15 Jan

Actually, Let’s Talk About Those Video Games

Posted by Kit Campbell in Other Creative Things. Tagged: , , .

January Books: 2/4 (Writing Down the Bones)

Since my post on Tuesday, I have:

  • Beaten A Building Full of Cats 2, which kept my save data the second time around.
  • Played the demo for Strange Antiquities. I played their first game, Strange Horticulture, a while ago, and Strange Antiquities seems to have a lot of the elements I liked about the first game with some new mechanics. I went to put in on my wishlist and discovered it was already there.
  • Started playing Mask of the Rose, which I Kickstarted who knows when, but only got about half an hour in.
  • Managed to rally enough of my old Among Us friends to play for two hours earlier today, which was excellent and reminded me of why I loved the game so much.

It’s a lot of video games, like I noted on Tuesday, and it’s continued to be a lot of video games. So I got to thinking…is this a sign of something? Stress? Avoidance?

I suspect our relationships with gaming, much like our relationship with food, is created when we’re children. My mother did not allow video games in our house, which she always said was because they rotted your brain, but looking back, I suspect it was actually a money thing. My cousins lived across the street and had a NES or SNES or whatever was out at the time, and she never seemed to mind when I went over to play games at their house. Additionally, computer games were always okay. Mostly we had access to teaching games (my favorite was Super Solvers Treasure Mountain, which taught you grammar and word definitions. I could not tell you how many elves I caught with those silly nets), though at my grandparents’ I also had access to arcade classics like Asteroid, Centipede, Tempest, and whatever that game with the rendered tanks was.

I got a GameBoy when I was 12. I’ve never owned any consoles myself. (My husband grew up playing consoles and has continued to buy new generations as they come out. We as a family own a Switch and a PS5.)

As such, while I do occasionally console game, I still, to this day, mostly computer game. (And a lot of the console games are more active games, like Just Dance, and Dance Dance Revolution before it.)

I’ve never been someone who plays, oh, half an hour of a game a day and then moves on to other things. I either spend a couple hours on them or don’t touch them at all.

Which brings me back to this week. Am I stressed? Am I avoiding something? Or is this just part of my normal binge/don’t touch for weeks or months pattern?

I think it is, perhaps a combo of one and three, with a side of “this is on my goals so technically I am getting things done” productive procrastination. My spouse is out of town on business, and I’m going to be honest, he helps a lot with my day to day executive functioning. Am I functional adult? Generally yes. But it’s much easier when he’s around.

And I’ve found in January, especially, I tend to go out the gates full steam ahead on a goal, and this year just happens to be gaming. I’m sure in a few days or a week I’ll wander off and not play anything until February.

What probably also helps is that because my video game goal exists to help me get through my backlog of Steam games, I tend to pick games each month that have been sitting around but that I don’t especially have an urge to play, but this month I bought games off my wishlist and then played them immediately.

So, yeah. Should I do other things? Maybe! But maybe it’s okay too. It’s not like other things aren’t getting done.

Anyway, happy Thursday, squiders. See you next week, when we shall see if my shenanigans have continued.

13 Jan

Mid-January Check-In

Posted by Kit Campbell in Discussion, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Little early, but hey, why not.

January books: Still 1/4

Reading

As we can tell from my usual count, it doesn’t sound like a lot is getting done. But I’m still working through that Weird Parenting Wins book (and I’m in a section about teenagers, and there’s a few things I might want to try) and I’m about a fourth of the way through Six of Crows, which has been on my TBR probably since it came out. I bought this copy five years ago (the receipt was still in the book) but better late than never.

I’m also slowly making my way through Writing Down the Bones, which I started at my writing retreat at the beginning of June. It’s not a terribly long book, but I find that I need to digest each section (which tend to run 2-4 pages).

Video Games

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been spending perhaps more than I should here. I bought three games at the beginning of the month at the winter sale, and I’ve since beat two of them, Tower Wizard and Digseum. Both had idling elements so they could run in the background while I did other things and check on them periodically (Tower Wizard more than Digseum, which needed more hands-on grinding), but I appreciated that neither went on forever like other idling games I’ve tried. Both games were under $3 and I definitely got my money’s worth.

The third game I bought was A Building Full of Cats 2. I’ve previously played A Building Full of Cats and A Castle Full of Cats and they’re all essentially hidden object games, where you have to find the cats in various locations. However, I’m having issues where it’s not saving my progress. It takes a long time to do each level so I’m pretty annoyed about that, especially since the end game stuff won’t unlock unless all the other parts are done, assuming it follows the same format as the other games.

Today I also re-downloaded Among Us, which I played copiously during the pandemic. (According to Steam, it’s been two years since I last played.) I spent a little bit of time today playing Hide and Seek mode, but my hope is to be able to get my pandemic Among Us friends together and play in the near future.

I also played a game called Lost But Found where you’re the lost and found at the airport, and you’ve got to correctly return a stream of items to people. I found this one frustrating, and generally I’m really good at these types of games, so I would not recommend. Some aspects of the game were not well explained (and I never did figure some of them out) and it was also a little buggy. Not worth it.

Art

I thought briefly about it.

Writing

My class is actually coming along pretty well. I outlined everything and am about halfway through creating the slides for the theory portion of the class. I find the slides typically are the most infuriating part of creating the classes, so it should be smooth(ish) sailing once that part is done. (I think it’s because while outlining the class is all well and good, when you actually start to create the class you find areas of repetition or missing information, and then you have to fix things as you go.)

I am slightly worried about filming the workshop portions. I bought a webcam in COVID times that would do multiple inputs, so you could screen share (and film it) and put yourself up in the corner, but somewhere along the line the company removed that functionality. I might be able to use the software I use to stream on Twitch to do more or less the same thing, but I was having issues with the volume last time I tried (the game audio was wildly louder than my commentary audio). Now, the writing screen shouldn’t have any audio of its own, but I think there is probably an issue with the microphone audio.

So that may or may not be an issue when we get to the filming portion.

I’d like to restart my morning pages, which I haven’t gotten around to yet, but all in all I’m not too worried about how things are going.

Do I need to stop playing so many video games? Yes. Will I? Maybe! See you later this week, squiders!

10 Jan

Goals and So Forth for 2026

Posted by Kit Campbell in Discussion, Reading, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

January Books: 1/5 (Rose/House)

Now that we’ve got last year’s reading stats out of the way, we can talk about 2026 and goals and whatnot.

As you guys know if you were here over the last year, 2025 was rough, from a writing standpoint. Part of that was a bunch of life stuff and volunteer requirements (and I’m already running into some volunteer issues this year) so really I should give myself some grace, though that’s hard.

(Thus far, a week into 2026, I have finished a short story, gotten two query rejections, and did not get into the two mentorship programs I applied to in November. A mixed bag.)

I also have my normal yearly goals: reading 50 books (going to retry the 1 off my TBR and 1 I own requirements this year. I read a lot more of my own books than normal last year, and I hope I can continue that trend), working through my Steam games (though I bought 3 more last week…but I have started all three of those), and attempting some art periodically (still about a year behind on my sketch journal, which makes me think I should perhaps try something else as that’s not working how I wanted it to). I’d also like to start up archery. My family bought me supplies for my birthday two years ago and I haven’t even put the arrows together yet.

On the writing front, I talked briefly last week about how I was having difficulty finding cohesive writing goals for the year, and I can’t say I ever did. I’m going to focus on a single project at a time and let them take the time they need, and then move on to a new one based on the circumstances that exist at that time, rather than a prescribed list I’ve made at the beginning of the year. So we’ll see how that goes.

For my first project, I’m going to work on the interconnected short stories set in my Trilogy universe, which I believe I talked about briefly in October. As part of that, I’m going to make a SkillShare class based on how to write interconnected short stories, so hopefully effectively killing two birds with one stone (which is an awful metaphor, if you think about it).

So, wish me luck.

Have any interesting plans of your own for the new year, squiders?

6 Jan

2025 Reading Stats

Posted by Kit Campbell in Reading. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Happy new year, squiders! I hope you’re off to an encouraging start!

It’s time for my yearly reading stats post, which is interesting to me and maybe no one else, but I like numbers and so here we are.

Books Read in 2025: 53
Change from 2024: +3

Did a lot of reading in December. And not much else. Onward!

Of those*:
13 were Fantasy
8 were Mystery
6 were Science Fiction
5 were General Literature
5 were Nonfiction
2 were Historical Fiction
2 were Horror
2 were Romance
2 were Thriller
1 was an anthology
1 was Biography
1 was a short story collection
1 was Folklore
1 was Gothic
1 was Magical Realism
1 was Memoir
1 was Science Fantasy

*Some genre consolidation was done here. YA or MG titles went into the general genre. All subgenres of fantasy or romance, for example, also went into the general genre. And things like Mystery Romance or Fantasy Mystery went into Mystery or Fantasy respectively.

New genre(s)**: Nonfiction, Biography, Anthology, Folklore, Gothic, Science Fantasy
Genres I read last year that I did not read this year: Ghost Stories, How To, Mythology, Self-Help, Steampunk
**This means I didn’t read them last year, not that I’ve never read them.

Genres that went up: fantasy, science fiction, general literature, thriller, historical fiction
Genres that went down: mystery, horror, memoir

Fantasy has regained the top spot for the first time in a while, and I also did decent at reading science fiction this year as well. Horror wasn’t great (though I suppose the Gothic is technically horror, and the short story collection was also horror, so maybe we’re fine). Otherwise the normal genre spread as I read whatever catches my interest.

22 were my books
30 were library books
1 was a book I picked up at a hotel and so belonged to neither me nor the library

!! This is the best I’ve done in years! Good job me.

43 were physical books
10 were ebooks

Average rating: 3.5/5

We went back down a bit. There were a couple books this year that I only rated 2, so I guess the rest of the books kept the average up.

Top rated:
The Burial Tide (horror – 4.5)
The Teller of Small Fortunes (fantasy – 4.2)
The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2024 (anthology – 4)
The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen (magical realism – 4)

Honorable mentions of 3.9: Haunted Ecologies (horror short story collection), Rest in Pink (mystery/romance), For Duck’s Sake (mystery)

Most recent publication year: 2025
Oldest publication year: 1899 (The Legend of the Treasure Seekers)
Average publication year: 2011
Books older than 1900: 1
Books newer than (and including) 2020: 28

Again, I think the increased focus on reading books I own has pulled the average year published (and the number of newer books) down a bit. We’re five years newer on the average than last year, though.

The first book I read this year was The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong (fantasy) and the last was The Burial Tide by Neil Sharpson (horror). Interesting note is that both made it into my top books of the year.

I’ve started the year with Rose/House by Arkady Martine and a book I bought forever ago but lost somewhere (and refound during our yearly winter break cleaning spree) called Weird Parenting Wins. I’ve also been reading a manga called The Promised Neverland and am currently on volume 9 of 20.

What were the best books you read last year? What books are you looking forward to in 2026? Any reading challenges you’ve set for yourself?

30 Dec

Not-So-Liminal

Posted by Kit Campbell in Discussion, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

Howdy, howdy, squiders. My coffee shop is so full that we’ve had to sit outside, even though it’s only 40 degrees out. Adventures!

Historically the week between Christmas and New Year’s has been a weird, liminal time, where the old year is mostly dead yet it’s not the new year, and days tend to run together. Where calories don’t matter and time means nothing.

Except…I’m not feeling it this year. Days and time have meaning. Days have purpose. The liminality has not come.

Weird. But productive, I guess.

Yesterday I cleaned my areas of the office. My space includes a 4×5 IKEA Kallax shelving unit (it’s a 4×4 on top of a 1×4), half of a long desk up against a bay window, and then half the bay window.

In theory the bay window is lovely, but in reality, since the tornado killed the large ash tree outside the front of the house, it’s too bright. Sun right in the eyes. So mostly the blinds stay closed. And since the computer monitors mostly hide the bay window, it has become a depository for stuff, mostly things that need to be dealt with but don’t fit on the desk.

(Which, ironically, means they get lost and not dealt with. Out of sight, out of mind.)

I do go through the bay window piles periodically (though I found some mail which was over a year old, so, uh, whoops) but apparently I’ve never gone through the Kallax before.

(We built this set-up at the beginning of 2020, as documented here.)

A lot of old kid stuff, from when the kids were much younger. Flashcards and sight words and whatnot. (My youngest is 10, so I suspect these are left over from when we had to do home school during COVID.) Eight things of lotion, four things of hand sanitizer, six things of lip balm, two roll-on aromatherapy sticks. A 2020/2021 planner that I used not at all. Art supplies everywhere which I have mostly consolidated.

Productive! And they say an organized space makes for an organized mind, or something along those lines, though I recently read something by a poet that says you should never trust a creative with a clean space.

(And, to be fair, I didn’t go through everything. But I did hit 50% of the sections and it is much better. And the bay window is 90% better and there are no papers back there to get lost at the moment.)

I also did my Christmas puzzle. Typically I pick out the most fiendish 1000-piece puzzle I can find, but I bought myself this puzzle earlier in the year because it was cute and didn’t have edges, and it was very satisfying but also too easy so I may do a second puzzle here.

I spent some time over the weekend pondering my writing goals for this upcoming year. They…lack focus. Like, for the past few years I’ve specifically been working on the Trilogy, because it’s my dream to get it traditionally published and out into the world. But I finished the revision in late 2024, and I’ve been submitting it all 2025, so there’s nothing specific to do there. And at some point I have to move on. Like, what would my goal be if it that dream comes true?

And I’m not really sure.

Other years I’ve picked a broader goal. Education, or practice, or something. My education year I tried to read a writing book each month, but there does come a point where you can only absorb so much theory, and everyone’s writing process is different anyway, so half the time the book is useless. My practice year I picked three random Pinterest prompts (one each from my character, scenery, and writing prompt boards) and wrote a short story each month. Not sure I got anything good out of that, but it was fun.

I do get anxious about hoarding prompts and not using them, so it does help with that.

And so I could do another broader goal, but I’m not feeling it. 2025 was not a good year, in terms of actually finishing, well, anything. So focusing on just making stuff with no clear end goal is not appealing.

I’m also feeling a little disconnected, community wise. With Turtleduck Press I had regular deadlines I needed to hit, and I was getting stories published on a routine basis. And all my writing forums are essentially dead. I could use some place active, with regular challenges or anthologies or something, to keep me connected and meeting small goals. So I guess if you know of any, point me in the write right direction.

So I think we may piecemeal things for a bit until a bigger picture comes along. Finalizing focus and order on those here. Waiting to hear on whether I got a mentorship. Stuff along those lines. I’ll let you know when I know.

Anyway, squiders, enjoy the last few days of 2025, and I’ll see you in the new year!

23 Dec

Christmas Movies Now and Then

Posted by Kit Campbell in Discussion. Tagged: , , , , .

December books: 6/4 (A Wonderful Christmas Crime and Writing While the World Burns)

The other night we watched the Christmas Chronicles, which, while not a new movie (it came out in 2018), was a new movie to us. This is something we go through each Christmas season, where we look for new Christmas movies we’ve never seen, and I try, mostly unsuccessfully, to sneak my favorites in.

It’s a difference in media consumption in general. Nowadays you can stream basically ever movie ever made somehow or another. Why settle for the familiar when you can try something new? There’s so much out there to see!

I tried to explain this to my kids last week, how we used to re-watch the same things over and over, because that’s all we had. Your movie options included the videos you yourself owned and whatever the local video rental store had in stock. I was rather poor growing up, so trips to the video store were limited, and we definitely didn’t have HBO or another service where you could watch newer movies.

In fact, for most of my formative years, we lived in a small mountain town (it’s still quite small to this day, despite massive growth in many mountain towns), where our video rental options were the Safeway three towns over (cheaper, and we were there fairly regularly because it was also the closest grocery store) or a store in town which I remember renting from maybe twice, so I can only assume it was wildly more expensive.

Christmas feels like a time for tradition, and one of our traditions growing up was our Christmas movie marathon, which my sister and I did each Christmas Eve after dinner to whenever we fell asleep for as long as I can remember. I can’t remember the exact rotation of shows, but it was Rudolph and Frosty, the Grinch, and my personal favorite, A Muppet Family Christmas, which includes not just the Muppets but the Sesame Street characters and the Fraggles.

(They never released A Muppet Family Christmas on video. Our copy was taped off a broadcast. I have found it on YouTube in its entirety, complete with 80s commercials, if one is so inclined.)

So, each Christmas, I find myself trying to watch my favorites in direct competition with everyone else’s urge to watch new movies. But it’s something I run into in general, as well. I want to show my kids the movies that I enjoyed as a kid, and generally I can get away with that, but rewatching something we’ve already seen? Oh, no, we can’t have that.

Sometimes you just want a comfort movie, you know?

Which camp do you fall into, squiders? Are you a rewatcher of favorites, or an only new movies person?

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a merry one, and I’ll see you guys next week.

18 Dec

Okay, Maybe We’ve Overdone the Mysteries

Posted by Kit Campbell in Reading, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , .

December Books: 4/4 (Edited Out and It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Mischief)

Howdy, squiders. We’re a week out from Christmas, so that’s a thing. I could probably use a few more stocking stuffers, but we’ve reached a point where anything shipped won’t get here in time, and I hate braving real retail spaces in December in general, so it may be what it is.

I’m most of the way through my fifth mystery of the month, and I’m flagging a bit. To be fair, this book is annoying me content-wise (It’s A Wonderful Christmas Crime, and the author has taken things in a direction, character-wise, that I do not like and if she doesn’t change things by the end of the book, I may be done with the series. Alas, and after I talked it up last week too). But in theory we’re also going to get Five Golden Wings (now I’m #13 in line on 8 copies, so that’s not moving quickly) AND I bought myself The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries which was perhaps a little ambitious, and maybe we’ll just keep that for next year.

My eyes, they are bigger than my stomach.

I don’t tend to read the same genre in a bunch, so I suspect I’d get sick of anything eventually. Genres have genre conventions, and they tend to get repetitive after a while, so that makes sense.

Anyway. It’s been a LOT of mysteries and maybe I should have paced myself, especially since two of them weren’t even Christmas themed.

I have a horror novel ready for pick-up, and the manga series I started is science fiction/horror-adjacent, so mixing those in may help. Or not, because mystery can be horror-adjacent as well. Maybe I need to read some romance or cozy fantasy.

On the writing front, we’re making some baby steps. I’ve written 1000 words on a short story that came down from on high. Been a while since we’ve had a fully form story fall out of our brain ready to go, and I’m choosing to see that as a promising sign. I’ve also started to outline some of the horror shorts we talked about. And I’ve been poking a couple of writing books I’ve been in the middle of for months.

At some point here, I need to sit down and do some soul searching and put together a long-term plan for January and onward. That, I think, is something for that weird liminal week between Christmas and New Year’s, when time has no meaning.

How’s your December going, squider? I hope that whatever holidays you celebrate are going well! We may get back here before Christmas, but I make no guarantees.

10 Dec

It’s Christmas Mystery Time

Posted by Kit Campbell in Reading. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Hey ho, squiders, how are you doing? Wait, hold on.

December books: Still 2/4 (in the middle of two, read a volume of manga)

We’ve talked the past few weeks how December is traditionally a hard time for me to get any writing done. We may get there yet–I’m making good progress on Christmas (almost all the cards have gone out, most of the presents are bought) so I may get some brain power back there soon. But otherwise I’m just kind of chilling and watching scary videos on YouTube.

(A crutch of mine, alas.)

It’s also Christmas Mystery time! Every year I try to read a few Christmas mysteries. I like mysteries in general–they’re almost always in my top three genres read for the year (with fantasy and science fiction). A well-crafted mystery? A joy, every time. A mystery with an interesting premise? Sign me up.

(The 7 1/2 Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle is wonderful, if you’ve not read it.)

Of course, not all mysteries are the same, and Christmas mysteries do tend to run to mediocrity. Or maybe that’s mystery series in general. So some years I just stick to my tried and true series without trying to branch out. (Also I think I may have read most of the Christmas mysteries the library has.)

My very favorite mystery series is the Meg Langslow series by Donna Andrews. I’ve read all 30+ books in the series (except for the new one, which I am currently #16 on the hold list, out of 8 copies), and she generally puts out one or two new books a year, with more of the more recent ones being Christmas themed. The first book is Murder with Peacocks and past the first two books, all the titles are bird puns (this latest book is Five Golden Wings).

I appreciate the series because the main characters do go through some change over time. Since the beginning of the series, Meg has gotten married, had twins, bought a house, gotten new jobs, etc. And Meg’s got a large family that has, at this point in the series, mostly stabilized, but they go through their own life changes as well, so the world feels a little more dynamic than in some mystery series. At this point it’s kind of like reading about old friends and what they’re up to.

Anyway, I definitely recommend the series if you’re into such things.

The other Christmas mystery series that’s one of my mainstays is by Jacqueline Frost (which, if not a nom de plume, is the perfect name for someone who writes Christmas books) and starts with The Twelve Slays of Christmas. These books follow Holly White, who lives on a Christmas tree farm in Maine and only include Christmas mysteries.

(I think I missed a book or two, though–I got the most recent one and started reading it, but Holly had gotten married and I definitely missed that, and the Internet says there’s six books in the series but I’ve only read 3 or 4, so now I’m having to go back through and figure out which ones I missed, and whether it’s worth it to go back and catch up.)

(Okay, good news, I’ve only missed one, and now I’ve checked it out on my Kindle to catch up. It looks like she’s moved to a new book a year time frame, when before she was doing a book every few years, so that might be why I missed the last one.)

Sometimes I do Christmas romances as well, but it depends on my mood. I do like a good romance, but at least with the Christmas romances, sometimes it feels like they’re just getting put out to capitalize on the concept. Romance in general tends to be a little hit or miss for me, because I have picked up a fair amount that just feel…lazy. Nothing against the genre, it is the most read one and so I understand why some people put them out just to make money, but in general I’ve got to do some vetting.

Not feeling Christmas romance-y this year, at least not bookwise. Might watch a couple. Let me know if you have favorites (Not Love Actually, I’ve never been able to get through it).

I don’t know if I’ll branch out past my normal series this year. I’ve had to do catch up on the Meg Langslow books (I missed last year’s Christmas one, and one earlier this year, so I’ve already read those this month) and now it turns out I’ve got to do catch up on the Holly White series as well, so I may just not have time.

Do you have genres you read around the holidays, squiders? What are they, and why? Any recommendations on Christmas mysteries? (I don’t mind if they’re in the middle of a series or not.) Any recommendations on Christmas romance movies?

3 Dec

And Then We Promptly Gave Up on Everything

Posted by Kit Campbell in Discussion, Other Creative Things, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , .

December books: 2/4 (Rockin’ Around the Chickadee and For Duck’s Sake)

By which I mean I got sick and have thus not done any more writing, and, frankly, am unlikely to do anymore between now and tomorrow.

(Maybe I will find some motivation, but mostly I’m just coughing my lungs out.)

(If anyone knows any surefire ways to get rid of a cough, send them my way. I’m about ready to leave half an onion out on my nightstand.)

Yesterday my boss sent me home early (because of said cough) and Tuesdays are my best days for doing stuff for myself (the oldest kid, who gets out of school first, has an afterschool club, which gives me 3+ hours after work to myself), so I could have, in theory, written a ton!

Instead I watched a four-hour documentary on Disney animatronics and read 80 pages in a book.

Today I have made it all the way through the work day (with some side-eye from my boss) and have run some errands, so I am doing better in general, but still not sure I’m up for anything creative. Mostly I’m thinking I’m going to play some computer games.

I tried out two of the three I bought on Black Friday over the weekend. The first, Plate Up, sounded fun but is horribly frustrating in practice. Maybe it’s not really designed to work on a computer. Or I’m just out of practice with controlling a character with WASD keys. But I couldn’t even figure out how to place new objects down in my kitchen.

I’ll give it another go, but for first impressions, it was bad.

The second is called Oxygen Not Included and is a colony builder on a randomly generated asteroid. I set up a non-survival one to try it out (I played this after Plate Up and figured I was done with frustrations for the day) so I could get a sense of how the game is supposed to go. No tutorial, so you just have to figure it out as you go, so non-survival is definitely the way to go for now.

The third was DREDGE but that’s going to be a lengthy one, and I’m going to leave it alone for now.

So today I might go back to Oxygen Not Included, or I may start another game that I’ve had my eye on for a while. We’ll see.

Or we’ll take a nap. Jury’s out.

Anyway, happy December, squiders. I hope you’re doing well, and good luck for whatever holidays you subscribe to. Here’s hoping you get everything done in a non-stressful, controlled way.

See you!

29 Nov

Nano Writing: Essentially the End

Posted by Kit Campbell in Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

November Books: 5/6 (Songs of Power, The Keeper of Magical Things, and The Night Guest)

(The Night Guest shared a lot of similarities with One of Those Faces from last month that I didn’t like at all. This one was less convoluted and actually made sense, but I didn’t really like it still, so I guess we’re off that genre for a bit.)

Let’s see, as of yesterday, I’m at…31.5K. So we’re good on my backup goal of 35K, but it’s unlikely that 50K is going to happen. Which is fine! I knew it was a long shot going into it.

I’m also not sure what to do with this story. Part of me wants to be like, eh, you know, it was good to get back into things, but it’s not actually very good and maybe we should just abandon it.

But arguably no book is good while you are writing it, and it’s hard to tell whether or not it’s actually bad, or you just feel weird about it because you’re the one creating it.

And, if you recall, I chose something hard! I’ve got two different, at first seemingly unrelated, viewpoints. I’ve got an in-book important text (which is probably my favorite bit, not going to lie. It’s called Minnie Hopkins and the Well of Memories). I’ve got to balance the beats of both viewpoints and also not give away how they’re interconnected too early.

So it’s possible that it feels like pulling teeth just because it’s a lot, and not because it’s inherently bad.

I might see if I can get a writing friend to read what exists when November is done here and see what they think about the story.

But, also, traditionally, I don’t keep going on the same story come December. There have been several years where I’ve tried, but December is historically a very busy month with holidays and activities and all that jazz, and the amount of time I have to write is much less. Plus there’s always some burnout post-Nano (which is always interesting to me, because I often do write 20-35K in other months without issues) so the motivation to keep going on a story I’ve beat my head against for past thirty days is very low.

What normally happens is: I do Nano in November. I attempt to continue in December. This goes very poorly and I get mad at myself either for not getting anywhere or for trying when I know this always go bad. I put the story away until January or February or March, when I work through to the end of the draft.

I suspect why I attempt to keep going so often is because once you hit 50K (IF you hit 50K) you get a endorphin kick. I’ve done it! I’ve won! Plus I almost always write fantasy and 50K is about halfway, so the hard part of the story is done. (Alternately, with some genres, like the year I wrote the cozy mystery, 50K is about the whole draft and why not just finish it then.)

But this year we won’t be at 50K, so I’m not feeling the urge to keep going even though I know it’s a bad idea.

So, yeah, definitely not continuing into December. Though I might go through Dec 4, which is thirty days after I started (on Nov 4) and is the deadline I set for myself in TrackBear.

So, December. If we’re not continuing the draft, what are we doing?

Well, I might take the month off. It is very busy and I do tend to get very stressed. I could use my free time to play Steam games (I might have bought 3 more on Black Friday sales) or work on my travel sketchbook (still about a year behind–currently working on the cruise we took over LAST Thanksgiving break).

Alternately, I might work on one of those short story projects I was considering for November. Maybe the horror ones, because there was a section in my Nano novel I wrote last week that veered very close to horror, and I was reminded that I am very good at atmospheric creepy and that my fantasy novels are probably not the place to do it. But maybe the interconnected fantasy ones! But probably the horror ones.

Anyway, that’s how things are sitting, squiders. How are you feeling? If you’re American, I hope your Thanksgiving went well!

See you next week!

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