On Parents and Productivity

By now, I have more or less come to accept I will never get any actual writing done while I'm staying at my parents' house.

Of course, there are several reasons for this. One such reason is simply the schedule. With fifteen other people to weave around, I rarely get to be on my computer as I wish. When I do, it's frequently in the middle of a noisy kitchen. I don't mind that too much. Noise and life are an inevitable part of being around family, after all. However, I have long since given up on the hope of concentrating on anything even half-way productive in such an environment. In the dark of the night, when I should be able to concentrate without such disturbances, I am far too tired to produce anything of a particular quality. The problem is further worsened by factors such as my not having a desk in the room I sleep in, thus having to get my legs numb on the floor if I wish to get any writing done. Um, how about no thanks.

Another factor is more of a technical – or technological – concern. While at my parents', I am separated from my beloved computer, forced to make do with my old and failing laptop. Despite the countless hours I have put into the thing, I now find myself unable to get used to the feel of the keyboard. I have, for the most part, abandoned my loyal old companion. Yea, I am a bitch. What can you do, she's four years old. In laptop years, that equals about eighty.

As thus, I feel I can stop frowning at myself for not getting that word count any further over the whole long weekend. I mean, I did do some planning, right? That's almost more than I can demand from myself under such circumstances. In fact, I should be proud of my exceptional productivity! I jotted down notes for almost two chapters. At my parents', that is about the same as writing them at home, right?

Except I'm not writing at home, either. Where I'm free from any distractions that are not of my own creation. Where I can, at least in theory, feel free to allocate my free time as I wish. Sure, said free time may not be that bountiful at this time of the year, but it does exist. Prime writing time!

Writing time which I use on TV Tropes, AIM, and other such methods of procrastination. I know, I know. I should be ashamed of myself.

As it is, I am somewhat ahead of schedule for my primary word count goal for the year (500,000, to be exact). However, that means I am very badly behind on my ultimate word count goal. With a third of the year behind me, I need to start working a lot faster and soon if I wish to have any hope of achieving it.

The word count chart I made for my wall, intending it to be encouraging, is rather pitiful at best. One hopes it will work to shame me into writing something at least. Even little things will get me ahead, after all. There are days of five hundred words. There are days of five thousand, or fifteen thousand. I just need some less of the former, and some more of the latter. And none of those depressing days of zero words that seem to fill my tables at present.

I hereby declare that from now on, I will not allow myself to partake in any such procrastination until I have written at least five hundred words for the day. It is not much, but then I have never been good at writing too little. I hope that if I get myself started, I will continue to write, and get that word count up, little by little.

After all, I have a big, big chart to be filled with the stickers of word count bench marks. And those kitties are cute and demand to be applied to the grid.

I don't have the word count chart at my parents' place, either. The lack of kittens is the obvious culprit for my lack of productivity, not me.

Yeah, right.

I wonder if gluing kitty ears to my laptop would solve two problems at the same time.

Lore: Might and Magic

So I've pushed some of my urban fantasy ideas together. I'm now working with them under the name of Mythical Lore 101 over at my original fiction journal, or Lore for short.

Of course, working on a new world means worldbuilding. And, while there's still a lot I have to figure out, this is what's clear about it this far.

Magic

There are different disciples of magic, but all share a common trait: technically, anyone can use them. Some people may lack the internal power to do much with it, but basically anyone who learns the rules and rituals can use magic, and anyone with the same power level and knowledge can have the same results. This includes summonings, magical runes, potions, and so on.

The level of magical power in a person is partly inherited, partly somewhat random, and for certain kinds of magic it can be increased by training, though everyone is born with certain limits they are unable to surpass.

Might

Might is different from magic in that it is an innate talent. Some forms of might can be replicated by means of magic, such as most elemental powers, but some are unique to their users. Nobody can learn to use might; you are either born with it, or you aren't. Those who are born with it naturally have the ability to use their might, though they might be able to increase their level of control by training.

As they are hereditary to a degree, certain kinds of might are tied to certain traits: for example, only women can have natural magic sight, while only men can be born with the ability to drastically decrease temperature. These traits, however, do not follow any particular rhyme or reason any more than there is logic to the fact that men are more likely to be color blind.

Fantastic problems

No, I'm not talking about NaNo. It's going forward, slowly but surely, but it's not what's bothering me the most right now. That's not even my stupid Bleach fanfic that's threatening to take over my head.

No, what's eating me at the moment are my fantasy plot bunnies.

I currently have two main fantasy bunnies eating away at my head. One is fairly traditional; it has several kingdoms filled with fantastical races (elves, elben, golden people, silver people...) and a traditional "big bad" with centuries of evil reputation to back him up. There's a traditional band of "heroes" (if you can call a kleptomaniac prince very heroic, among others) and even a traditional task -- go and find the Big Bad's son before his father awakens and lures him to the side of darkness. Oh, and if he's already evil, you must kill him, and a certain prophecy says the leader of the heroes won't return home, have fun on the way. Did I mention the one sending them off is said leader's mother? And some "urban legends" (though there's hardly anything urban about the setting) are in fact real, including Grieving Queen, who the legends say is the mother of the Big Bad's son... and steals children whenever it rains...

The other one has no clear setting yet. I know there's a forest, because there's also a little boy who believes himself to be the god of the forest, and who latches onto a priestess because she looks like his mother. There's a couple of perfectly ordinary wandering knights, except one of them is immortal and the other obsessed with staying young, who come across the near-dead victim of a royal conspiracy scheme. There's a young stable boy who's really centuries old and fought in a previous war, and a crown prince who's working to start a new one, and an old and worn general who may or may not be evil but who's certainly prepared to kill an innocent child just because he's in the way.

...Maybe I could combine the two... the first setting does have a couple of immortals, and adding in the original quest against evil shouldn't make the plot of the second much more complicated at this point. I also know of at least one "royal" person in the first setting who'd like a war, though she's neither a prince nor the heir to the throne... I'll have to establish the magic system, but then I have to do that anyway. (Kinda want to retain some singing magic, since that was the point of the original reincarnation of the first plot years and years ago, but I still have to figure out if that's exclusive to a few people or if it works for anyone who knows the songs.) Grieving Queen might fit in with the actual forest gods, though if I want the priestess I'll have to establish at least one religion... though then those would naturally revolve around the immortals...

And of course trying to simplify things by combining them only brings up new complications. Yay. -_-

For those interested, here are some of the characters in the first one. Including the kleptomaniac prince (the first one from left). Last one on right is the Big Bad's son. And this shows the all-important difference between elves and elben. The one at left is an elb, the one at right is an elf. Crystal clear, ne? ...No? Well, too bad, since the difference's apparently been enough to keep up a grudge just about short of a civil war for centuries.

Also, while the little boy may or may not be a god, killing him does do bad things to the forest... ah, the joys of karmic retribution. >_>

...While I am at it, I wonder if there's any way to involve the old idea I had of four angels being reincarnated as four siblings, only one of them went mad when she realized what they really were, and another is in love with his sister...

NaNo! Days 4&5~

It was a dark night, and though it was not particularly stormy, there might have been a slight dribble of rain outside. However, the fervently moving fingers inside did not know about any such things as they practically flew over the keyboard. They had been doing little else for the past day. After leaving class, she had done nothing but sat at her computer, more or less writing all the time, only occasionally taking the necessary break for visiting the bathroom or eating or casually stabbing her far too stubborn characters to death.

Finally, on the 5th of November, at 23:34, ther writing program finally displayed a five-digit number starting with a... five.

She had achieved Nirvana. Well, something pretty damn close to it, anyway. NaNoWriNa might've been closer.

So! After a day and a half of frantic writing (clocked in 14k on the 5th, goodness me), filled with researching (and then more or less lovingly describing) enucleation aftercare (that's the removal of an eyeball for those of you blinking sleepily at the screen), contemplating the woes of babies waking up in the middle of the night when you really really like sleep, and figuring out the general timeline, I have achieved the (first) goal of the month: The 50k mark.

Thank you, thank you, this is far too much, really, such praise is most undeserved. I'd like to thank caffeinated drinks, Write or Die, those two friends who always seemed to be just a few words ahead no matter what, and...

Yeah, that is, right. For those interested, the sentence that finally tipped the scales was,

It was just an evolutionary reflex, he knew, just the way his brain had been made because after all he was still just a human even if he wasn't one of those stupid herbivores, but as Shou's tears slowly ebbed away and he gave a little smile around the nipple of the bottle Kyouya found his own lips curving just a bit further, too.

(Okay, so actually it was There was a slight smile on Kyouya's second-in-command's face, but the first one is much sweeter, wouldn't you agree?)

So, among other things, I wrote about holding a crying child. And the scars left from grave injuries. And asking Papa difficult questions about his eye. And okay, fine, holding someone who's neither a baby nor crying.

That said, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty happy with the amount of big words one can fit into something that simply means "You're a consenting adult, stop blushing like a kid who heard a dirty word".

"Perhaps I am." Finally, Hibari gave up the pretense of reading, lifting his eye to look directly at Hayato from where he sat quite calmly on the couch. "You are behaving quite childishly, Gokudera Hayato. We are both adults, as I understand, despite your occasional rather juvenile behaviour, and as such, I would assume we are capable of handling the matter in a somewhat mature fashion. Yes, we did engage in sexual activities last night, in my bed, in this house. To my understanding all this happened on mutual agreement, with acknowledgement and acceptance of our individual sexual desires and preferences. Given the preceding conversation, as well as the fact neither of us seemed too intent on letting any such activities have a further effect on our day to day life, I cannot help but rather wonder at your current behaviour."

...Wouldn't you agree?

So! At the end of the fifth day, I stand as follows:

Words total: 50,146
Completed chapters: 3
Completed scenes: 19
Scenes total: 30

Also, tip of the day: If you make an assassin babysit your infant, make sure you're not too attached to the couch. Trust me, you'll be better for it.

NaNo! Day 3~

Today, I didn't really write very much. I was still too tired in the morning, spent most of school drawing some more planning pictures for my sci-fi and the really annoying fanfic bunny, and then got home so late, I was just hungry and tired and annoyed and all things bad. Got still 6k together altogether, which I suppose isn't that bad.

This thing just keeps throwing details my way from everywhere... seriously, the words "Auntie Luss" were never meant to pass mortal lips, yet here I am, staring at them on my screen. Honestly. The thought of babysitting assassins seemed silly but doable before I wrote it. Now it's silly and absurd and I really really really want to keep it in the story. Poor Hayato just can't get a break.

I've absolutely no idea which part I'll attack tomorrow. Hopefully I can come up with something tomorrow at school. At least I won't have any classes on Friday, so I can use all of that to catch up~ Of course, seeing as I seem to be planning to hit the 50k on Friday, there's a lot to catch up with. XD But hey, I can't be any worse than the others, now can I?

So, today, I was writing about this, among other things.


And at the end of the third day, I stand as follows:

Words total: 26,628
Completed chapters: 2
Completed scenes: 12
Scenes total: 18

NaNo! Day 2~

Gaming night obviously means I don't make it home on time. Ah well. NaNo day two, reporting in somewhat late~

Wasn't going to write very much... then realized how far ahead some people had gotten. First heading towards 15k, I finally made it from yesterday's 12,337 to 20,073 in roughly three and a half hours, which I'd think is quite acceptable. Half of this was a character rambling -- a scene that was supposed to be about 1k headed towards 5k instead. Because of this one scene, I'll probably have to rethink my chapter breaks if I want to keep the chapters roughly the same length. Ah well. These discoveries are all part of the fun. ♥ Still have to figure out if the chapter with that scene is done or if I'll add another scene just to add to the chaos. For now, I'll call it done.

Got some nice ideas, too; my characters developed connections I hadn't quite expected, all feasible enough within the universe but still somewhat... surprising. Hm. It seems Shou will be the most fearsome (real) baby of all if I can actually talk a world-class assassin into babysitting him.

Today's bit was roughly about this.

On a non-NaNo note, I spent half my time at the gaming night drawing planning pictures for my sci-fi 'verse. The damn thing apparently really, really wants to exist. At least I finally got down the picture of berths that's been bothering me, though I'm not entirely sure about the relative heights of the two guys in the picture. Will have to check against the original height chart, still.

So, at the end of the second day, I stand as follows:

Words total: 20,073
Completed chapters: 2(?)
Completed scenes: 9
Scenes total: 14

NaNo! Day 1~

And it's started!

At 12,337 words, I'm pretty satisfied with what I've done on the first day. Of course, there's still some catching up to be done, but at least I beat last year's first. Always aiming to better myself, yes I am~

Lost a chunk of valuable writing time because I went over to some friends' place. I don't exactly regret it, though; I had fun, and it's not like that's going to ruin my NaNo. Besides, I'd think that after reaching the first 10k on my first day I deserved the break. Even if I ended up dozing off behind their couch. Sorry, guys~

So, today I wrote about this. Among other things. ^_~

So, as we near the end of the first day of NaNo, my stats are as follows:

Words total: 12,337
Completed chapters: 1
Completed scenes: 7
Scenes total: 10

Now to beat that one dear friend...