RoW80 Check-In: November 23rd!

“Naturally, it was with those final words that the gobbit released a massive sneeze, narrowly missing Taluin’s outstretched hand with a trajectory of thick, milky mucus. Placidly, it licked what remained dripping from his nose.
‘Oh, yes,’ Gilferen murmured, almost losing his straight face thanks to Locke’s snickering. ‘They’re just lovely.’”

Hello, everyone! Today is Wednesday, so that means it’s time for another great Round of Words in 80 Days check-in post! I’ve had two days off that I was babbling about all last week…did I manage to milk the most out of them and come back with a spectacular surge in productivity? ….Not really. I spent most of yesterday feeling a little ill, and my evenings were filled with dates (DATES! Whoooo!), but I did get some work done and covered a lot of the gap in NaNoWriMo that I’m planning to completely massacre once the insanity of Black Friday is over. Let’s have a closer look, shall we?

Serpent in a Cage: The big number one WIP is going along nicely; that tends to happen when you’re back to following along with original draft, though it’s been interesting since I’ve decided to cut a character completely out and I have to work the previously written stuff around her absence. I have a few people expressing interest in reading what I’ve got so far, especially since I’ve filled up one notebook and moved onto another, so it isn’t as if them reading it deprives me of my work. Still, I’m in that place where I don’t want it looked at until I have this version typed up. It’s so incomplete and even just the fact that the character I cut is still in earlier chapters of this new work. Yeah….definitely needs more work before I let any eyes other than my own see it. When do you usually let people read your WIPs? I’m curious if others are a little wary of letting anything unfinished being seen, too. Chapter: Ten. Page count: 128.

Novel in 6 Months: Due to slipping behind in NaNo, I haven’t been working on this story lately and, unfortunately, the last episode of American Horror Story, rather than inspired me, made me grit my teeth and think, “I WILL NEVER CREATE SOMETHING THIS AWESOME. HOW CAN I EVEN TRY?” Yeah, I’m a little obsessed, which is bad, because it makes my own American horror story seem pale and uninspired by comparison. Also, not working on it consistantly has disconnected me from it pretty badly, too. I’m glad I wrote extra, though, and gave myself a buffer of words. This way, when NaNo is finished, I’ll be about where I need to be on the 500 words per day, and can pick it up once the NaNo pressure is off. Word count: 28,591. I’ve stopped keeping track of chapters, because a lot of it is just random snippets at this point.

750 Words: I’m out of the November challenge; wah-waaaah. I was focused on NaNo for most of the day yesterday, figuring I would finish up my 750 words in a before-bed sprint as I have for many of the dys lately. But then my friend showed up and we went wine-tasting, and I was pretty much out for the count. Considering that my biggest failing when it comes to 750 words is that I’ll go out without having done my word count, I’m okay with this. I think it’s much more important to go out, live life, and have fun that chain yourself to some arbitrary goal. There’s always December, after all! I might take a break on it today, and try to get my focus back into it after Turkey Day.

NaNoWriMo: Oh, NaNo. How you have ruled my life for the last few days and I’m still behind! I think I made good lee-way, though. If you include the words I’ll need to write today, I’m only about 7000 behind, which is definitely doable for that last homestretch. I really want to finally be able to say I won NaNo, so even though the story is a complete wreck, I’ll still have those 50,000 words and then it’s just a matter of figuring out a good method to clean it up, rewrite a good portion of it, and develop it into something stronger. I will get there, though! Even if it means chaining myself to my computer on November 30th! Page count: 47. Word count: 31,211.

Short Stories: Short stories? What short stories? LOL.

100 Books Project: I’ve been blowing through books lately, which is really exciting. I keep telling myself to pay more attention to NaNo, since that’s got the sooner deadline, but I’ve just been enjoying reading a lot lately, and I’m hoping to have another book ready to add to the count either tomorrow or Friday. Books read: 53/100.

Black Dome Society: …wait, what’s this? Did L.S. Engler just add another goal to her list? Yes. Yes, she did. The Black Dome Society was something I was kind of working on in conjunction with my friend Ryan; it was his idea, but I’m the one with the writing prowess. Things have been a little rough between the two of us, but we’re getting back in stride and the wine-tasting last night definitely fueled a great brain-storming session where a lot of different ideas were tossed back and forth and I made a perhaps crazy commitment to seeing what I can do in finally getting this project on the ground and running in a direction where we want to take it. I haven’t started on it yet, but in the next few days after the holiday, I’ll be taking up the endevor of trying to get it started, so why not make it a RoW goal to keep myself focused on it? Should be interesting, either way!

How’s everyone else doing? Any Thanksgiving plans to interfere with your writing? I know I still plan to get a lot of writing done in the morning before all the festivities, and I know my roommate is planning to use my having to work on Black Friday as an excuse to get us home earlier. We’re terrible. =D

Be sure to check out other RoWers here and check out all the other great things they’re working on! Have a happy and safe turkey day, fellow Americans, and for those of you who aren’t, have a fantastic day, as well!