May 2016 Production Recap · 11:11pm Jun 5th, 2016
May has come, May has gone, and the inexorable march of time onwards to the cold embrace of death is impossible to avoid. Eat at Arby’s.
Also, it’s production recap time! Graphs inside the break, run, save yourself.
14,237 words written total (Combined MSWord, and Fimfiction word count) between three projects.
So bit of a rough month all things considered. The numbers aren’t super bad for how ugly the month has been, thanks to a bit of an accident with Basil Bones. I set out to write chapter 4 with the plan to switch back to the original novel before tackling chapter 5, got about 4k words into it, and realized that I was missing a scene inside of the one I was writing. I split it in two, thinking that chapter 4 would just end up being a little long, wrote the new scene, then finished the second part of the original scene, and found it ended up being two chapters worth of material. So I suddenly had two drafted chapters and a really solid first half of the month for writing.
Then the second half of the month happened. I had a slight slow-down on writing while I got my ducks in a row with launching Geek Books, then a total crash and burn when my grandmother passed away unexpectedly. I say unexpectedly because she passed in her sleep after a fairly normal day, but she had emphysema and was 95, so really it wasn’t a surprise and honestly it was a bit of a blessing for her. She wasn’t afraid of dying, but was afraid she’d end up in hospice care or a hospital for months before going, and she was saved from having to go through that. I wasn’t too shaken up by it, but my personal life was thrown to the wolves for a couple weeks there, as relatives came into town and we all dealt with the administrative nightmare that is death in the modern world. I’m not gonna be too down on myself for not getting much of any writing done in that window, but it’s been difficult to claw my way back into productivity afterwards.
Anybutts, that’s enough being a downer. Let’s get into specifics.
9,815 words drafted (Fimfiction word count) finished length.
These chapters are up on the site now, surprise extra length and all. As the rest of my writing’s been tossed around sort of violently, the next chapter’s a bit of time away, but hopefully not too long, if I get back in the swing of things. Writing has a weird amount of friction to it, and after falling off of it getting going again has proved challenging, but I do have some momentum. If I can maintain it, I should be getting back to Basil soon enough. Here we are overall:
26,369 words drafted (Fimfiction word count) out of 35,000 (estimated finished length).
You may notice the estimated length’s puffed up a little. As I say, I’m bad at guessing this. I think I’m close in my guessing, but I also think it’s just as likely I’m yet another chapter off and it’ll be more like 40k words. We shall see, though I am getting close to done on it. Not much else to say on this one for now. Onwards!
2,634 words drafted (MSWord word count) finished length.
This here is what actually kicked off the month of May. I had about half this drafted at the start, so I finished it up before moving onto the Basil chapters. Not very much material to show on this, just a finished up chapter. This would be much better if it had another chapter tacked in, but alas. Here it is overall:
48,372 words drafted (MSWord word count) out of 70,000 (estimated finished length).
In hindsight I’m super annoyed that my plan to high-gear this totally fell flat and I got very little done on it. I’m sticking to my ‘two chapters, then switch’ plan for it going into June, but I haven’t quite gotten into working on it yet. It is the first thing on my plate, though, I’ve just been struggling to get that plate in front of me. Instead, I’ve focused what little time and attention I’ve had on…
3,053 words drafted (MSWord word count) out of 3,500 (estimated finished length).
As I recently announced, I’ve launched a youtube channel reviewing books. I finished reading The BFG during the weeks of crazy, felt I had a reasonable amount to say about it, and have gotten to the scripting of a couple episodes about it. This sort of writing is pretty easy for me and I felt like it was a good way to pick myself back up and get to work, and thus far it’s doing its job on that. I’m hoping to be done with the drafting later today, then over the course of June I can do all the recording and drawing for it in time to put up the first episode during the first week of July.
While I’m doing that, next on the block is more of my novel, two chapters worth, then into Basil Bones chapter six. I’m not planning on my grandmother’s passing sinking me, so I just gotta grab everything by the horns here.
That sort of underwhelming and rather difficult May brings the year’s running tally to:
Total Words Written: 68,880.
Average Words Per Month: 13,776.
Projected Total Word Count for 2016: 165,312.
Onwards we dive into June. I’ve started it off okay, let’s go for broke here. TTFN.
I knew there was a reason I loved you.
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Says the guy with a wrestler avatar.
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...Really? Did you have your sense of humor pulled out through your ass? Calm your tits.
Say, uhh, bats, do you listen to Welcome to Nightvale by chance?
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Hey, uhh, ZOMG, do you listen to Welcome to Nightvale by chance?
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I can't say I have, though I've heard the name before. I'm usually not that into fiction podcasts, but that one has been vaguely on my list of stuff to maybe check out. I'm not quite sure what it has to do with a Nihilist Arby's joke, though.
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It is well worth the listen. I didn't "do" podcasts before it either but now I listen to Welcome to Nightvale every update.
As for relevance, every so often they have a "Word from our sponsor" segment and they are very much in line with what you did.
Here's an excerpt from episode 2.6 (no spoilers for the main part)
Pretty much all if then are like that, with just enough variance to keep it interesting when it shows up.
I like another segment they do called "Traffic", and the running gag that is "Weather" is also funny.
I will warn you though, the first couple of episodes are rather dry and I almost didn't get past them. It really picks up around ep four or five when Cecil finds the right voice to use and really gets into his role.
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That's pretty great, I love that sort of Gonzo Marketing parody. If you are unfamiliar, Nihilist Arby's is a pretty hilarious Twitter account that does fun little bite-sized things just like that.
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I was not aware of it, but it's quite amusing.
When you've got the time binge some Welcome to Night Vale. Each one is just under half an hour long, until you get to their live shows which are around two hours, so it doesn't take that much time to listen to one of them. Though I do recommend trying to make it to at least ep six in one sitting if you can, because the first few are indeed a bit dry but they pick up pretty quickly and if you can get past that initial slog it becomes very much less of a chore. I wouldn't recommend skipping them, as even things from the very first episode get call backs latter on.
There is a very tight continuity to the series, again, not really counting live shows which do get minor references but are not "mandatory" to the experience, and I've often found myself going back and re-listening to things to try and find the first reference to something that played a key part in a newer episode.
I'm trying not to go full on fanboy here. Tee-ell-dee-arr; go give it a listen, I very much enjoy it.