eddyfate

16,445 / 16,445 (100.0%)

The first draft is done. I'm under, but the 20,000 word limit was an approximate target. Still, that means that when I go through to revise, I can comfortably expand on areas that might need it (since I went back and did a lot of rewriting while in the process of writing, I might have inadvertently skimped). I'm planning to let it sit for a day or two, then revise, then send out to a couple of first readers for their input, then revise again and send off for editing.

13,436 / 20,000 (67.2%)

Another ~1,000 words. While it still took me an act of will to sit down and write, this set went a little easier this time. Once again, I have to remind myself that writing every day is easier than writing every now and then.

Most of the past few days have been working on the Origins LARP: skeleton, giving assignments to people, fleshing out I need and what I'd like in my head, and putting some stakes in the ground. it really helped to just sit down and put all of the things splashing around in my head for the past couple of months into motion. I've already got a pretty good idea of what I need and by when, although there's a few parts I'm still a little fuzzy on. That's why I have a group of good people to help me out, and I'm damned thankful for them.

Since today I had some time and I'm feeling a bit better, I juggled a bit more LARP work with some actual wordcount on Digital Dirge. It's only a thousand words, but once again it's a case of building the car as I'm driving it; I had to reread some previous work and tweak it to match what I had in mind for the next section, as well as refresh my memory on where I was planning to go. I'm envisioning six more major chunks (each at about a thousand words) before I do my second draft, so I'm hoping to have the first draft done by the end of this week. Barring catastrophe or further illness, that should be a plausible deadline.

12,535 / 20,000 (62.7%)

10,732 / 20,000 (53.7%)

It feels like for every thousand words I put down, I end up cutting 500 back out. Today, after some solid progress in the past couple of days, I ended up cutting one chunk out entirely because I realized that it just wasn't necessary to what I was trying to do. I do feel like everytime I do this the whole manuscript takes more focus and comes to life for me, but this is the first time I've really developed something as I was writing it. It's a new experience, and as a result the whole thing is just taking more time than usual.

8,276 / 20,000 (41.4%)

Ended up going back and trimming down a section that was repetitive. Normally I try to avoid that kind of in-draft editing, but in this case it was blocking me from finishing up a different section. Not entirely sure I'll hit 20,000 words, but since that's more of a guideline than a benchmark, I'm not terribly worried -- it just provides a nice goal.

7,342 / 20,000 (36.7%)

It's a very strange day when Grand Theft Auto inspires your work.

3,292 / 20,000 (16.5%)

Again, I'm still at the stage of nailing down the skeleton. I figured out one vector, but the other one just wasn't working out right for some reason, and I spent the past couple of days just thinking about it and kind of avoiding any serious writing on it. I finally talked it over with greebotrill, and she pointed out that I needed a third vector to make it all hang together. We discussed ideas, and after hastily jotting down some notes it all clicked into place. I discarded chunks of my original idea, and rearranged some other pieces to accommodate the third vector. Now I'm going to sit on it for a while and see how that gels in my head - I have a Mage LARP to run tomorrow, and Monday is editing for draft three of MET: Awakening, so I'll have a few days to let it sit in the back of my head before I come back to it and start fleshing out details.

1,086 / 20,000 (5.4%)

I'm not yet to the stage of doing daily wordcounts - this was just me sorting out the structure of the manuscript and writing a few small sections I already had in my head. I actually spent more time shuffling ideas around and agonizing over a title then hammering out actual wordcount.

221,338 / 185,000 (119.6%)

I wrote up one of the two sections I had to do, realized (with some regret) that the section on using stage magic in LARP wasn't really needed, pulled (with even more regret) a large chunk of the Legacies appendix, moved the rest into Chapter Five, and called it a day. One day shy of exactly five months of writing, and the first draft is done. I'm 14,000 under where I expected to be (although still 36,000 over my proposed wordcount). I'm going to ignore the hell out of MET Mage for a few days, let the rest of the playtest data roll in, then get to work making the last revisions before I start working on editing.

232,530 / 185,000 (125.7%)

Good news: As the snow was getting reasonably bad, my boss let me leave work an hour and a half early. After catching up on the late VST work (well, late for me), I decided to poke around with MET Awakening. The extra time got me really in a groove, and I ended up cranking out nearly all the rest of my draft -- if I can get the final sections written in the next two days, I will actually be on time for my complete first full draft (hitting right when the playtest results are due), instead of a week later as I originally predicted. That means I'm nearly 10,000 words ahead of schedule. And I'll be hitting about what I expected -- 50,000 words over target. That doesn't make the cutting any easier, but it does mean I can estimate well.

So, assuming all hits as it should, I'll be done by the end of the week. I'll take a few days off to celebrate, then dive into the growing pile of final rules tweaks and revisions before I close all that off and start doing my cutting and editing pass.

226,989 / 185,000 (122.7%)

Long story short, I was feeling ill last night and this morning, but then I felt good enough to go into work, so while I was waiting to go into work, I banged out the rest of the spirit section. I've gotten some good commentary that I will go back and look at once I finish this draft.

Now I'm going into work, and then I'll probably fall over dead.

221,512 / 185,000 (119.7%)

Second half of the spirit rules. Like before, not a huge number of changes - just enough to smooth over some potential crossover play issues and close a couple of loopholes.

219,690 / 185,000 (118.8%)

Halfway through spirits (and much cross-referencing with Werewolf: The Forsaken, as well as chatting with Forsaken experts). At first glance I thought the rules were identical, but I see now that there's some distinctions that could be important. Fun!

217,218 / 185,000 (117.4%)

Slow day -- had a lot of email and logistical stuff to catch up on today. But tomorrow, I get to dive into the spirit section, which should be fun.

212,659 / 185,000 (115.0%)

More Storytelling advice, more revision of chapter structure, more babbling about magic. Slightly under quota today (only a thousand words written), but none of it was cut-and-paste work, and there was a fair amount of cross-referencing and revision to get the point across in a good economy of words. Overall, I'm pleased.