What did I accomplish in October?
I did a lot of editing. I decided to go back through the early chapters of The Land of Two Moons and put them into the 2-panel-per-page format that I’ve been using for the latest chapters. Those early chapters comprised parts 1, 2, and most of part 3.
The result? Well, Part 1 used to consist of a prologue and 3 chapters. It now consists of a Prologue and 5 chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 needed to be split into 2 chapters each, as they were getting way too long for my liking.
Part 1 is 157 pages long. Comic pages. Comic pages that I will eventually have to draw. It will, at minimum, take me around a year and a half to draw 157 pages.
This is after me cutting out all the fat, too. Everything here is essential to set up the plot and character development.
Part 2, on the other hand, started out as 3 chapters and ended up as 3 chapters. It has ended up at a much more reasonable 94 pages. Part 3 also stayed at 3 chapters, and is 87 pages.
So, writing-wise: I finished the first two chapters of part 4 (chapters 12 & 13). I am currently in the middle of chapter 14.
Artwork completed in October
I didn’t draw this much as in other months – mostly because I wrote and edited a lot.
I’ve also been doing a series of black & white portraits of the main characters of The Land of Two Moons. It’s helping me figure out what kind of shading style I want to use for this comic.
NaNoWriMo Plan & Goals
I’m doing something very different this November. I’m rebelling!
It’s something I’ve done for multiple Camp NaNoWriMo sessions, but never NaNoWriMo proper. I realized that I haven’t had enough time to think out the plot of the original novel, and I wouldn’t get anywhere if I tried to write anything past the first act. I am not much of a pantser, unfortunately.
These are the tasks I want to complete during this NaNoWriMo:
- Write the first act of Mujin’s Journey (novel, WIP title). This should be around 10-15k words. The series of events is pretty set in my head, so it won’t conflict with any other ideas I come up with.
- Continue working on the script for The Land of Two Moons (webcomic script). I only expect to write 4 chapters during NaNo, with each chapter being around 2000 words long.
- Finish the editing outline for The Book of Immortality. I wanted to complete this task in September, but it did not happen. I also wanted to complete it in October, but…it still didn’t happen. I will be writing a 3-4 sentence summary for each of the remaining 37 chapters that do not have summaries. This will probably end up totaling around 1000 words.
At most, that gets me 24,000 words – barely halfway to the 50,000 goal! But there are some other tasks I want to include that don’t produce a wordcount!
- Drawing comic pages of The Land of Two Moons. I saw someone mention counting each comic page as 1000 words in the NaNoWriMo forums, and I’ve decided I want to do that as well. I’m breaking this down into pencils (the sketch of the page) being worth 500 words, and inks (the finalized page) being worth 500 words. Since I hate drawing an entire page in one sitting, I’ll probably do a bunch of pencils one week, then ink those pages in the next.
- Editing The Book of Immortality. That editing outline is one of the tasks I plan on knocking out first, so I’ll have the rest of the month to edit. Each hour of editing will count as 1000 words.
It’s unlikely that this will also get me to 50,000 words, unless I somehow become a master of time management overnight (very unlikely). That’s why I also want to start worldbuilding and plotting two other projects: Let the Sky Remain Unbroken and Tenebres Library. They’re both future webcomic projects that have been bouncing around my head for a few years. They’re now at the point where I’m satisfied with my ideas, and I want to start writing.
Obviously I’m not going to start writing something new when I’ve got enough WIPs to handle, so that’s just why I’m plotting them.
But…isn’t this too much to focus on in one month?
This has crossed my mind. A lot. It is, in fact, quite a bit too much to do. This isn’t even close to what I would try to do in a normal month – but then again, neither is NaNoWriMo. When I’m writing a normal script or novel, I try to aim for 500 words per day, weekdays only. That’s around 10,000 words a month.
NaNoWriMo’s always been about going above and beyond what I feel comfortable with, so I’m going to give this impossible plan a go!
Like in previous years, I’ll also be doing weekly blog posts.
Unlike previous years, they are not all going to be posted on Saturday. Here’s my current schedule:
Update 1: Days 1-7, posted on November 8th
Update 2: Days 8-14, posted on November 15th
Update 3: Days 15-21, posted on November 22nd
Update 4: Days 21-30, posted on December 1st
