SF Bluestocking Does NaNoWriMo 2017

What I'm Writing, What I'm Inspired By, Advice I'm Finding Helpful

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The Shannara Chronicles: “Paranor” and “Crimson” are a new high point for the series

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Star Trek: Discovery – “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” is a bunch of nonsense

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State of the Blog and Weekend Links: November 5, 2017

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November 4: Welp

So, today, instead of writing, I spent most of the afternoon on the phone with Spectrum. Nothing fries ones brain quite like having to spend a couple hours dealing with cable company customer service. However, I now have faster, theoretically better internet, and tomorrow’s a whole new day, with a whole “extra” hour of time for me to write stuff. 

All that said, I’m not altogether unhappy with my progress so far, even though it’s early in the month. It could certainly be going worse, at any rate.

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Recent Reads: Space Opera, Cosmic Horror, Hippo Mayhem and More from Tor.com

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November 3

So, last night I stayed up far past my bedtime to finish my post about this week’s episode of The Shannara Chronicles. Yay for word count, but boo for wise and healthful decision-making. I’ve felt like death most of the day, and this was not helped by having to eat a nasty kale salad for lunch because I bought two of them to try when they were on sale and didn’t want to waste it. It was a healthful (hooray for kale) but nevertheless unwise decision.

Still, I’m plugging away at some book reviews today and making some moderate progress. My revised goal for the day is to get to bed at a more reasonable hour, however, so I can wake up fresh and ready to write tomorrow.

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The Shannara Chronicles: “Dweller” is the show at its high fantasy best

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November 2: LBR, Still Pretty Much the Beginning

I wrote a couple hundred words each on several things yesterday, but I didn’t finish anything and I’ve decided that I’m only counting words written on things that I actually finish this month. Today will be better since it’s Shannara Chronicles review day, and that show is always good for 1-2k words. Tomorrow will be a day for writing book reviews, and my plan is to spend at least part of Saturday writing about chapters 32-35 of Titus Groan.

Regardless, I’m not beating myself up (yet) about not being a juggernaut of productivity just because I turned a page in my calendar. It’s early yet. Maybe I’ll be a juggernaut in a couple of weeks.

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November 1: The Beginning

So, I’m lowkey doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I’m not writing a book and may not write any fiction at all, to be honest. As anyone who follows my work at SF Bluestocking probably knows, I’ve been struggling for months with depression and the lack of productivity that tends to come along with that. The last few weeks have seen some improvement, and I’ve been keeping up with regular, time-sensitive-ish work like television reviews, but I’ve fallen far behind on book reviews and having managed to get out a Gormenghast post in months. I feel better every week, but in spite of my repeated optimism about returning to a level of productivity closer to where I’d like to be, I’ve been stuck and not making much progress at all.

So, NaNoWriMo feels like a perfect opportunity to try and get back on track. I’m not going to be putting too much pressure on myself, but it’s not uncommon for me to churn out 2-4k words in a day depending on what I’m writing about, so getting through the 1670 or so per day required to hit 50k by the end of November feels very doable.The key thing, for me, is going to be writing every single day. That’s the habit I’d like to get back into, and I’m hoping just forcing myself to do it as part of a big communal event will be just what I need to get myself back into gear.