The Quest Blog
COMMENTARY DONE
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11/30/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 29
For some reason I managed very little writing yesterday. I'm caught up with where I should have been then (348,552 words) and I'm not quite done writing tonight either, but I'll in all likelihood still be behind when I call it quits. Meanwhile, because I didn't actually start at midnight, I'm going to consider my NaNo to end around noon on December the first (well, a quarter before, technically, going by the timestamp on my "NaNoWriMo: begin" entry). I'm still planning to try to finish the fic/get to 50,000 before that point.11/28/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 27
I managed to fall asleep twice today when I was going to get my writing done after work, so all things considered, I think it's pretty good that I'm still on schedule NaNo-wise: 346,884 words, 45,006 in November, goal is 45,000. But I only managed that by eating up the buffer I've been building up over the past several days, so that was only 1101 words today.Revelations are happening. I'm on the eighth page of chapter 75 now; I don't think it should be that many more pages, though the wildcardness is still there and it will depend on the outcome.
I've been thinking about changing my posting plan a little: I think it might be a good idea to first edit the entire thing, get opal (and possibly elyvorg, if she's up for it?) to beta-read it then so that they can have a wider sense of the context when commenting on each chapter, and then edit each chapter more thoroughly individually before posting, taking their critiques into account. This would mean a longer gap before chapter 63 goes up but a shorter one between chapters once I do start posting.
11/27/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 26
345,783 words, or 1721 since yesterday, leaving me at 43,905 words when the goal is 43,333.I'm done with the One-Shot A scene and have started the next one; then it will be getting all the information that needs to come out to come out and integrating that properly with the action.
I fetched the original One-Shot A document after writing nearly all of the scene again and have concluded that I really like both of them but they have different emphases and rhythms. It will be hard to decide what if anything to use from the old version. Maybe I'll just post the old version as an extra after the chapter or something.
I'm not actually sure how long this chapter will be, so it's a bit of a wildcard; it could become quite long, or it could not be. Hopefully I'll finish it in the next couple of days, at any rate, so I have time for chapter 76 before the end of the month.
11/26/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 25
344,062 words; that's 1879 words today, with 42,184 NaNo words total when the goal is 41,667.I've finished chapter 74 and started the scene formerly known as One-Shot A. I haven't gotten the chance to retrieve the version I originally wrote from my desktop's hard drive yet; I'm going to do so tomorrow, but until then I'm just writing a new version of it. I really liked several bits of One-Shot A that I can't type up from memory, but I also like what I've written so far into the document; it fixes something that was rather rushed in the old version, and I'm generally pretty satisfied with the outcome. The end result will probably be some kind of mixture of the two, unless when I reread the original I discover it was actually awful all along and I just never noticed.
Still lots of things I'd like to change in editing in chapter 74, but who cares because I'M WRITING CHAPTER 75.
11/25/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 24
342,183 words. That's 2317 since yesterday, and I'm back ahead, with 40,305 words as I ought to have 40,000. I could keep writing - I'm in the middle of that scene I've been planning for ten years, and it is pretty delicious - but seeing as it's past seven AM and I've thoroughly caught up now, I'm calling it quits and continuing tomorrow.This is also the final scene of chapter 74; after that, it's chapter 75, which I still can't believe I'm almost at.
Funnily enough, I didn't have a very good writing day for most of it; that old plot point I talked about yesterday was still stuck somewhere in the knots of my brain, and I ended up explaining to opal the basic idea of what was going on and bouncing my ideas off him, which promptly sorted that out. Then, however, I needed to rewrite a fairly lengthy conversation because what I ended up going with regarding that plot point was the 'fixed' version while I'd already written a bit assuming the other, and after that I actually found myself with fewer words than I had at the end of yesterday. So then I had to make that up before I could start making actual progress, and by that point it was past midnight.
But well, getting to the juicy bits really helped. I wasn't going to write even this much - I thought I'd settle for passing 1667 today and try to catch up tomorrow - but then suddenly I was passing the goal for today and then I went on for a bit after that.
I'll almost definitely finish chapter 74 tomorrow, and then it's chapter 75 time. Oh, man.
11/24/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 23
I didn't feel nearly enough like writing today, and it didn't help that for part of it I was feeling kind of dizzy for some reason (possibly sleep deprivation) and then spent a couple of hours sleeping it off.So I'm at 339,866 words right now, which is 1526 words since yesterday, leaving me ever so slightly more behind. But I still fully expect to make it up in the weekend.
I decided to move a large chunk of chapter 73 into chapter 74, so I'm now on the fifth page of that. It's going to be several more pages in my estimation, but at least while chapter 73 was kind of hard to write since it was all emotional turmoil and I had no idea where it was actually going so I had to process it at a more reasonable non-NaNo writing speed, I'm now getting to the OH MY GOD PLANNING THIS FOR YEARS bits for real.
Unfortunately, chapter 74 has been in the planning for a bit too long - which is to say that as I'm writing it the holes in twelve-year-old me's vision of it are suddenly becoming a lot more apparent than they seemed when I was just putting together the planning. (Blessingly, this is also the final plot point in the fic that is quite that old, so I should not have this problem with chapters 75/76.) I may do some last-minute shuffling around of things; I have some ideas on getting it to work better, but I'm going to sleep on it.
Also. Ahem.
GUYS THIS IS THE THIRD TO LAST CHAPTER. WHEN I FINISH IT I WILL BE WRITING CHAPTER 75 WHICH IS GOING TO START WITH WHAT I USED TO CALL ONE-SHOT A. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG I HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THAT. AND IT HAS ALL THE PLOT.
11/23/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 22
Not a great day for NaNoing today; I'm at 338,340 words, which is 1312 since yesterday, leaving me 204 words behind again. That should not be a big deal to make up for tomorrow or this weekend, though.Chapter 73 is being a lot longer than I thought, but that's okay because I wasn't sure chapter 74 was enough material anyway; this gives me room to move stuff into that.
11/22/2012: NaNoWriMo: Aside
Something about a particular character that I didn't know before just came to light as I was writing chapter 73. Then I realized it had been carefully set up by a couple of different scenes in a much earlier NaNo chapter that I'd had earmarked for being messed with in editing because they seemed strange and sounded like they were leading up to something when they weren't, or so I thought.How do these things even happen, seriously.
11/22/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 21
337,028 words. That's 1729 words since yesterday, and I'm at 35,150 words in November so far where I'm supposed to be at 35,000, so that puts me neatly at 150 words ahead.Chapter 73 is being wayyyy more emotional than I thought it would be. Wow. I haven't even gotten to the real stuff that's supposed to happen in this chapter.
11/21/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 20
I'm at 335,299 words, which means I've written 2104 words today and am officially ahead again, with 33,421 November-words written when I should be at 33,333. I've also finished chapter 72 (I ended up moving a bit of what I wrote yesterday over to chapter 72, since it fit better there topic-wise and made for a better balance between these chapters).The reason I was so quick with this is that, if you forgot, chapter 72 was what I mentioned at the beginning of the month as the next chapter I'd been planning for years and was thus really excited about writing. So that was fun. :D (It has Rick in it.)
Then chapter 73 will be a bit of a breather chapter about which my ideas are kind of rough (I mean, I know what actually needs to happen in it but I'm planning to include some charactery conversation as well), chapter 74 is another planning-this-for-way-too-long, chapter 75 is ALL THE PLOT and will be really fun and really hard to do right, and chapter 76 is the end. Unless I end up doing a separate epilogue as I used to intend to before I wrote the chapter plan. We'll see.
11/20/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 19
333,195 words, 1778 today, 349 words behind. I've written 31,317 words in November so far in all.Chapter 71 is on page eight and nearly done. This is still all working pretty well with the timeline - I've written nearly nine chapters out of fourteen, a day before the month is two thirds through.
11/19/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 18
I'm at 331,417 words now - unfortunately not caught up yet, since I only managed 1743 words today, but hopefully I can continue to whittle that down in the next days (I'm at 29,539 words right now for November, where I ought to be at 30,000, so I'm 461 words behind).This is a really nostalgic part of the story - basically everything happening right now is calling back to some of the early chapters. On the one hand, this made me reread some of those early chapters and discover gems of my fourteen-year-old self's writing such as "A bearded man, most of his bearded face hidden in shadow" and "She didn’t say anything to him and they just walked down the stairs, ignoring each other very ironically." On the other hand, when I was going to reference how May came with Mark to confront the Mew Hunter largely because he'd also stolen her Larvitar, I discovered that that never happened, because apparently the version I was remembering was the UMR and I took that part out in the ILCOE. (Originally, they had a full five-on-five battle in Rainbow Woods, leading to all of Mark's Pokémon fainting, and May lent him Larvitar for the rest of the journey, leading to the Mew Hunter stealing him when he stole Mark's Pokéballs; in the ILCOE, I decided the full battle was unnecessary, cut it down to just Dratini vs. Larvitar, and removed the bit about Mark having Larvitar entirely.) It was pretty strange; the ILCOE has been the official version of the fic for so long that things that used to be in the UMR - like Mark randomly encountering the Waraider herd near Ruxido sometime in chapter 28 or so - tend to slip my memory entirely until I start thinking about that version specifically. This weird reversal of that principle has never happened before.
It is so weird to be writing this. It's seemed like this way distant vague future something for so many years.
11/18/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 17
329,674 words. Not quite caught up after yesterday (I should be at 330,211), but despite spending most of today in the unwritingest mood ever, I eventually managed to cough up 2726 words and finish chapter 70. That last bit is terrible; I'm going to have to edit the hell out of it, but I still really like the concept.Last night I lay awake in bed for an hour or two unable to sleep because my brain insisted on thinking about the ending of the fic, and some things actually came together in a way they hadn't before. It's strange how even when writing things ridiculously fast and badly, I'm having roughly the same amount of actual ideas as I would have in the time it would have taken me to write these chapters at my normal pace. I worried a bit about that before I started; it seemed like the bits of the chapter plan that I was unsatisfied with or uncertain about would simply stay that way if I was trying to NaNo this, without my usual thing with getting sudden ideas as I'm writing. But it's working way better than I could have hoped.
Anyway, I am now writing THE LAST FIVE-CHAPTER ARC. I still haven't quite worked out what to title it; the possibilities that have occurred to me don't quite fit in with "The Pokémon Festival" and "The Ouen League".
11/17/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 16
With the combination of work, dinner with my family to celebrate my brother's birthday immediately after work, and Wreck-It Ralph immediately after that, I had basically no free time today. And then I had to fix my site and then I fell asleep. Will try to make up for it tomorrow, when I have absolutely nothing I'm supposed to be doing.Also, writing this battle is a lot more of a headache than I thought. I've almost spent more time organizing it in my planning document so that it will make some sense than actually writing it.
11/16/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 15
326,948 words. Which means I am past the NaNoWriMo halfway point (I'm at 25,070 words total), which means I am officially caught up and in fact ahead of the goal by 70 words, having written 1944 words today. It's not even as ridiculously late as usual!I'm on the sixth page of the chapter. This battle has a completely ridiculous number of Pokémon in it; I'm mostly looking forward to getting to the end of it because of that shower-inspiration I talked about yesterday. And because then it's the LAST FIVE-CHAPTER ARC NO I'M STILL NOT OVER THAT.
opal keeps trying to blackmail me into giving him the chapters as I go. Tell him he's silly. >:(
11/15/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 14
325,004 words. 1914 words written today, 23,126 done altogether, only 207 words behind the NaNo goal of 23,333. I expect to catch up tomorrow.Chapter 69 is finished, and I'm a couple of pages into chapter 70, which incidentally means I'm now done with more than half of what I had remaining at the beginning of November, chapter-wise. Which fits pretty nicely with the fact it's the fourteenth of November (well, technically six in the morning of the fifteenth, but that's because of my screwed-up sleep patterns).
I took a shower today and had a sudden burst of inspiration for making chapter 70 more interesting than it was meant to be, which was great; I'm now looking considerably forward to finishing this chapter. And then it's the freaking last five-chapter arc. This is insane. I can't believe I'm doing this.
11/14/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 13
323,090 words. That's 1778 today, and I'm now behind the goal of 323,544 (a.k.a. 21,666 NaNo words) by only 454 words. Still keeping it up!Chapter 69 might be more interesting than I thought; we'll see where this conversation goes. (God, I can't believe I'm almost at chapter 70 after which it's the LAST FIVE-CHAPTER ARC THING.)
11/13/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 12
321,312 words, 1717 today. That's 19,434 words total for November where I should be at 20,000, or 566 words behind. I'm slowly but steadily catching up.Chapter 68 is not done yet, but it's on page nine. I might move a scene that was supposed to be in this chapter to chapter 69 instead, in which case I'm on the last scene of the chapter; otherwise it's the second-to-last. Or, you know, I might shuffle these chapter splits around even more.
I took a nap today, where I had yet another dream about finishing the fic. In it, the end involved there being a bunch of legendary eggs, many of them shiny; most of them had already hatched, but one still remained, and there was a bunch of suspense around what was in the last egg. In the closing scene, it dramatically turned out to be a Togepi. When I woke up I was thinking, "Wait, that ending really isn't any good. I need to make up a new one, quick." Thankfully I then remembered that wasn't the real thing.
In the meantime (in the dream, not the actual fic) there was something with psychics ruling the world (I think my brain was mixing it up with Negrek's Clouded Sky) and Mitch being a Dark-type and sneakily taking down the psychic leader, which led to the reputation of invincibility that had been holding up the psychics' reign being broken as the story spread. This was somewhat bittersweet, as while the characters didn't like the psychics' reign, they felt making them lose everything in such a manner was cruel.
11/12/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 11
I'm at 319,595 words, or 17,717 words into November, when the NaNoWriMo target is 18,333. That means I'm 616 words behind, having written 2043 words today and cut down my lag by more than a third. Whoo.Chapter 68 has been fairly smooth sailing. Some transitional material, some of which may end up being cut if I decide the flow works without it, but it has both Sparky and Carl in it, which has been making a lot of it write itself. I've been in a really good writing mood today and yesterday, probably partly because of the prospect of Sparky and Carl. Unfortunately, though that would be lovely, it's not so much in the sense of managing to write for very long uninterrupted (though I did manage quite a bit in one session just earlier, I also managed to waste a couple of hours rereading the entirety of chapters 1-3 of Unsounded - highly recommended, by the way - because the PDF version of the print edition that I backed on Kickstarter just came out). But it's a really good writing mood in the sense that I feel like my output for these days has some reasonably non-terrible bits (well, non-terrible for me, at any rate) and they flow pretty naturally given I am writing, as opposed to the slogging, tortuous 'just shut up and write some words that say something like what's happening' thing my NaNo experience otherwise consists of.
Granted, this did come at the cost of going to sleep ridiculously late again. But at least unlike some of the previous days here I wasn't actually that tired, instead of staying up watching my sanity slip and my eyes dry into dust as I tried to type something coherent.
11/11/2012: NaNoWriMo: Day 10
Right. No update yesterday because I was sick, slept most of the day, and only managed to write a few hundred words in the evening.Today I've been doing a whole lot more writing, however, and now I'm at 317,552 words, which is 2798 since the last update two days ago. That's still 435 words behind what I ought to have written in two days, and being that I was already behind at that point I'm now 992 words behind the goal (I'm at 15674 words so far in November where I should be at 16666), but considering I lost almost a whole day there on top of an existing slip, I think I could be doing a lot worse.
I just finished chapter 67 (unless I decide to reconsider the chapter splits, which I might). The end is in sight - this was a problematic chapter to write because of its somewhat transitionary nature, but now that that's past, chapter 68 is fairly well defined now, and chapters 69 and 70 should be basically according to the chapter plan. So from there it's back on track, and hopefully I can catch up fairly soon.
With chapter 67, I've also now written nearly five chapters out of fourteen left during NaNo, which fits fairly nicely with the fact we're now a third of the way through November.