Wow, that month went past in a blur, didn’t I? I got caught up in the NaNoWriMo frenzy and zoom, there went the month.
My November Goals:
[30/30] 30,000 words
[ ] Finish the DtS edit.
[X] Return to roller derby
[X] Try pilates for the first time!
[4/5] Jog 5k five times.
[ ] Get weight below the XX5lbs mark.
[3/5] Read 5 books, including 1 beta manuscript. (The Tea Master and the Detective, Structuring Your Novel, Alice Isn’t Dead)
I’m feeling pretty content about this month, because I really went all-out on the tricky book edit. It was tough going but I pushed on and made some really solid progress. I’m proud of myself.
Writing
My favourite tool for writing this month was Jami Gold’s Scrivener templates, which combine her beat sheets (with suggested word counts for hitting each beat) with the Scrivener outline mode. This isn’t the sort of thing that would appeal to me for a first draft, but right now I’m trying to detangle a much-revised old project into sensible plotted order. Jami’s beats were a LIFESAVER for that. It’s no secret that I love a bit of maths and formula, and having the wordcounts in front of me for each section really helped me visualise where the beats fall in this knotted-up monster-book.
Building up the wordcount to hit the target is super satisfying and having wordcount goals per section is really helping me untangle this messy manuscript.
This is still a tough edit, but I feel like with the beat sheet I have a map through the woods. So let’s keep going!
I hit my 365-day daily writing streak in writing game 4theWords (my referral code: VEOZB29724, if it takes your fancy), and my avatar got a spiffy (and manuscript-fitting) set of angel wings to mark the occassion. Here she is her monstrous weirdness.
Reading
This month I finished…
The Tea Master and the Detective: A genderbent Asian sci-fi Sherlock Holmes, and it’s absolutely as amazing as it sounds.
Structuring Your Novel: A pretty decent structure book, though there wasn’t much in it I hadn’t heard from other books.
Alice Isn’t Dead: The audiobook production quality on this was top-knotch, but it just ended up too similar to the podcast it’s based on. Since it was sold as a ‘reimagining’, I was left disappointed by the near-identical storyline (and the removal of some of my favourite episodes to streamline the plot for the novel).
I’m also in the middle of Tower of Dawn (by my bookish obsession of the moment, Sarah J Maas) and I’m really loving it.
Art
Unsurprisingly with my head stuck in NaNo-land, my art this month was ALL about pinning down the character designs for my Divide the Sky crew. I’m growing to like their new designs a lot as I doodle with them both this month.
I also made a worldmap for Divide the Sky, and I won’t lie, it was MEGA fun. Super handy for thinking about some worldbuilding things I wouldn’t usually consider, like how the hell rivers work. I used a very powerful little program called Wonderdraft.
(‘Clockface Loch’ shouuuuuuuld really be Clockface Lake because the protags are from Yorkshire, Dublin and Dubai respectively but damn it guys lake just doesn’t sound right, so we’ll say the local Scots insisted on it.)
Fitness
I’m back skating again! Roller derby has been super fun and I’m seeing huge improvements in my previous challenging moves, crossovers and one-foot-balance on my right leg. I’m really looking forward to testing out my new abilities in a big hall before Christmas and seeing how my skills are matching up to the skills test requirement.
I’m also now one of two Emmas in my derby team, so I took a few polls to help pick a derby name, over here and here on Twitter (poll 1, poll 2). The final results across both sites:
Em-Dash: 25 votes
Teadragon: 20 total
Banshee Maree: 16 votes
Writer’s Block: 11 votes
TeaMaree: 3 votes
TeaDemon: 2 votes
Some really interesting results, and I feel like I understand my buddy Malk‘s poll addiction now after this. I keep wondering if my wording influenced the results at all, haha. It’s a poll and not a blood pact so I’m not taking the results as gospel, but I’m looking forward to taking a few of these out on the track and seeing which ones fit right.
I also started out pilates to try and remedy some of my posture issues that are affecting my skating. I’ve seen a big improvement after just one class, so I’m going to keep it up and see how it goes from here.
I’m also still jogging steadily—not as many 5k jogs as I hoped for this month, only three instead of five, but Mac has become a big fan of jogging on his nighttime dog walks so he’s helping me keep up the miles.
Life in General
Let’s see. I’m obsessed with the made-up girl-band for a video game, K/DA, and their song POP/STARS. It’s such wonderful catchy K-Pop and the visuals are slick and stylish! I love how energetic this song is, and wouldn’t be surprised if my nerdy arse ends up using it while doing the difficult endurance skating challenge in roller derby.
And my beloved Spyro the Dragon made a reappearance, though with all the NaNoWriMo chaos I didn’t get much chance to game. December should hopefully have more gaming time!
That’s it for November! I’ll see you at the year-end, lovelies.