Menu
chapter 16 blog
I first heard about National Novel Writing Month ten years ago in 2007. Since this will be my tenth year participating (in some way or another) I have decided to put together a celebratory timeline of my history.
What I've always loved about NaNoWriMo is that it has always inspired me to write. Even with all the years I've been unprofessional and dopey about it, I've finished at least one new book a year every year for the last decade. I still strongly feel like the best reason to participate in NaNoWriMo is, well, to finish a novel. That being said, there are a lot of other very valid, very noble reasons to join and this year I'm going to start taking those other reasons a little more seriously. This is a great opportunity to interact with a community of writers, to talk about projects that mean a lot to me, and to keep track of my goals. So stay tuned. Soon I will be announcing this year's project for NaNoWriMo (which I'm really excited about.) I'll also be tracking my progress on the official site as well as on my Writing.Com portfolio. -Cat
0 Comments
I'm very proud to announce that for this year's National Novel Writing Month I will be working on the novelization for Adventures! Wonderful cover art by Alan Johnson For those of you who don't know, Adventures is a gaming podcast on Youtube hosted by Stupidexport. I joined in at around the seventh episode as Radley and had the time of my life during the recording sessions. After we recorded the final episode, Alan approached me about working more with the story. We both really bonded with the characters that we'd been playing, and collaborating on a multi-media project seemed like the natural next step. What I'll be working on for NaNoWriMo is actually my second attempt at this particular project. As soon as it was brought up to me, I started writing a rough draft because I was so excited to be working in this world and with these characters, but I didn't top to think about just how difficult it would be to adapt a podcast into a book format. The answer is really, really hard. The previous version was terrible. There was a lot of pointless dialogue, long descriptions of combat, traveling back and forth between towns and of course, loose ends. These are all things that are perfectly entertaining when listening to players squabble and commentate, but aren't very interesting to read about. The book was a mess. I had fallen into the same trap a lot of other people have fallen into when working on these kinds of projects. If you're basing a book off of a game you played that you enjoyed, your instinct is going to be to keep every little detail in the book, and then add stuff on top of that. It makes sense because you want to stay faithful to the source material, you want to leave in all the moments that made you love the characters and the world, and cutting stuff out hurts. I have read a lot of rambling books/stories that have been adapted from games - and that's not what I wanted to write. Outlining this project was a nightmare. I was trying to get player feedback from an old draft while trying to outline a new draft and listening to the podcast files and figuring out how to structure a project of this size, and it felt really hopeless. That was when I got the idea to scrap all of the sections I had previously written and start with a clean slate for NaNoWriMo. This is an event that has helped me push through some of my trickiest projects in a timely manner. Getting this monster of an outline finished in time was a challenge. There was a lot of note-taking, several drafts of the outline, and lots of badgering my fellow players about their characters, but I think it paid off. I feel very, very prepared for what will be my most organized NaNoWriMo ever. Here we have the full transcripts from the podcast, two composition notebooks full of character notes, the finished outline and of course the notebook that I'll be writing in for NaNoWriMo. Last week Alan was kind enough to do some character sketches in the notebook I haven't decided whether or not to make the WIP available during the month of November, but you will be able to check my word count progress on the NaNoWriMo project page as well as on my Writing.com portfolio. |
Chapter 16 BlogJust a place for me to give updates on my work and mission of publication. Archives
February 2018
Categories |