August 2018 Overview

Jay ArgallLeave a comment

Hello everyone.

I’m writing this blog post last-minute. Usually I work on a draft all throughout the month, but I haven’t done that this time.

Enough about that. Let’s get to the point.

What did I do in August?

I finished chapter 6 and 7 of The Land of Two Moons. I am now working on Chapter 8. I set myself a writing goal of 46 pages, and I wrote exactly 46. I have the rest of chapter 8 outlined pretty thoroughly, so finishing that chapter will not be difficult.

I also drew some things.

A shading/color test of the lineart seen in this Tumblr post. It was posted on Tumblr on August 08.
Another shading/color test.
The third shading/color test I did, which turned out too pink/red and not as purple/blue as I thought it would be. It and the preceding piece were posted on August 09 on Tumblr.
A 4-color palette coloring of a sketch. The reason I only used four colors is because I got lazy and didn’t want to color it realistically. Originally posted on August 20 on Tumblr.

I did draw some other things, but they are sketches or concept art and aren’t supposed to be seen by anyone other than me, so I’m not posting them online anywhere!

I’ve also got an unfinished piece; I posted my art progress on Twitter. I’m not sure when I’ll finish it.

What do I want to accomplish in September?

I want to continue this 2 page per weekday thing for The Land of Two Moons. It’ll net me 40 pages, which means I will finish chapter 8, 9, and probably get about halfway through chapter 10.

I’ll need to finish outlines for those chapters soon, since as of right now, I don’t exactly know what happens in those chapters. I have vague ideas, but I haven’t exactly worked them out.

Perhaps it’s time to move some events around and make things more interesting.

I’m also starting to think about what I want to write for NaNoWriMo. Is it too early? I don’t remember if I’ve ever started planning a NaNoWriMo project in September before – that’s something I usually heavily start getting into in October.

Anyway, I really have no idea what I’m doing for NaNoWriMo, so I’m going to focus on that this month.

The last thing I want to focus on this month is creating an editing outline for The Book of Immortality. I finished writing it in April and haven’t touched it since. Enough time has passed that I should be able to look at it, make a list of the major events, and start creating a plan to edit this novel.

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Next blog post will be on September 30th! See you then!

Camp NaNo July 2018: Week 4

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21 July

Target Page Count: 67.88

Pages Scripted: 4

Total Pages: 79

Started chapter 5 today. This is a chapter that I’ve been looking forward to writing for a while!

22 July

Target Page Count: 71.06

Pages Scripted: 3

Total Pages: 82

Nothing much to say today.

23 July

Target Page Count: 74.29

Pages Scripted: 4

Total Pages: 86

I managed to put in a bit of worldbuilding & foreshadowing that I hadn’t planned.

24 July

Target Page Count: 77.52

Pages Scripted: 5

Total Pages: 91

Ended up writing more than I planned to today. And I’m now 90% done! That’s exciting.

25 July

Target Page Count: 80.75

Pages Scripted: 0

Total Pages: 91

Decided not to write today due to headaches and general tiredness.

26 July

Target Page Count: 83.98

Pages Scripted: 4

Total Pages: 95

So close to being done!

27 July

Target Page Count: 87.21

Pages Scripted: 7

Total Pages: 102

Finally done!

28-31 July

Though I did write a little bit during these days, I decided not to add the pages to my total page count.

Overview

I won four days early!

There were a couple of things I learned this month:

  1. I am very, very bad at remembering what panel layout I had in mind a few days after I’ve written a page. This is not a good thing, since I’ll eventually have to draw the comic. The solution: I have now implemented a panel layout into the header of all of my pages.
  2. My outline doesn’t give me nearly as much content as I thought it would. I’ve had to merge several chapters in order to have one 20-page chapter.
  3. Scrivener is a great program, and excellent for comics. I have a folder for each chapter, and a separate file for each page. It’s great!

Other than Camp NaNoWriMo, what did I do in July?

I got a Nintendo Switch and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, so I’ve been playing a lot of that in my free time.

I haven’t written anything else. I did draw three pages of the prologue of The Land of Two Moons. I drew some things.

Other than Camp NaNoWriMo, my July was pretty uneventful.

What do I hope to accomplish in August?

I’m going to script 2 comic pages per weekday. That’s 43 pages, which is roughly two chapters. I finished chapter 5 on the 27th, so I’ll hopefully be done with chapter 7 by the end of August.

Although…I haven’t even started plotting chapter 7 yet, so that may be a bit of a problem.

Currently, I don’t have any plans on touching The Book of Immortality. I have a plan on how to edit it, but I don’t have any timeline for working on it. But I do plan on getting back to it!

The next blog post will be on August 31st.

Camp NaNo July 2018: Week 3

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14 July

Target Page Count: 45.22

Pages Scripted: 3

Total Pages: 60

Started chapter 4!

15 July

Target Page Count: 48.45

Pages Scripted: 1

Total Pages: 61

Just one page today. I wanted to take a small break from overachieving.

16 July

Target Page Count: 51.68

Pages Scripted: 3

Total Pages: 64

Not much to say today.

17 July

Target Page Count: 54.91

Pages Scripted: 4

Total Pages: 68

Nothing interesting today either.

18 July

Target Page Count: 58.14

Pages Scripted: 4

Total Pages: 72

I got to finally write part of a scene I’ve had in my head for a while! Feels great.

19 July

Target Page Count: 61.37

Pages Scripted: 3

Total Pages: 75

I finished chapter 4! It was a shorter chapter than the previous ones, but adding more pages would have just been dragging it out unnecessarily.

20 July

Target Page Count: 64.60

Pages Scripted: 0

Total Pages: 75

I decided to take an actual break today and write zero pages. Partially because I’m 75% done, but mostly because I’m dealing with incredibly sore hands/fingers from drawing.

Overview

I wrote 18 pages this week. That’s lower than in either of the previous two weeks, but I don’t particularly care since I’m so far ahead.

Counting today, there are 11 days remaining to write, and I need to write 25 pages. That’s less than 2.5 pages a day, and I’m expecting to hit that goal a couple of days before the 31st.

The 31st is also when my last progress report is going up. See you all then!

Camp NaNo July 2018: Week 2

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07 July

Target Page Count: 22.61

Pages Scripted: 6

Total Pages: 30

I finished the second chapter! Now I’m going to get to write the parts where the plot really starts kicking in.

I also decided to merge the next two chapters, since they take place on the same day and there really isn’t enough content for two separate chapters.

08 July

Target Page Count: 25.84

Pages Scripted: 5

Total Pages: 35

Another decent writing day! I’ve started on the third chapter, which happens to be the last chapter of the first “part” of the story. At the moment, I have no idea how many parts there are going to be.

09 July

Target Page Count: 29.07

Pages Scripted: 1

Total Pages: 36

Only one page today! I decided to take a bit of a break since I’ve been overachieving recently.

10 July

Target Page Count: 32.30

Pages Scripted: 5

Total Pages: 41

I wrote a lot more than I planned to today!

11 July

Target Page Count: 35.53

Pages Scripted: 4

Total Pages: 45

I originally merged chapter 3 and chapter 4 because it looked like there wasn’t going to be enough content for two separate chapters. But now that I’m writing the new chapter 3, it looks like I might have to split them up again.

Also, I’m almost at the halfway point!

12 July

Target Page Count: 38.76

Pages Scripted: 6

Total Pages: 51

Turns out that yesterday’s concerns were for nothing. I’m back on track to end this chapter at a normal page count.

13 July

Target Page Count: 41.99

Pages Scripted: 6

Total Pages: 57

Finished chapter three! The first part of this story is done!

Overview

Overall, I think this was a pretty good week. I wrote 33 pages, as opposed to last week, where I only wrote 24. I finished chapter 2, then started and finished chapter 3.

Onward to next week!

Camp NaNo July 2018: Week 1

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01 July

Target Page Count: 3.23

Pages Scripted: 6

Total Pages: 6

It is day 1. I have already changed my goal from 31 pages to 100 pages. For those of you who remember Script Frenzy, 100 pages in 30 days (it was held in April) was the target goal. Since July has 31 days, I have it slightly easier than I would if I was doing this in April.

02 July

Target Page Count: 6.46

Pages Scripted: 4

Total Pages: 10

Properly started chapter two today. I also figured out a way to briefly introduce a character and plot point that’ll be important later on. It’s something I was having trouble with as it would seem to come out of nowhere when they’re supposed to be properly introduced, so it’s great that it worked out this way.

03 July

Target Page Count: 9.69

Pages Scripted: 4

Total Pages: 14

Today was a pretty uneventful writing day, though I did manage to work some more things out. There’s a bit more foreshadowing now than I originally had in my outline.

04 July

Target Page Count: 12.92

Pages Scripted: 3

Total Pages: 17

Another uneventful writing day.

05 July

Target Page Count: 16.15

Pages Scripted: 3

Total Pages: 20

Again, an uneventful day. At least the plot is moving forward.

06 July

Target Page Count: 19.38

Pages Scripted: 4

Total Pages: 24

Made good progress on the current chapter.

Overview

This week started out pretty strong and ended with me forcing myself to write, but somehow managing to keep ahead of schedule. I’m really hoping next week is going to be better.

June 2018 Overview

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What did I do in June?

I wrote 9,698 words with a goal of 10,000. I didn’t make my goal, but I did finish my script! The Book of Immortality is complete at 104,099 words.

This is the first thing I’ve finished since mid-2016. It’s also the first thing that I’ve written since mid-2015 that I’ve actually liked, so I’m pretty proud of myself for not getting discouraged and sticking with this the whole way through!

I also finished scripting the prologue and first chapter of The Land of Two Moons, a story I’ve been plotting out for the past few months.

What do I hope to accomplish in July?

I’m going to be participating in Camp NaNoWriMo again. I’m going to continue working on The Land of Two Moons, and I have a goal of 31 pages. That’s an incredibly easy goal I could hit in a week if I really wanted to, which is why I picked it. I want to take it easy after finishing The Book of Immortality.

However…I’m having a seriously difficult time coming up with an adequate summary. Even trying to put a genre on it is pretty difficult. It’s not that I don’t know what’s going to happen – I totally do – but that it’s hard to do it justice in a paragraph or two without feeling disingenuous or deceptive.

You’ll be able to see my status here. I will also be updating my progress on Twitter, and posting compilation posts on this blog every Saturday (and at the very end of July):

1st Post: Week 1, 1-6 July

2nd Post: Week 2, 7-13 July

3rd Post: Week 3, 14-20 July

4th Post: Week 4, 21-31 July

I’m not going to work on The Book of Immortality at all this month.

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To anyone else doing Camp NaNoWriMo this July, good luck!

May 2018 Overview

Jay ArgallLeave a comment

What did I do in May?

For The Book of Immortality, I wrote a total of 10,030 words this month with a goal of 10,000. I made some good progress, plotwise, in my story as well. My script is now sitting here with a wordcount of 94,401 and 35 chapters.

Because of this, I’ve decided to adjust my goal to 125,000 words, like I mentioned in my previous post. I don’t have much else planned for the rest of the story – it’s winding down at the moment, so it’s more than likely that I’ll be finished before I hit 125k.

I’ve also been plotting out and researching for a new story, which is a spiritual successor of sorts to The Gate at the End of the World. It has many of the same characters , but in different roles. The setting and plot is also incredibly different.

What do I hope to achieve in June?

I’m planning on writing 10,000 words for The Book of Immortality. Since there are 21 weekdays in June, that works out to 477 words per weekday.

I’m also going to continue working on the new story. It needs quite a bit more work before I can start writing it. Maybe I’ll do that for NaNoWriMo this year?

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My next post will be on June 30th. Until then!