONE was the same reaction: sad face. The fact that everyone hurt right along side me, and everyone cheered me on when I bounced back, is just so wonderful. I have the best support group!

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman Inc

If you are an artist of any sort, and you don't have a support group like this, go out and look for one. You NEED a group like I have. I'll be the first safety net if you need, but you NEED this kind of support. You need people who "get" what your art means to you. Go. Find them. They're out there.

Even with my great support group, Ali perking me up with her miracle work, and getting some writing sprints in, I just couldn't get as excited about my story as I once was. I couldn't get the momentum I had at the start of the month. A bit of my spirit did break, and it's taking a bit for me to heal it.

That being said, I did write for a near-solid eleven hours straight on Friday! Over 12,000 words! Aaaaaand none of them were for my NaNo story....

Instead, I used those eleven hours between waking up and going to play D&D with my buddy Zebey and her roommate - they were the newbies on X-Future last year - writing down everything I could remember about my Varekai trip.

For those that might not remember, I have a whole series of notebooks, all color-coordinated so that I have one notebook for each story I'm working on. It's easier for me to organize my plot bunnies when they are in their own pens. Anyway, this is the one I had set up for Varekai. The orange is unique to me because there aren't that many other stories that have an orange theme to them. For me though, thanks to my time with a production company named Icarus Communications, I equate the story of Icarus with the colors blue, orange, and white. Mostly, orange is in relation to the sun. I also liked that it looks like golden lightning bolts are going through the cover of the notebook. It has an almost Greek God Smiting feel to it. It may not relate to Varekai at all - which is more yellows, whites, and greens - it does scream out "Icarus" to me, so it's good enough.

I remembered to bring my Varekai notebook with me when I FINALLY saw the show live this past Thursday! It was such a fun and exciting experience, especially when I found out that the tour had JUST returned to the United States after years touring over seas! The very first stop once they returned to the US was actually right outside my hometown, which is super cool, and then the next stop on the tour was up by me, so I could see it! It was like fate. After waiting fifteen years, I FINALLY was able to watch it live, and it was just so kismet that they had JUST returned to the US.

I'm rambling. Sorry, like I said, it was exciting to me, and just as exciting for who came with. She had been dying to watch a Cirque show as well, so she was my date on Thursday. It was so much fun to squeal over everything with her.

Well, between the squealing, I tried to take notes on the show. Mostly things that were different between the live performance and the DVD I own. The still-relevant differences, I mean, so I didn't really mention much about the replacement acts. It would be easier for me later on when I fan-novelize this show for me to reference back to the DVD. Therefore I'm ignoring the replacement acts and how they might affect the overall story.

The problem, though, is that once the audience sections of the arena got dark it was hard to see where I was writing in my notebook. Even harder when I didn't want to stop watching the performance, but wanted to jot down my thoughts before I lost them. It got to the point where my hand lost track of where I was on the paper. Which made my already bad handwriting even worse!

Talk about writing over myself.

As I was writing at the performance I knew that I wasn't writing within the lines. I even commented a few times that it will be near impossible for me to go back and read my notes. However, in hopes that I could decipher SOMETHING, I kept writing.

I got even worse with my interpretation of the lines and where my hand was on the paper in relation to what I had just written. I mean, seriously?

I have like three different lines running over each other in that jumbled mess!

Thankfully, with a great deal of time and effort, I was able to interpret and re-write. I transferred all of my notes onto a separate piece of paper that I now keep tucked inside the notebook.

Granted, my normal handwriting isn't much better, but I can at least read it and know what my notes are trying to say. This is why I like laptops. I can just lay my fingers on the keyboard home keys and write all I want without ever looking down. Even with some typos, it's still easy enough to figure out what I was trying to say. I don't think whipping out my netbook to type would be all that great of an experience though, especially with such tight seating. Oh well, the notebook worked, and I was able to salvage the notes. That's all that matters.

However, since I wanted to keep it so the notes I was making were solely for my story, I kept them separate from my overall thoughts of the performance. I didn't jot anything down in reference to the performance as itself in that orange notebook. I didn't want to forget it, though. So I did a bulleted list of each act that was performed in the two-and-half-hour show, and then wrote in as much detail as possible my thoughts on the acts, how they differed from the ones on the DVD, and what the overall feel was.

I meant for it to be a two-hour long project. Tops. But the more I wrote about the show the more I remembered and the more I wanted to write down before my faulty memory forgot it forever. For each act I also had to watch the DVD version so I could compare what I remembered from Thursday to the recorded performance.

I haven't even gone back to write in other experiences of the night, such as the trips there and back, driving around Syracuse while waiting for the show to start, or buying the merchandise just before the show. I want to jot it all down so I will forever have this evening in as much vivid detail as I possibly can capture.

Just the show itself is over 12,400 words and 18 pages long! So! Much! Writing!

And none of it counts!

Most on Facebook are telling me to add it to my overall count. However, I want so badly to stick with my "Old School Wrimo" goal, in other words, someone who writes 50,000 words of a brand new novel between November 1st and November 30th.

If I jump ship and include the 12,000 words I wrote in glorified diary-entry form, or even if I use the four blog posts I'll have in November, I'd be more of a "NaNo Rebel" - just counting every word written, regardless of project.

Eh, I might just cave and do so in order to "win" this year. I feel like I deserve to consider this year a win after the setback I had. Even if that win has a mental asterisks after it. Besides, then I might be able to get a new NaNo Badge.

For those unfamiliar, in order to add some fun to the NaNo challenge, the organization has a series of badges you can earn. A lot of them will automatically be added to your account once you've achieved them: things like signing up for that year's NaNo, hitting 5000 words, or donating to the organization that runs the program. Other badges you award yourself once you feel you've achieved them.

No matter what, there will always be three badges that you cannot get, simply because it's a sort of "either/or" situation with some other ones.

Out of a set of three badges - declaring yourself a "planner" or a "pantser" or a "plantser" - you can only be one of the above, and therefore there are two badges you can never earn that year.

Out of another set of two badges - "Old School Wrimo" or "NaNo Rebel" - you can either be one or the other. You can either aim to stay true to the traditional NaNo challenge, or you can rebel against it and just enjoy your own writing goals you set up for November. I had declared myself Old School, but with this setback I might now be a Rebel.

Did I find the loophole where I get both badges?

Also, speaking of the badges, I feel like they added more this year, and some of them are fantastic!

www.NaNoWriMo.org

My personal favorites are the "Secret Noveling" and "Procrastination" badges. Although, I find it silly that they even created a procrastination badge. It's like they're encouraging it, hehe. Best part is once you give yourself a badge the description changes slightly in your public "badges earned" section of your profile.

Boy did I ever earn that badge this week, though. The trick is to not only procrastinate, but to do so "in new and exciting ways." I'd say spending 11 hours writing anything BUT my novel would count, but in case it didn't I found another fun way to procrastinate.

I knew that people create cover pictures for their fanfiction and amateur online-published stories, such as on DeviantArt or FictionPress. I've even done some simple ones myself for many of my chaptered stories:

Nothing all that exciting. It has the basic feel and the title. Simple.

After joining the Facebook fanfiction group though, I've seen some really enticing cover art.

Ignore that these are all for smutty Harry Potter fanfiction. These authors tend
to give - excuse the pun, but - the most love to their works.

While it's probably easier for a live-action such as Harry Potter because the artist can then steal images from the real world or other movies in order to manipulate them into the look they want, I still like the amount of effort put into these covers.

I felt I needed something like that for Peeping Tomcat. So I spent pretty much a whole day trying to design one. I scanned through nearly every episode of Miraculous Ladybug in order to try to do the same thing as the above covers: find footage I could manipulate so it would look like Cat Noir was watching Marinette from outside her window. I tried about three different ways of doing that, and I wasn't thrilled with any of them. I then tried grabbing a close-up of Cat's face with the expression I wanted, and tried to edit the panels of Marinette's window pane over it so it looked like he was looking in. Again, no dice. I then liked the idea of just focusing in on his mask, so I went frame-by-frame through about six different episodes where I knew I'd have that close-up shot.

Once I found the one I liked, I took off the Disney watermarks, which is not fun to do when you don't have access to Photoshop, and did some more doctoring along with picking out font and the like. Eventually I came up with two pictures. One for places like DeviantArt where a horizontal image is best suited, and one for places like FanFiction where a vertical picture - to make it look more like a book cover - is required.

Any thoughts? I feel like the vertical one looks like an 80's mystery/sci-fi cover. Not the feel I'm going for, but I wasn't sure what else to do:
     
Either way, the cover is done, and I'm out of reasons to stall. I spent some time last night going through YouTube videos showcasing the "evidence" in the show that Adrien likes Marinette, as well as a video showing 101 reasons to love the Adrien and Marinette pairing. It really did re-inspire me to see all those adorable puppy-love moments. I attempted to write too late at night, though, and didn't get much done.

Seems to have been my M-O. So I haven't really officially added much. Although, you might see with my NaNo counter along the upper right corner of this page, I'm past the half-way point at least.

Kinda sorta....

After losing my novel I had to re-center myself, as you'd expect. Part of that was to transfer my outline to my main novel file. I started with the opening that Ali saved, and then I wrote notes at the end on how I had originally closed the chapter, in order to make sure I didn't forget. I then wrote out a bulleted list of what happened in the second chapter, as well as the third chapter. Again, this was so I could remember what I did while it was still relatively new. That way I had a better chance of re-creating it. I then took the rest of my outline - via those note cards I showed you guys a few weeks back - and typed them all up in the main file so I could quickly read over what I wanted to do and fill in the gaps. It was also easier for me to write non-linearly that way. If I'm stuck continuing where I left off, I could read through the outline until I got to a place that struck my fancy that day.

A smart move, and only mildly cheating. A lot of people stated that they'd consider it me trying to beef up to make up for the 11000-some words I permanently lost. I then cheated a bit further for the same reason. I went back to the original Peeping Tomcat that I wrote in September. The one that I used a chunk from to tease this NaNo version. I scooped up the paragraphs - or pages - that I had written in that version that were the inspiration for the corresponding chapter for NaNo. I then dumped the pre-written bits. I know I'm going to rework and rewrite, and if I'm going "NaNo Rebel" anyway, might as well go full-throttle, right?

So, yes, I do have 25,969 words according to the NaNo site, but if you add up the words I've actually written via my calendar, I'm only at about 21,500. Eh, worse comes to worse I'll just dump that Varekai writing into the mix. If one of my fellow writing group members could fluff up her story by typing up full Shakespearean plays at the end, I can dump stuff that I've personally written. Right?

Well, I'm running late on everything else I have to do today, so I'll catch everyone next week. Happy NaNo-ing to any who are taking this journey with me. For all Americans, happy Thanksgiving this Thursday.