The Wongery

This blog post is not untitled. This blog post has a title. That title is "Untitled". That title, "Untitled", refers not to this blog post, which has a title, but to something else, which currently does not. And is therefore untitled. Unlike this blog post, which is not untitled, because it has a title, which is "Untitled".

So, at the time I write this it is November 2, which means it is Day Two of, uh, NovelEmber, or Writing Month, or Novel Quest, or the November Writing Challenge, or... The Event Formerly Known as NaNoWriMo. (Oh, hey, speaking of Writing Month, that site finally seems to be functional. So I'll probably "officially" join that event too.) Which means that by today, to be on track with the 50,000-word goal (and honestly 50,000 words is short for a fantasy novel and I expect the final novel to be significantly longer) I should have written at least 1,667 words. (Well, that's just for day one; we're on day two now, so arguably more, but day two isn't quite over yet, at least in this part of the world.) So how much have I written?

I have participated in the event that was at the time called NaNoWriMo but which through the remainder of this blog post I will refer to as TEFKAN (short for The Event Formerly Known As NaNoWriMo) at least five times. Three or four of those times, I succeeded. (The uncertainty is because there's one (terrible) novel I've written that I honestly don't recall if it was for NaNoWriMo or not—and it just occurs to me as I write this sentence that I could check the last modified date of the files and see if it was written in November, except that I can't do that now because I'm away from home and writing this blog post on my laptop and those files are on an external hard drive in my apartment so I guess I should have thought of that earlier oh well.) On at least two other occasions, however, I attempted TEFKAN and... didn't even come close. What is common to most if not all of the times that I succeeded is that I had already outlined the story before I started and named all its major characters and had a good idea what was supposed to happen in it. And the times that I didn't succeed... I hadn't.

Well, this year I haven't.

I intended to, of course, as I've written about in past blog posts. So why didn't I? I mean, yes, there was the poll to help me decide which world I was going to set the novel on that I put up so late that it didn't close until October 29. (And I said that while the poll was up I was going to get a headstart by brainstorming ideas for novels set on all eight worlds in the poll, but... let's get real, with my track record for getting things done that was never going to happen.) Still, that left me more than two days—not much, but not nothing—to think about the novel, come up with ideas, and do some outlining—on one of which days I wasn't working, so I could devote the whole day to preparation for TEFKAN. Which I absolutely did not do.

Why not? Well, mostly just general procrastination due to my complete lack of anything resembling willpower or work ethic. There were some other proximate causes; for instance, as I mentioned briefly in the last post, I recently got involved in a worldbuilding game on Discord that I've been spending more time on than I probably should. But I probably would have been able to pull myself away from that long enough to do more novel prep if it weren't for, well, my complete lack of anything resembling willpower or work ethic.

So, as of today, Day Two of TEFKAN, I have come up with some general ideas for the novel, I do have a very vague shadow of a semblance of an overall plot, but I don't have anything resembling an outline; I don't have more than three characters named. So does this mean I'm not going to finish the novel this month? Well... not necessarily.

There's another event somewhat similar to TEFKAN that I've also participated in in the past, and with which I've had a better track record: 24-Hour Comics Day, in which participants are challenged to create from scratch an entire 24-page comic in 24 hours. (As I've said in the past, I can't draw, but that doesn't stop me from trying.) Unlike TEFKAN, I've successfully finished 24-Hour Comics Day every time I've attempted it. (I can't claim they were any good, but I did create complete 24-page comics.)

But there are two big differences between 24-Hour Comics Day and TEFKAN. Well, besides the fact that one lasts for a month and the other for only twenty-four hours. And that one involves writing a novel, and the other a comic. Okay, there are at least four big differences between 24-Hour Comics Day and TEFKAN. But besides the obvious, the two biggest differences are these: While TEFKAN explicitly allows any amount of planning and outlining beforehand, by the rules of 24-Hour Comics Day, you're supposed to do everything within those twenty-four hours, including the planning and writing; you're not supposed to go in knowing what your comic is going to be about. And while what you're supposed to end up with at the end of TEFKAN is essentially a first draft, at the end of 24-Hour Comics Day your comic is supposed to be declared finished; twenty-four hours and it's pencils down. (Figuratively. I don't think many people draw comics entirely in pencil.) Now, like TEFKAN, 24-Hour Comics Day is entirely a self-driven challenge; there's no one enforcing the rules, or officially disqualifying you if you break them. Nothing's stopping people from coming to 24-Hour Comics Day with the script to their comic already written and thumbnails drawn, or going over their comic after the twenty-four hours are over polishing it, cleaning up mistakes, and adding details. But if I'm going to participate in an event like that, I want to do it right, so I've done it following the rules as written. I avoid even thinking about what my comic is going to be about before I start (and if I do find myself thinking of an idea before the start of the event, I decide that I can't use that idea, since I came up with it outside the twenty-four hours, and I force myself to come up with something different once the event starts.) Per the rules of the event, I go in fresh, no outline, no characters, no story ideas, not even knowing what genre of comic I'm going to draw. And yet somehow, unlike TEFKAN, every time I've attempted 24-Hour Comics Day (and I've done it multiple times), I've succeeded.

Now, while I started the event without any planning, that doesn't mean I just jumped in and started drawing something random and made the comic up as I go along. I generally spent the first hour or two (okay, probably closer to two, if not more) doing some brainstorming and planning—deciding what the comic's going to be about, sketching character designs, thumbnailing the first few pages. I didn't have a full script written before I started drawing; at least once or twice I don't even know how the comic was going to end until I got there. But I at least had a general hazy idea of the plot to start with, and then I wrote, thumbnailed, and drew a page at a time. Like I said, it hasn't necessarily resulted in good comics. But it has resulted in finished comics.

So, could I do something similar for TEFKAN? I don't have the story outlined; I don't have more than a small handful of characters named. But I do, as I said, have a very vague shadow of a semblance of an overall plot. Is that enough for me to be able to start writing?

Well, I guess so, because I've started. (Whether it'll be enough for me to finish writing remains to be seen.) Yesterday^[1], I wrote, according to Microsoft Word's word count^[2], two thousand two hundred and eighteen words, making up most of Chapter 2 and putting me technically on track. (Why did I start with Chapter 2? Well, because part of what vague notions I'd had for the novel included the idea that until near the end the chapters would alternate between an account of a ship sailing on the Dreamsea and that of characters on an artificial island, and while the novel was going to start with the former, I actually had a better grasp on how the island part of the story would start, so it made more sense to begin writing that.)

Again, this is, of course, a first draft, and of questionable quality. In particular there's a sort of an action sequence that... I'm not sure is possible? (It involves a character holding onto another character by the ankle over an endless drop^[3] with one hand while holding himself up by a rope with the other, and then the second character folding his body upward to grab onto the first character and climbing up his body to safety. Is that... does that make any sense at all? Is that something people could actually physically do? I'm not totally sure, but again, unlike 24-Hour Comics Day TEFKAN allows any amount of revision and expansion after the event is over. I'll worry about it when it comes time for the rewrites.)

So... yeah. Like I said, I am technically on track to finish; if I keep writing as many words each day as I did yesterday, I'll have well over fifty thousand words written by the month's end. But I'd feel a lot better if I had my story outlined. Heck, I'll feel a lot better when I know how I'm going to begin the shipboard part of the story (I still don't). Still, I'm hopeful that I can finish the novel by the end of the month. Maybe I'm just being irrationally optimistic; maybe I don't have a chance and it would be better for me to give up and spend my time on other things. But I'm hopeful.

Oh... and guess whether or not I've come up with a title for my novel yet. Go on, guess.

This blog post may contain a subtle clue.