Update and NaNoWriMo 2022

 Morning, been a while, and I do have an explanation. 

So last year, I did actually participate in NaNoWriMo. I didn't post that here because I felt like I wasn't gonna make it. 

And hey, look at that, I didn't. 

I felt kind of dejected, honestly, and didn't want to post a failure.

I was also just not happy with the story. It wasn't awful, an intrigue murder mystery at a school for the arcane, but I was just struggling to find the progression every day in a way that I wasn't struggling with Fight or Flight and Bound. Each time I opened the doc I found myself fighting to keep any semblance of pace and not really knowing where I wanted the story to go. In the end I had a story I was not proud of and came way... way short of making NaNoWriMo. 

I could blame my work, I was at a new job at the time. Clearly that massive change in my life made it hard to sit down and write! But no... My new job has a lot of downtime, a lot of opportunity to sit and write *at work.* Hell I even had a desk and a computer to work at so I wouldn't have to haunch over my tablet to bang out a couple hundred words during my lunch break. So no, it wasn't my work. It was just lack of motivation, which is always my problem. The self imposed obligation of doing a NaNoWriMo was what got me to 50k with Bound and Fight or Flight last time, but it didn't manage to get it's hooks in me last year. 

So I'm not participating this year. The same thing will inevitably happen, I can feel that it will. I don't have a good story idea in my head right now and I don't want to force it like I did last time. So I'll sit this year out and do my best to actually hit the ground running next year. 

But that doesn't mean I shouldn't be writing. I'm still clearly struggling to find motivation to sit and write when it's not NaNoWriMo, when I don't have an (arbitrary) obligation to sit and write hanging over my head. I have to work on that. Need to figure something out. I need to write because it's something I enjoy doing... which I do. I love writing. It's just getting it into my routine that I struggle with.

And hey look I have three unfinished projects to get to work at. By end of year I want to have finished Bound (there's only really the final fight and wrap up to do there) and get back in to Fight or Flight. If I can finish both by years end even better, and I'll look into making that third project, Faces in the Crowd, my New Years Project.

Expect updates soon... Not every day, I imagine, but once I have something I'll post it. 

Beginnings

This blog is intended to be a writing tool, a motivtor of sorts. The idea is to post at least a single short story of at least one page in length a week, minimum. I've always desired to be a writer, but the act of sitting down and writing has always come with difficulty. I once saw someone speaking, disparagingly, of NaNoWriMo that 'writers do not need a motivator to write. They simply sit down and write. ' While these words come off as unessisarily harsh and more than a little 'gate-keeper' to the act of writing and motivation, I'd be lying if they didn't strike me when i heard them and continue with me to this day. This blog is here for me to take that, albiet unwarranted, criticism and move past it. I'm going to teach myself to sit down and write.

It's also a learning exercise. Again I wish to be a writer, and while I have plenty of loose ideas, characters, disperate world building, I struggle with plot. A to B to C. This blog will help be hone that skill, ideally. Here I will craft my, you know, craft. Teach myself to write stories, learn how to tell tales. No better wy to learn something than by doing, so here I'm going to learn how to be a story teller by telling stories.

So hello, my name is Will, I don't know what brought you here, but I'm glad you're here all the same. Hopefully I can entertin you during your stay, and I'm honored to have you here with me on this journey.