Estoy pero no Soy

Nanowrimo: Final Word Count

2008-11-30T21:28:20Z

52,128 / 50,000
(104.3%)

Heh. I managed to add about a thousand words through my edits, go figure. Mostly, things needed to be clarified, transitions inserted, a little padding here and there, so on and so forth.

Will email it to those who have expressed interest in a moment.

Unless I come up with an equally awesome idea, I do not see myself trying again next year.

As for this blog? Eh, it's been sort of nice to have something to update with daily, but it's likely it will grow silent again. We'll see. :P

Day 29=Success.

2008-11-29T22:49:15Z

51,132 / 50,000
(102.3%)

Today went pretty much exactly as expected, and I have succeeded. :)

I'm going to read it through in one sitting while editing tomorrow, as planned, submit it to the website, and then I'll be 100% done. If you want me to email you the thing, go ahead and ask me in comments or email me at chilango2 at gmail.com.

I also finally found a title I was happy with, "Another day, Another dollar." It became a repeated line throughout the nano and it wasn't until I finished it and realized that that the choice became obvious.

Be warned that the story contains hyperbolic political rants, hyperbolic rants about work in general, and uses religious imagery and themes on occasion for comedic effect.

Now, I will discuss how the actual process of writing this thing went for me.

While this was challenging for me, I wouldn't go so far as too say it was hard, if that makes any sense.

I started late on the 5th with barely any writing done (less than a day's worth), and in the ensuing days I did no writing on a total of five additional days, and am finished a day early.

That effectively means I reached 50k words in 20 days, or an average of 2500 words per day. It just so happens that most of the days I *did* write were about 2.5k days, with 2-3 days that were 3k or higher.

I really feel like breaking it down on a logistical level helped me. It gave me a concrete word goal to try and reach each day, and some days I definitely had to push myself to get there, but by and large the "just a few hundred more words" helped make sure I *did* do that. I've also had the benefit of seeing Bev attempt nanowrimo a few times previously, so I had some idea as to the pitfalls that can befall a writer attempting it.

Probably the biggest problem with Nano is that it's set in November, which is really a silly month to do it in, it has Thanksgiving, which by itself is sufficient, students are in school, that sort of thing. I however, had the dubious good fortune of having practically no distractions or demands on my time.

Other stuff that helped:

1) I came up with the idea for this nano on November of last year, and its kind of been in the back of my head since then, slowly stewing. This really helped, as I had a general plot structure ready way ahead of time, had time to think about what I could put into it, and so on. I had a whole list of 'work horror stories' that I felt could go into it as well.

2) It was fun story. A nano has to be really fun, I think, to be doable, it has to be a story you enjoy telling, basically. My story ended up being alot of extended rants about work, society, and so on. I enjoy a good rant, and this allowed me a venue in which to do several.

3) The decision to use quotes of various songs, etc. At some point, I came up with the idea of using movie, song or other quotes from various sources as an 'opener' for alot of the 'sections' of the nano. These helped in two ways, first, they worked as a springboard for that section, I often found myself writing the section in a way that reflected the quote, and as such the quote gave me an idea as to what to write about. And of course, the quotes boosted that all important word count.

4) laislabevita edits and comments. While she deleted a word here or there, her comments and requests I clarified certain sections ended up adding a great deal to my word count, as well as of course making it a better, more comprehensible story.

5) The stories picked up from elsewhere. There were plot elements or horror stories picked up from various other people, especially laislabevita and mayhap that further added to things I could talk about in general.

6) Steady, minimum amounts of work. Again, breaking it down to "This is the mninimum I need to do each day" really helped me. It was sometimes a struggle to reach that number, other times I flew past it easily, but it was a reachable goal every day I actually had time and energy to write except one. The splurges of 5k words other nano writers can manage are, I think, entirly beyond me, so I couldn't afford to fall too behind.

Word Count: Day 28

2008-11-29T01:31:21Z

49,048 / 50,000
(98.1%)

Starting at: 45952
Needed to reach:47952
Words added today: 3096

The schedule, etc, now becomes irrelevant. All I need is 952 words and I have succeeded.

Hell, I could probably finish this tonight, but I want to rest, relax, etc.

I actually intend to reach roughly 51k words tomorrow (adding 2k shouldn't be hard).

The extra thousand is as insurance, I hear that sometimes the nanowrimo counter doesn't agree that all of your words are words, so its wise to build a little insurance.

It also builds insurance against editing, which often makes a nano shorter, although not always.

Word Count: Day 27

2008-11-27T23:42:08Z

45,952 / 50,000
(91.9%)

Starting at: 43406
Needed to reach:45406
Words added today: 2546
Words ahead: 943
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1350
Min. words necessary/day to have the 30th free for just editing: 2024

Obviously it's only 6:30pm, so I could continue, and I may later.

Word Count: Day 26

2008-11-27T03:11:46Z

43,406 / 50,000
(86.8%)

Starting at: 40301
Needed to reach: 42301
Words added today: 3105
Words ahead: 64
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1649
Min. words necessary/day to have the 30th free for just editing: 2198

Today, for the first time since nanowrimo started, I am ahead of schedule. :)

Things are definitely looking good, and finishing it a day ahead of time is looking very doable.

Word Count: Day 25

2008-11-26T02:14:41Z

40,301 / 50,000
(80.6%)

Starting at: 37577
Needed to reach: 39577
Words added today: 2724
Words behind: 1374
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1940
Min. words necessary/day to have the 30th free for just editing: 2425

May do more work tonight, but we'll call it a day at this point.

Word Count: Day 24

2008-11-25T03:09:04Z

37,577 / 50,000
(75.2%)

Starting at: 35025
Needed to reach: 37025
Words added today: 2552
Words behind: 2431
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 2071
Min. words necessary/day to have the 30th free for just editing: 2485

Six days to go.

As expected, no writing occured yesterday.

No D&D on Thursday, no need to run a campaign on Sunday. If I was going to have a more or less free week, this was the week to have.

I keep up today's pace I will reach 50k a day early and have some time to do editing, which will be good.

Word Count: Day 22

2008-11-23T05:06:59Z

35,025 / 50,000
(70.0%)

Starting at: 32899
Needed to reach: 34899
Words added today: 2126
Words behind: 1649
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1872

Succeeded at meeting my minimum. I really need to keep myself away from blogs for the rest of the week, they swallow up hours I could be writing. I came home at something like 4pm, took a nap till 5 or 6, but didn't actually start writing till 9 or 10 or so because of the evils of the blogosphere. :P

Still, I did meet my minimum. With any luck I'll wake up early tomorrow or come home early enough to do a *little* writing, but if not, well, I'll jsut have to buckle down and finish it, we're definitely entering the end game here, but I'm in decent shape, considering.

Word Count: Day 21

2008-11-22T05:11:28Z

32,899 / 50,000
(65.8%)

Starting at: 30,726
Needed to reach: 32,726
Words added today: 2173
Words behind: 2108
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1901

Another pretty good day. I was a little lazy today and didn't really do any writing till 9pm or so, so it's a good thing the word count progressed well, or we'd have a repeat of last weekend.
I am having a somewhat busy day tomorrow as I am going to dim sum and need to prepare for Sunday's session, but I should hopefully be able to manage 2k words, which will mean that only Sunday itself will likely be a total loss. This will put me at 35kish words, I will then have 7 days, including the 30th, to reach 50k, or 2143 words/day, which is manageable, if difficult.

If I'm going to finish a day early to have time for one last edit I'm going to need to pull out at least one or two 3k words day out of my hat.

Word Count: Day 20

2008-11-21T04:44:50Z

30,726 / 50,000
(61.5%)

Starting at: 28,660
Needed to reach: 30,660
Words added today: 2066
Words behind: 2614
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1928

Achieved minimum today, but since I had D&D this evening, I reached it by 4pm and didn't fall behind. This is good.

Word Count: Day 19

2008-11-20T03:36:22Z

28,660 / 50,000
(57.3%)

I did work on it yesterday, but LJ was being bad and I couldn't access it to update.

Yesterday's progress looked like this:
Starting at: 23,507
Needed to reach: 25,507
Reached: 24,817
Words added: 1310

Yeah, yesterday was kind of a bad day for writing. However, as should be clear from the number above, I did very well today:

Starting at: 24,817
Needed to reach: 27,507
Words added today: 3843
Words behind: 3,013
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1940

I passed the 50% mark today and neared the 60% mark. Today's work represented a nice 7.7% of the total.

Word Count: Day 17

2008-11-18T04:01:05Z

23,507 / 50,000
(47.0%)

Starting at: 21,377
Needed to reach: 23,377, in theory
Words added today: 2130
Words behind: 4,832
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 2038

Yeah. This is mildly depressing, just when I was about to catch up, and then I am unable to do any writing at all from Friday to Sunday, and today I just did my minimum, really. Saturday and Sunday I basically expected, Friday, however, not so much.

Ah well. I'll keep plugging away and doing my best.

Due to the cushion I've built by doing 2k words per day the situation is not *entirely* unsalvagable, it's entirely plausible for me to do 2038 words per day from here, more or less, although I'll have to somehow manage more than that by some significant amount to make up for this coming Sunday when I'll be DMing again.

Word Count: Day 13

2008-11-14T04:13:42Z

21,377 / 50,000
(42.8%)

Starting at: 19,133
Needed to reach: 21,133
Words added today: 2244
Words behind: 294 (!!!!)
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1684

The current portion of the nano is a bit of a hard slog, the earlier parts were a lot more fun to write. I may simply be succumbing to inevitable loss of momentum, but we'll see. If I can get at least as much written tomorrow as today I'll be temporarily ahead of schedule. Then, of course, I'll fall behind again due to plans for a busyish weekend, but I still feel pretty good about more or less catching up to where I should be after 8 days of writing.

Best title idea so far: "Dame mas oficina"

Word Count: Day 12

2008-11-13T04:36:21Z

19,133 / 50,000
(38.3%)

Starting at: 17,047
Needed to reach: 19,047
Words added today: 2086
Words behind: 871
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1715

Yeah, the "schedule as determined by Jorge" is too complicated by now to keep up, and is starting to lose its point as I get close to catching up to where I should be if I'd started on day one.

Only got 2k words today because I had D&D, which I forgot about yesterday (it's normally Thursday). Hopefully I can build a little leeway tomorrow for the weekend, seeing as I'll be preparing sundays sessions on Saturday and then actually running said session.

We'll see.

Word Count: Day 11

2008-11-12T04:23:04Z

17,047 / 50,000
(34.1%)

Starting at: 13,850
Needed to reach: 15,850 for today. 17,850 to make up for yesterday.
Words added today: 3197
Words added to cushion: None.
Total cushion per schedule: None.
Words behind per ideal: 1290
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1735

I didn't do a damn bit of writing yesterday, as we had a number of errands and other such to run as well as other interrupting bits of "life in general" as it were.

I tried to make up for it today but fell a few hundred words short of the minimum. Still, I mitigated *most* of the damage, and if I manage to write the same amount tomorrow I'll be back ahead of my schedule and get back to catching up to where I should be ideally.

While my self-set minimum goal is 2k/day, I've been pushing myself to 2.5k a day and succeeding so that, ideally, I'd find myself eventually *ahead* of where I should be ideally and have time to do things like re-read, edit, etc in the last day or two of nanowrimo. Ambitious I know. :)

Since I skipped yesterday, and since it's *guaranteed* I'll be skipping Sunday (I run a D&D game that day), I'll need to push a bit harder to achieve that. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks for the title suggestions, they've been helpful. Best one so far is "Open Office" which is appropriately amusing. Still brainstorming.

Word Count: Day 9

2008-11-10T00:37:57Z

13,850 / 50,000
(27.7%)

Starting at: 11,318
Needed to reach 13,318
Words added today: 2532
Words added to cushion: 532
Total cushion per schedule: 3243
Words behind per ideal: 1153
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1722

One mildly lame title idea: "The Empty Office" which is apropos but not sufficiently catchy.

Word Count: Day 8

2008-11-08T22:27:40Z

11,318 / 50,000
(22.6%)

Starting at: 8,827
Needed to reach 10,827
Words added today: 2491
Words added to cushion: 491
Total cushion per schedule: 2711
Words behind per ideal: 2018
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1759

Still no title ideas.

Word Count: Day 7

2008-11-07T18:42:10Z

I should probably just make my minimum word count per day 2k period and simplify my life. So I will. I should also count total nano days, not days since my schedule started. So I did that too. :)

8,827 / 50,000
(17.7%)

Starting at: 6,220
Needed to reach 8,220

Words added today: 2607
Words added to cushion: 607
Total cushion per schedule: 2220
Words behind per ideal: 2842
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1791

Bit by bit, I cut the last number down. When I cross 1667, I'll have made up for starting late. I'll probably continue to push for 2k per day however, it's nice to have cushion.

I am having trouble coming up with a title. Suggestion appreciated. If you need to see/read it to give suggestions, just ask. :)

Word Count: Day 2

2008-11-06T17:57:12Z

I realized last night after I posted my update that I had screwed up the math somewhere.

My minimum daily requirement is 1924 (call it 2k) words, which means I added 474 to my "cushion" yesterday and am only 1824 words ahead of my schedule as of this morning before writing.

As of noon:

6,220 / 50,000
(12.4%)

Words added today: 2472
Words added to cushion: 548
Total cushion: 2372 = 1.3 days
Min. words necessary/day from this point: 1823

To clarify, I intend to keep my minimum as 2k words/day, that way if I slip or rest or whatever, I have some cushion. :)

I may write more today as well, but I've earned a break, so its gaming time.

Word Count Update: Day 1

2008-11-05T20:55:24Z

I'm partly doing these updates to keep myself motivated and keep myself on track. I know their a little fussy and inside baseballish, but it keeps me organized, and Nano is a logistical as much as a creative challenge. :)

In case it wasn't clear in my previous entry, the one thousand some words I noted were written on Monday and a bit on Tuesday. (mostly Monday). So that included no work from today. That bit of writing wasn't considered in my original break down of my necessary schedule, so its pure gravy.

I'm stopping today at this total:

3,748 / 50,000
(7.5%)

Words added today: 2,398 This is 508 words above my daily requirement.

Words ahead of schedule: 1,858

This is mostly from the Monday and Tuesday writing. This is almost a full days worth ahead of schedule. I hope to keep adding padding in small chunks as I go along so that I can afford to take small breaks or have room for days when I am too busy for whatever reason to do any writing.

Again, if you want to read it as it currently exists, feel free to ask.

Word Count Update

2008-11-05T15:01:32Z

Okay, today is my first real "free" day of writing, but I did manage to get a little writing snuck in on Monday. This should help make the overall daily total easier to reach.

Word count as of today, before buckling down and getting started:

1,350 / 50,000
(2.7%)

Any interest in my posting snippets as I go along? Even if there is, I may wait till its finished so you can read it all at once, but my decision will be influenced by the desires of the audience at large. :)

Nanowrimo: Starting Premises

2008-11-01T23:19:24Z

Allright. I have been bad and am already behind, seeing as with the excitement concerning Bev passing the bar, etc, I have done not a bit of writing.

The fact that I plan to volunteer for That One's campaign probably won't help, or my duty as DM of my gaming group. Still, other than those things, plenty of time. Not visiting or being visited by family during Thanksgiving.

So, worst case scenario, no work till Wednesday. Since the ideal pace is 1667 words per day, this will represent a total of 6668 words I would be short, meaning an extra 223 words per day starting Wednesday, or 1890 per day starting the 5th. Considering this post itself is precisely one hundred ninety-nine words long, this should not be that difficult.

Premise:

Office Space, mixed with Clerks, and every other "I hate my job" movie or book you have ever read. I will tell every horror story I have ever personally experienced or heard of during my 6 or so years as an administrative assistant, in order to cleanse my soul of that job as I prepare to sometime in the sort of near future be rid of it forever.

House Cleaning

2008-02-20T20:25:08Z

Comments on the new blog look welcome.

Deafening silence also welcome, as that's usually what you get from *me*, and you will learn to like it!

chilango @ 2008-02-01T11:05:00

2008-02-01T16:20:04Z

No excuses from me this time. Just the usual. I've determined that I generally only have the energy to be in so many hobbies at once, and keeping this blog up regularly counts as a "hobby" and, yes, well, it gets lost in the line and such.

I was looking at my Facebook profile and thinking about the Democratic primaries when I realized I seem to have a really bad track record of primary crushes. In 2004 I managed to support *both* Wesley Clark, and then when eh flamed out, John Edwards, before boarding the ABB Express with some resignation once the primaries were over.

This time, I sort of danced back and forth between Obama and Edwards for the longest time before throwing in with Edwards right before Iowa, only to see him promptly flame out.

This is my long way of explaining why I am not throwing my support behind Obama.

In other news, I'm in two D&D3.5 campaigns right now, although one is on hiatus till late February because everyone else is busy. But the other one is going fine. It's now officially the longest running D&D campaign I have ever been in, I think. It's also ridiculously broken and overpowered, it's not even funny. Actually, it's pretty funny.

My party mainly consists of:

A half celestial who started out as a Warlock or something and has a level or two in Saint. He has displacement, so any hit, even a critical has something like a 50% chance of missing him. He also has a ridiculous number of free actions during battle, wherein he can basically interrupt the attempts of anybody to do anything against him.

An elf who has some sort of weird warrior class, can change stances so his AC is basically unhittable, and recently acquired something like a 7x Vorpal Sword of Doom. I'm not really joking.

And myself. My character is fairly sane compared to these guys, he's just was just a level 10 or so human cleric with an archery focus, +5 plate, and a +1 shield.

The DM recently informed us thta he realized that he hadn't been giving us enough experience to "deal with what we were going to be facing" and how we are level 17.

Yeah.

Meme

2007-07-29T00:58:44Z

Some day, I will do a HP entry, or several, laying out thoughts. Today is not that day.

Today, it is....time..for... meme. (as I am playing KOTOR currently, I imagined that in a Darth Malak voice. For those unfamiliar whit his voice, imagine Darth Vader, but with less "breathing" less "hollow" and a bit harsher.

he rules:
*Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
*People who are tagged need to write in their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
*At the end of your blog, you need to choose (8) people to get tagged and list their names.

1) I say "for lack of a better term" alot. Too much, In my Senior year AP English class, people starting calling me Jorge "FLOABT" Garcia.

2) I drink everything in super strength. Coffee? Add eight packets of sugar. Ice Tea? I put a pitchers worth of mix in a glass sized container. And like it.

3) I was born a month late. The family joke was that I was too stubborn to be a Taurus.

4) Of all places on earth, I have lived in California the longest. And yet I have not been north of San Luis Obispo within said state, ever.

5) I once tried to create a real version of psychohistory but stopped when I decided that math was hard.

6) I am famous for liking or otherwise tolerating books other people hate, such as Tess of the D'Ubervilles.

7) I insist on "Jorge" rather than George, a name I absolutely hate. This has been a long and usually fruitless battle, although for some random reason, people started having an easier time with Jorge a few years ago.

8) I had a spanish accent, naturally enough, when I moved to the states from Mexico. I did not, however, realize this fact until about 4 years after I had moved there.