PONOWRIMO!

So I was going to announce this when the fic came out but it's been sitting in processing for a while and I feel like I owe my watchers something for telling them I'd update Summer and then totally putting it on hiatus instead.

I've decided that my lack of productivity in terms of fic-writing needs to be fixed, and in hopes of doing so I'm participating in the pony version of a contest I've participated in four (well, really two and then half-assed for the other two) times before. This, of course, is NaNoWriMo. Not sure if the pony version (run by one of the EqD prereaders, Noble Cause) will help me actually get to 50k for once, but eh, it's worth a go. Judging by the fact that tons of fics are pouring into the "Looking for Editors" group (also the fact that my story is taking a while to be approved) I think it's safe to say this is a fairly popular contest already. I for one am not going to be editing my fic until September for the sake of actually getting 50k words, something none of my stories have ever accomplished, even outside of a month.

I've already run into the procrastination bug, and I only started writing last Friday night. Even then, I bumped out less than 1k words, far short of the ~5k I should've had by the end of the night. Then I took Saturday off, and I realized my hopes of achieving my goal with a reasonable amount of writing each day were fading fast. Sunday I bucked it into high gear and finished up the first chapter, which I actually named this time! Yaaay named chapters!

So anyway the story (which is titled Direction, for the record) is currently sitting on 2,628 words, a full 5,437 behind pace. Fortunately, a clip of 2k words a night would put me over my goal, and in the early days of writing Summer I did that four nights in a row. Unfortunately, I definitely teetered off after that, but I hope the fact that I'm writing more for word count than for quality will help me learn to not be such a perfectionist with every single little word.

Still, I am going to have to deal with some obstacles while writing. For one, I'm leaving town tomorrow (August 7th) night for a wedding and I won't get back 'til August 12th. One of the things I noticed when doing my latest two attempts at NaNoWriMo was that not having a laptop kind of made participating damn near impossible, since any night you weren't able to sit at your desktop for an hour or two was a night you'd have to make up later. I still don't have a laptop, and even though I'm making ~$400 a week at my new summer job I'm saving up for possibly maybe going to Canterlot Gardens (which, if I do, I might or might not have some exciting announcements about). However, I'll probably be able to convince my dad to let me use his work laptop to at least get some writing done while I'm off watching other people be in love.

Maybe next blog post I'll talk more about the actual content of Direction, a fic that I'm actually fairly excited to be writing, but for now I've got words to write. I've already lost enough sleep these past few weeks, I don't need to go losing more.

(PS: For the record, I'm calling it PoNoWriMo for Pony Novel Writing Month, which is actually not the official name of the contest but it makes more sense to me than the official name of the contest. Yes, I know that's redundant. Yes, I know I'm supposed to be a fanfic writer. You're not paying for this, so shush)