Writer's Block Daily

I only "succeeded" at Na No Wri Mo once, during the June one a few years back.

But... It was kind of garbage. Like, all of it. The writing was okay I guess, but the plot was derivative and the characters weren't very interesting either. I ended up just scrapping it.

These days I prefer planning things out before I write them.

I don't think I've ever succeeded in Na No Wri Mo. Though this November I've managed to write something every day. Yesterday I finalized my RP Campagin, today I designed a board game.

My experience was I wrote around 48k words in 11 days, and that really exhausted me and made me not want to write. I ended up barely reaching 50k near the very end.

I wrote a short script for HitRECord about going on a date with a magician. A crapton of the other scripts involve either evil/necromancer magicians or really obvious parodies.

My magician is a Japanese-American guy who uses mysteriously-placed origami to schedule a date with his best friend, calls the origami figures his babies, and makes a pi/pie/3.14 joke at 3:14PM since their date is at lunch in the afternoon. Then when it rains unexpectedly, he makes her umbrella appear in her bag. From the trunk of her car, which was locked, and parked about half a block away. And then she checks the trunk and finds some flowers in the umbrella's place, which ensures a second date.

It just really surprised me that so many people thought "date with a magician? EVIL/LOSER/DORK!" Especially on HitRECord, which is a pretty upbeat website in general. You'd think with so many performing artists, we'd have people who understand that magicians are another type of performer.

edited 27th Nov '15 7:06:26 PM by Sharysa

That's an original and interesting take on magic.

...pretty sure that Sharysa meant 'as in a stage magician'.

I've run into a problem where I have a very well-developed world and a good idea of what the main characters are going to be like, but I'm very indecisive about what I want the plot to be like. I have a bunch of different ideas but they all have different things I don't like about them. It's making me a bit anxious.

What kind of story do you want these characters to tell?

I'm not really sure what you mean.

Try the old writing exersize: Pick an arbitrary situation, put your characters into it, and see what they do.

I wrote a letter-like story about a murderer telling stuff to the sheriff of police— why he did the triple murder, and asking why he hasn't been caught yet. I can't believe how I made a cohesive story with a beginning, middle, climax, and end in letter format.

On the writing front: little progress, I need to stop adopting plotbunnies that inevitably move in and consume more than their fair share of brainspace. (Portal fantasy into the early gunpowder-era: Land Rover Perenties work their way around the edges of armies and polities convulsed by the Infantry Revolution, in a world where the Divine Right of Kings is more than empty talk. Unneeded distraction!)

On the thematic front, though, following recent developments, I continue to be unnerved about how throwaway predictions made years ago about the corrosive effect of ethno-nationalist fringes are seemingly edging closer to reality.

And on the completely unrelated front, for lack of anywhere else to link this, a fascinating study on receptiveness to pseudo-profound bullshit (to use the academic term for it: "seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous"; nonsensical randomly-generated statements filled with buzzwords that make syntactical sense but have only the appearance of profundity.) Kudos to Marginal Revolution for the link.

Must say really enjoying writing a 'Everyone Can See It' rom-com. Her friend decides she wants Him as a Fuck Buddy, and afterwards is standing there naked and says she won't get in the way of them, which squicks him out. In fact they are constantly squicking- every so often one of them thinks all the shippers might have a point, which freaks the other out, then freaks the first one out.

Just written a scene where He has taken Her on a date. And by 'Taken Her on a date' I mean dropped Her off so She can meet Her date. But not before worrying about Her, leaving instructions when to phone Him, has she got money, does she have a condom (for a first date).

edited 1st Dec '15 11:18:10 AM by Last_Hussar

Personally, I don't really like Nanowrimo. From what I've seen, a lot of the writers there don't even intend for their novel to be good, or for it to ever get published.

While I somewhat share the sentiment, that's also the point. It's partly about shaking that perfectionist mindset and just getting something written.

edited 1st Dec '15 12:26:35 PM by nrjxll

Some people just write for fun without intending for it to actually get published.

*waves hand* Like me.

In other news, I was doing research on royal letterheads. I somehow stumbled on one of those poorly-written fringe websites about psychic warfare. It was a laugh riot, but this sentence in particular was amusing:

Makes perfect sense: I've been kicked out of the living room during England Rugby matches to stop my inadvertent curse. I might become an Arsenal supporter, just to make sure the buggers lose.

Congratulations on finding literally the best reason to be an Arsenal supporter. I applaud you.

I'm really curious what the intermediary steps were there.

I was Googling letters written by the British Royal Family, and one of the images I noticed seemed quite plain compared to the others, as if it was nothing more than something typed up in a word processor with zero attempt to make it look interesting. When I clicked on it, it turned out to be a warning to the Royal Family from someone who claimed to be psychic, saying that the US was expanding their targets of psychic assassinations from just the Kims in North Korea to all royalty everywhere. (Although they could be safe if they sent a million pounds to the bank account of his choice.) I noticed that the URL sounded very fringe-y and started exploring the site. Hilarity ensued.

I was already pretty happy because my origami stage-magician script is getting a lot of good comments, but then a new reader of Moonflowers said that if this were animated, it would be an epic pagan-Irish/Celtic version of Spirited Away. !!! I've been Squeeing inside for the past ten minutes!

BEING COMPARED TO HAYAO MIYAZAKI IS LIKE EVERY ANIME PERSON'S DREAM COMPLIMENT AND I WASN'T EVEN EXPECTING IT

JOYFUL SCREECHING

edited 1st Dec '15 7:31:12 PM by Sharysa

I suck suck suck suck suck at ending chapters.

It is possible the chapter hasn't ended then.

If the only thing remaining is the characters going to bed and the next plot development happens in the morning, it has.