Anyone doing Nanowrimo or working on their own project?

[Arinth]

Anyone else here working on a writing project of their own outside of the WoT world? I'd love to hear about it. I've worked on my own stories for years now but haven't written much in awhile because of school and work and family. However, I sat down tonight and hammered out 1k words for a new story. It felt good to write my own stuff after being so long away from it. I just wanted to say that and celebrate it along with the work anyone else may be doing too.

 

[Cass]

Wow!! Congrats and thanks for the inspiration!

 

I've been super hectic with uni/ work/family too and missing the joy of writing <3

 

I think my biggest issue at the moment/for a long time is I'm so tired I feel all blocked and out of ideas >.<

 

You give me hope!!

[The Bard Babe]

Yes Arinth!! I'm doing NaNo and powering through my story. Wanna do some story swaps at some point?

[Arinth]

That could be fun BB! Glad to hear you are writing too. Well I'm off to get my goal in for the day before bed.

[The Bard Babe]

Good luck! 

[Arinth]

*dusts hands*

 

Another 1100 words. Not too shabby. Things are about to get interesting

[Arinth]

22 hours ago, Cass said:

Wow!! Congrats and thanks for the inspiration!

 

I've been super hectic with uni/ work/family too and missing the joy of writing <3

 

I think my biggest issue at the moment/for a long time is I'm so tired I feel all blocked and out of ideas >.<

 

You give me hope!!

 

Hang in there Cass! Being exhausted and having no time has been on of the things that has really held me back too so I completely understand. The only way I'm getting any done now is that I just had to resolve to make the time to do it. I would just suggest writing something fun. Don't take it too seriously. If you are enjoying the story that you are writing it is easy to get started, and to keep going. :-)

[Cass]

4 hours ago, Arinth said:

 

Hang in there Cass! Being exhausted and having no time has been on of the things that has really held me back too so I completely understand. The only way I'm getting any done now is that I just had to resolve to make the time to do it. I would just suggest writing something fun. Don't take it too seriously. If you are enjoying the story that you are writing it is easy to get started, and to keep going. :-)

 

Good advice, I do tend to be too critical and serious about 'approving' my ideas ?

 

If someone wants to throw me a challenge or starter I'm all for it!!

 

Congrats on your second 1100 words!!

[Cass]

9 hours ago, The Bard Babe said:

Yes Arinth!! I'm doing NaNo and powering through my story. Wanna do some story swaps at some point?

 

Ooh yey!!

 

Can I just read and love all your writings too even if I don't get around to busting out of my block?

[The Bard Babe]

Of course of course! I have no problems getting words down but I've always sucked at finishing stories, and until I've finished, I don't tend to edit, which means I never share any of my writing. But I'm really going to try and do that this time!

 

If you need writing inspo or advice you should losten to writing excuses! 15 minute podcast episodes and the whole of season 10 is a big masterclass - and Brandon Sanderson is one of the hosts. Highly recommend if you're a bit stuck!

[Arinth]

I am happy to share with you too Cass. I've been developing in my head a main story for a long time and I've put some effort into building the world. I found I was having a hard time picking up where I left off in the story though so for my Nano project its a prequel of sorts about a character in the world. Its kind of like an origin story.

 

I also don't edit until I finish writing. I find it really slows down my progress. I am able to write more if I just get it out. Even if it needs editing its still better than being stuck and having little or no progress.

[The Bard Babe]

Woooow no wonder we like writing together Arinth, we sound like we have very similar processes. 

I always get bogged down by worldbuilding. I adore it, but it takes me too long and I get stuck and want to include all of it in my story at once and then I lose interest in the story because I already know what's happening haha. 

 

I also do exactly that with moving backwards, finding what happened to my characters before the main story to be super interesting, often moreso than the story. I like being avle to sort of flit to wherever without the constraints of ya know, a plot XD Unfortunately, that means I run out of plot very quickly, hence never finishing stories. 

[Arinth]

4 hours ago, The Bard Babe said:

Woooow no wonder we like writing together Arinth, we sound like we have very similar processes. 

I always get bogged down by worldbuilding. I adore it, but it takes me too long and I get stuck and want to include all of it in my story at once and then I lose interest in the story because I already know what's happening haha. 

 

I also do exactly that with moving backwards, finding what happened to my characters before the main story to be super interesting, often moreso than the story. I like being avle to sort of flit to wherever without the constraints of ya know, a plot XD Unfortunately, that means I run out of plot very quickly, hence never finishing stories. 

 

I love world building too! With my current story there is the King and then there are like 29 other Lords/Houses that make up the country. Without those 29 there are powerful ones which rule their own regions pretty strongly and have the loyalty of the Houses around them. For each of the 30 Houses I've had fun determining who is married to who, who the brothers/sisters and children are. Fleshing out the houses has quickly given me hundreds of characters I would say. I've also got a list of who the most renown warriors are. I've got the map of the country but haven't created maps of the individual cities. I think that may be one of the projects I work on next. The tricky thing for me is to not get so wrapped up in the world building that I forget to write, lol

[The Bard Babe]

Yuuup, I feel you there. Ahahaha, I love that intense detail. I have one story that I've been writing on and off for years with this ridiculous web of alliances between the three Nations and the military power and and a crazy magic system and cultures and stuff, and every time I re-visit it, it just gets bigger haha. It's getting a little bit hectic, but I've still never gotten anywhere with that story. I need to completely re-vamp the plot, I think. I've never really figured out what's going on, but damn the world is cool by this point haha

[Arinth]

That does sound pretty awesome. The cool thing about having a world that developed is you can stand back and pick any number of characters to write your story about. Because I had already built the world in my story I was able to just step back in time and pick a character and create their origin story.

[Cass]

Yey!!! Sharing!! Thank you both! :)

I loooove backstory and character histories, so I'm excited to read yours,  Arinth.

 

And Oooohhh - I did listen to writing excuses a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it! Maybe I should go deeper/ into Season 10 - Thanks BB!

 

I think the parts about editing and plot are part of where I'm tending to come undone... I often enjoy editing as I go, getting all excited about the words and language part of things and making everything take so long

Worse, I can't seem to remember how to "flit wherever" these days, I reject my ideas before I start because I foresee/predict failure or a lack of plot :/

[Cass]

53 minutes ago, The Bard Babe said:

Yuuup, I feel you there. Ahahaha, I love that intense detail. I have one story that I've been writing on and off for years with this ridiculous web of alliances between the three Nations and the military power and and a crazy magic system and cultures and stuff, and every time I re-visit it, it just gets bigger haha. It's getting a little bit hectic, but I've still never gotten anywhere with that story. I need to completely re-vamp the plot, I think. I've never really figured out what's going on, but damn the world is cool by this point haha

 

This sounds awesome and I already want to fall in love with the world and characters ??

[Cass]

15 minutes ago, Arinth said:

That does sound pretty awesome. The cool thing about having a world that developed is you can stand back and pick any number of characters to write your story about. Because I had already built the world in my story I was able to just step back in time and pick a character and create their origin story.

???

 

I had never even thought of trying this,  but I realllllllllly like the idea of this as an approach. 

 

I have several world and character ideas I love... I just reeeealllly seem to suck at finding their future plots ???

[The Bard Babe]

YES I am so bad at plot just very very bad. The story I'm writing for NaNo is very new, but it's also a combination of a couple of ideas that have been floating around for a while. As always, I have no idea what the main conflict actually is, or how it ends though at least I have a couple of ideas this time. Also absolutely no idea how to get there. But I have a new technique to make sure I don't flop, which is to add a fun character I like to a later plot point. That way I don't have a huge cast right from the start, and I have motivation to go find those characters so I can start using them haha.