Location, Location, Location

Clé · Post by **Clé** » Mon Oct 21, 2024 8:08 pm

November is nigh. About a week and a half away. Too close.

The reason this is significant, of course, is that, as discussed in a previous post, I had planned to write a novel in November set on one of the worlds of the Wongery. Originally I had intended to do this as part of NaNoWriMo, but, for reasons discussed in a more recent post, I had decided I wanted nothing to do with the organization that runs that event (and that has a trademark on the name).

Neither of those decisions has changed. I still do want to write a novel in November set on one of the worlds in the Wongery, for the reasons delineated in the first post linked above. But I'm still sure as heck not going to do it as part of NaNoWriMo, for the reasons delineated in the second post. (And more; turns out things have been going even worse there than I realized. More on that below.) But I still do want to do it as part of some larger community or event. I could just sit at home writing without interacting with anyone else, or for that matter I could (and probably will) get some writing done at work when my attention is not urgently needed elsewhere. God knows I spend a huge amount of time sitting at home writing without interacting with anyone else anyway (I mean, I'm sitting at home by myself writing this blog post right now)^[1]. But... that just wouldn't be the same experience. Much of the appeal of events like this is interacting with other people: seeing what they're doing, discussing what we're up to, just being around other people participating in the same event, either physically or virtually (and the former in this case of course isn't really practical). I mean, I certainly wouldn't fully call myself an extrovert—though I think the whole extrovert vs. introvert distinction is something of a false dichotomy anyway—and like I said I do spend a lot of time just sitting at home by myself writing or engaged in other creative tasks, but I am not entirely asocial and do of course enjoy some level of human contact^[2].

So I've been looking around for other communities hosting writing events similar to NaNoWriMo. I assumed that with NaNoWriMo's increasing alienation of its userbase, there'd be a lot of other people picking up the slack and creating their own similar events by different names, and this is indeed the case. I found some through a simple web search; others through the r/nanowrimo subreddit (which, as stated in the sidebar, "is not supported or affiliated with the official National Novel Writers Month organization in any way.")^[3] And I've been trying to decide on other communities to participate with. I don't have to decide on just one, of course; there's nothing in principle preventing me from participating in multiple events. But on the other hand, it would be silly to try to join just every novel-writing community I run across. So I wanted to pick a handful of associations that were running novel-writing events in November and that had fora or some other method of community communication.

So, anyway, here are the ones I've decided I'm probably going to go with:

NovelEmber: Okay, if I did have to pick just one of these events to participate in, this would be it, because it's hosted by World Anvil, a site dedicated to tools for creating worlds. I was already aware of World Anvil; in fact since January it's been the first item in the list of "Other Worldbuilding Sites" on the main page of the Public Wongery; but I haven't really explored it in depth, mostly because, well, I don't really need another site to create worlds, since, well, I have my own site for creating worlds, namely this one, the Wongery. Still, like I've said before, the Wongery isn't just about sharing the worlds the Grandmaster Wongers have created (though that is its main purpose); I also want to encourage other people to share their own creations, so if there are other sites with a similar goal, I'm all for them and want to encourage them. (Which is of course why I have that list of other worldbuilding sites on the Public Wongery main page in the first place.) So, yeah, if there's a November novel-writing event associated with a site about worldbuilding... yeah, that seems like the obvious choice to participate in. But of course as discussed above I don't have to pick just one of these events to participate in, so let's continue.
Plotterati November Writing Challenge: Plotterati seems to be a new site for writers that... apparently is still a work in progress and ironing out some bugs, but then the same is true of the Wongery (even more so), so I don't have room to complain. Anyway, the November Writing Challenge is pretty much exactly the same challenge as NaNoWriMo—write at least 50,000 words in the month of November—but that's exactly what I was looking for, so great.
The Novelist's Initiation: Hosted by another new site, The Order of the Written Word (which is apparently affiliated with a Montreal small press called The Stygian Society), the Novelist's Initiation is a bit different from the usual NaNoWriMo-type challenge, in that it asks for only 30,000 words instead of 50,000—and those words can be either the first draft of a new novel or part on an existing novel-in-progress. But of course 50,000 is greater than 30,000, so if I write at least 50,000 words, I'll have written at least 30,000. Unfortunately, the only sort of community venue for this challenge seems to be on Discord, which I've... expressed my feelings about in the past. But even if I may prefer fora, my distaste for Discord isn't enough to completely prevent me from using it, so yeah, whatever.
Novel Quest: Novel Quest is a NaNoWriMoesque event hosted by yet another new site, Writing Quests, that according to its (old?) substack page is intended as a "framework for creative challenges". I'm a little iffy about this one, though, because it's not clear there's any sort of community communication involved, which is one of the things I'm looking for. But apparently once you sign up for the site (which I haven't done yet), you get access to the "Writing Quests Framework", which... maybe includes that? I guess I'll find out.
r/nanodiaspora: A new subreddit "[c]reated for those who want to do nanowrimo, but don't want to support or rely on the nano organization." Okay sure.
Writing Month: Uh... maybe? This site is apparently intended to host several tiers of challenges, from the classic 50,000-word challenge of "Novel Writing Month" down to a 2,000-word "Short Story Writing Month" and including also a "Poetry Writing Month", a "Blog Post Writing Month", and possibly a "Graphic Novel Writing Month". (Of course, it's the Novel Writing Month that I'd be interested in participating in.) But as of the day of this post (October 21, 2024), November is less than eleven days away and this site still has little more than a message that it's "coming soon", so, well, we'll see if it's actually ready in time.

Regardless of which of these events I participate in (and my current plan is to try to do all of them listed above, with the possible exception of the last one if it's not ready in time), as I said, November is nigh, so I don't have long before I have to start writing. But while according to the original NaNoWriMo rules, and presumably to those of most of the events that have followed in its footsteps, participants aren't actually supposed to write any text that will appear in the novel before the beginning of November, but are allowed—and indeed encouraged—to do prewriting prepwork: outlining, creating characters, doing any relevant research, et cetera. And with less than eleven days to go until November, I... haven't done any of that.

But before I can make any progress on the plot or characters, I have to figure out... well, which world of the Wongery my novel is going to be set on. Which brings us, finally, to the subject that the title of this blog post refers to, and that the post was supposed to be mainly about. (I don't just bury the lede in my blog posts; I sink it under fifteen layers of concrete.) Anyway, my plan has been to set the novel on one of the worlds described in the Wongery, but, well... there are a lot of worlds described in the Wongery. Some in much more depth than others, of course, but still...

An exact count of worlds is hard to come by because the definition of "world" is somewhat fuzzy, but at the time I'm writing this the Central Wongery's index of worlds has seventy-one entries. This uses a very broad definition of "world", however, and some of those "worlds" are entire planes or estures, and some are redlink placeholders that are mentioned in other articles but don't have articles of their own yet. If we restrict the list to what the Wongery calls mounds—basically, worlds analogous and usually similar in size to planets like Earth—then it's about halved, with only thirty-four items remaining: Arianiga, Axa, B'gor, Chee, Cocoro, Curcalen, Dadauar, Diddu, Gala, Gallerra, Ganyak, Ijian, Interlife Earth, Jhembaz, Kadis, Khalan, Lnnai, Meliauth, Meptus, Nalw, Nuclearth, Numlle, Oe, Plex, Ranthis, Tegn, Therqin, Thorgh, Ufmarkt, Varra, Vlastach, Xos, Ym, and Yudis. Actually, while they're not technically mounds I think any of the eidopoles would also be a perfectly suitable setting for a novel, and so would the Eversky though it's also not technically a mound, so let's throw in the Eversky and the three eidopoles that currently have articles as well, Aarven, Aeol, and Hax, for a total of thirty-eight options.

Which is still way too many. But we can pare them down further. If I'm going to be writing the novel, it makes sense to write it about one of my worlds, that is, one of the worlds the articles about which are credited to me, "Clé", rather than to one of the other (at least nominally) five Grandmaster Wongers. This brings the list down to a much more manageable eight: B'gor, Cocoro, Curcalen, Dadauar, Ganyak, Jhembaz, Kadis, and Varra. Now, I'm going to be honest: I really don't want to choose Ganyak as the setting of the novel. I want the novel to showcase the original worlds described in the Wongery, and eh, I think Ganyak may be too close to just a standard superhero setting. Hey, they can't all be winners. (Plus it's among the least developed worlds on the list anyway, with currently only two articles about it: the main article on the world, and the First Western Academy.) On the other hand, while it's not a mound and not listed in the index of worlds (hm, maybe it should be... okay, I just added it), I think the Dreamsea could be an interesting setting for a novel, so let's add it to the list in place of Ganyak. So that leaves me with our final list of eight possible worlds to choose from as the setting of my novel: B'gor, Cocoro, Curcalen, Dadauar, the Dreamsea, Jhembaz, Kadis, and Varra.

Still, I ultimately have to choose just one of those eight. How am I going to do that? Well, I could just roll an eight-sided die, I suppose. But I have a different plan in mind. In fact, in the first post where I said I was going to write a novel set on a Wongery world this November, I already said how I planned to select the setting:

Which Wongery world will I set the novel in? Eh... I'm not sure; maybe I'll put up some sort of poll when the time comes closer. Assuming I can figure out a place to put the poll where people will actually answer it.

Why put up a poll? I don't know; it just seems more... more appealing to me for some reason to delegate this choice. Plus, that way I can maybe get something of a feel for which world people would rather see a novel set in? At least according to the brief descriptions of each world the poll will provide, because I don't expect everyone voting in the poll to read the full articles about the worlds in the Central Wongery (and in any case the articles for many of those worlds are in desperate need of considerable expansion. I'll get to them; it's on my (still purely mental) to-do list; but I won't get to them before November).

But, as referenced in the last sentence of the quoted paragraph above, where will I put the poll? I'd been thinking of adding functionality to the MediaWiki installation to allow me to put a poll in a blog post (the blog posts, as discussed previously, being written in wikitext), but, well, that seems like a lot of work for something that I don't know how often I'm going to use and that may not be a good idea in the first place. I could put it in the forum, but I want to make it as easy as possible to vote in the poll to maximize the number of people willing to do so, and if I put the poll in the forum, then people would have to create an account to vote in it.

...Or would they? Is there a way to make it possible for "guests" (i.e. people not logged into an account) to vote in a poll on a phpBB forum? Well, maybe not on a poll-by-poll basis, but apparently there is a way to enable guest voting in all polls^[4], and while I don't know that I'd want that to be the case permanently, I don't expect there to be any other polls in the forum any time soon, so I think this will work for now. After the poll closes, I'll change the settings back to allowing only logged-in users to vote... and if for some reason I want to run another poll in the future that anyone can vote in, eh, then I'll figure out a better long-term solution.

(So doesn't enabling guests to vote in polls mean it's possible for someone to skew the poll by voting multiple times? Yes, but (a) I don't really expect anyone to care about the poll enough to do that, and (b) the stakes on this poll are low enough that even if someone does do that it's not really a big deal.)

But the question remains about how to get people to vote in the poll. I realize that at the moment very few people, if any, are reading these blog posts, and while I do still hope to attract more people to the Wongery and eventually build a readership and a community here, that clearly hasn't happened yet (and may never happen, but hope springs eternal), and if I just slap up the poll and this blog post and do nothing else, the expected number of people who will vote in the poll will be as close to zero as makes no nevermind. So what I'm going to do is, well, post about it in the writing communities where I'm participating in a November novel-writing event. At least, those of them that it seems appropriate to post in; I'm going to try to read the room and see if other people are posting to ask for help or suggestions regarding their novels, and I'll only post where it seems that's accepted. Is this really just a ploy to bring people to the Wongery site and try to publicize the Wongery? No, not at all; I really do want people to vote in the poll and help decided on which world I'm going to set the novel I'm writing this November. But of course, if it does bring attention to the Wongery site that will be a welcome bonus. (It probably won't, though; even if people do vote in the poll most of them probably won't bother to check out the rest of the site. Oh well.) Of course, the ultimate purpose of the novel itself—once it's finished and self-published—is to attract attention to the Wongery, but eh, that's further on down the line.

So the poll is up now, huzzah, but, well, I'd really intended to have it up at the beginning of the month... and I really should have. If I leave the poll running for a week, then that means after the poll closes and the world is selected I only have a few days to decide on a plot and characters and do all the rest of the prewriting. That's... not a lot of time, and I really should have left myself more time for that—and of course I really planned to leave myself more time than that, but pretty much everything I do takes me much longer than I thought it would if I ever get it done at all. So, anyway, I guess at this point that leaves me with at least four options:

Just, well, try to do all the prewriting in a few days. I guess this is kind of the most obvious, default option, and yeah, I could do that, but I could really use more time to work out the story before I start writing. Is there a better option?
Make the poll shorter; leave it up for only a day or two, therefore leaving myself more than a week for prewriting after the poll closes. Eh... I could do this, and logically I probably should; if anyone does vote in the poll, they're probably most likely to do so in the first day or two, so I'm not sure leaving it up for a full week really serves much purpose... but still, I do want to maximize the people voting in the poll, so I'm reluctant to cut it too short.
Spend extra time prewriting and delay the start of the actual writing until later in November. Again, I guess I could do this; honestly I think I'm capable of writing enough in one day that I could finish the challenge even if I get a late start. Heck, one year I completed a novel during November despite writing IIRC about three quarters of it in the last week. And maybe I will end up doing this to some degree, but I still don't think it's the best option, and if I do do it it may be in conjunction with the following.
Start brainstorming ideas about stories set on all eight worlds, so once the poll closes and the world is chosen I have a bit of a headstart. The biggest disadvantage of this option, of course, is that seven eighths of the planning I do while the poll is still running is going to go unused. At least in the short term; in the long term I guess I could write novels set on the other worlds later; but if I ever do it's not going to be any time soon. But then, it's not like I haven't done planning for a lot of other projects that never got used. I have sooooo many unfinished projects, folks. Like sooooo, sooooo, many.

So yeah... it's that fourth option I think I'm going to (mostly) go for (though possibly combined with some degree of the third). While the poll is running, I'm going to try to come up with ideas for stories set on all eight of the worlds in contention... and then once the poll closes I'll see which one I end up focusing on.

Anyway, like I said, the poll is up on the forum (here's the link again), so in the unlikely case that you're reading this blog post within a week of its being posted, please go vote! Thank you.

↑ "Right now" referring, of course, to the time that I'm writing this post, not to the time you're reading it. This clarification was almost certainly entirely unnecessary.
↑ And on that note, incidentally, even if NaNoWriMo didn't have... all its other current propudious baggage, I'd probably still be looking for some other community to participate with, just because... NaNoWriMo doesn't really have a community this year. At all. The NaNoWriMo forums are closed down—I'm unclear on whether they're entirely inaccessible or whether the old posts are viewable by logged-in users but no new posts can be made, and since I've deleted my account I can't check for myself, but either way the effect is the same. There's nowhere on the NaNoWriMo site to interact with other users; there's no means for users to communicate with each other; there's, as I said above, no community, and no means to create one. Which means that there's no reason at all to participate in NaNoWriMo through the official organization this year; it has absolutely nothing to offer.
Well, technically I suppose it does still have two things to offer, but they're both of utterly negligible value. First, I assume (though I'm honestly not even 100% sure of this) that the NaNoWriMo site will still offer a wordcount tool where you can upload your opus and see how close you are to the 50,000-word goal. But there are plenty of other word counters out there; I've run across several recommendations for an app called TrackBear, but frankly I'm probably just going to use Microsoft Word's word count feature. (Yes, I'm still using Microsoft Word; I probably ought to wean myself away from Microsoft products, but... I haven't yet.) Second, I assume (though I honestly don't actually know this for sure either) that they will again offer "official" banners or badges you can download to display on your own website or blog or on social media to show that you completed the challenge. But, well... so what? You can say you wrote a novel in November without having an "official" NaNoWriMo graphic to declare it.
↑ And through reading other posts in the subreddit I'd found out more about just what the official NaNoWriMo organization has been up to lately, and discovered, as mentioned above, that things there had been even worse than I'd realized. If you're curious to find out more, the key points are summarized at a document hosted at nanoscandal.com. (I linked this document in my previous post regarding NaNoWriMo, but I hadn't fully read it at the time (and, okay, actually admittedly still haven't actually read the whole thing); I'd just run across it looking for some source I could link about the antanal NaNoWriMo esclandres that I had learned about through the NaNoWriMo fora—I couldn't link the forum posts themselves, since they were only accessible to logged-in site users.)
I've written a previous blog post about things I would do if I were rich, and I guess this is another item to add to the list: if I had the money to do so, I'd buy the NaNoWriMo trademark and domain from the nonprofit that currently owns them and try to... restore the event to what it was, or at least provide some viable community for it untainted by the current staff's misdoings. Is there really any value in the NaNoWriMo name, given that anyone can just run a similar event under a different title? Eh... well, from some standpoints, maybe not, but I'm a bit of a nostalgist; I like maintaining traditions, and anyway I think NaNoWriMo has done some good in the (at this point somewhat distant) past, and I think it could do some good again, if it's put in different hands. Would its current owners be willing to sell? I would think probably so, for the right price, especially since their finances and reputation are sufficiently in shambles right now that even one of their long-term (and, disappointingly, still current) sponsors has openly expressed doubt that the event will survive. But, in any case, this is of course academic, because I'm not rich and never will be rich, and that entire post was merely an exercise in exploring a counterfactual.
↑ Whoops... it turns out, though, that the instructions in that post are incorrect (or maybe they were correct for a previous version of phpBB and the Administrator Control Panel has been rearranged in a more recent version). I did figure it out, though—instead of Users and Groups → Manage Groups, I had to go to Users and Groups → Group Forum Permissions. (Just wanted to relate that here for the benefit of anyone else who might want to know how to do this.)