How is everyone doing? Are you taking part in NaNoWriMo this year?

In the ever-changing landscape that is my work-life, I realize I haven’t been blogging as much. Most of my posting has been on Medium. I’ll give you a link to my Medium profile in case you want to follow me there. Some of my stories are free but others require a membership to read.

That’s not even where most of my focus has been though. My YouTube channel has had a notable increase in attention this past year. If I ever figure out the specific reason why then I’ll share my secrets, but right now they’re a secret to me as well. What’s been getting the most attention of late has been funny short clips – mostly of glitches I come across at random while playing video games.

It’s good news that the channel is getting so much more attention than it used to. What’s annoying is that when I first started on YouTube, funny shorts were one of the things I tried first. I moved on from there because those videos weren’t getting attention. It’s a good thing I decided all the sudden to try again! The internet is weird.

But that’s only one half of what this blog post is about. The other half is NaNoWriMo 2023!

As I said, I’m not posting on my blog as often anymore, but significant updates like this are something I still want to make sure I share on a free platform. And I’m ready to announce this year’s project…

‘Aliens Vs. Wizards’

This’ll be the fifth book in my ‘Horror Vs. Fantasy’ series, and the final book in what I’m referring to as ‘Phase 1.’ The series may go through some changes in the next phase – a lot depends on what kinds of turns life takes, so I’m not making any big announcements about the future yet. I just know that this particular story felt right as the last book in Phase 1, largely because (so far) every book in the series has been released in reverse-chronological order (i.e. each following book takes place before the one that came out the previous year). It doesn’t pose a problem because, even though it’s a shared universe, the stories have been for the most part disconnected from each other, not directly impacting each other. It’s a pattern that has worked for now, but it won’t make as much sense to continue it with future books if the series goes in the direction I currently have planned for it (again, depending on how things go over the next few years – I gotta be open to changing my plans).

So how is this year’s project going so far? It seems to be going okay. As I type this out, I’m currently at 15029 words out of the 50,000 that I need by the end of the month. I’m on track wordcount-wise – that’s not what worries me – what worries me is how little of the story I feel like I’ve gotten into, even with so many words already written down.

It’s because I’m spending a lot more time on introduction this time around, and setting the stage for the big action sequences without having much action at the start. I’m spending more time on the Status Quo opening portion of the story so that when the alien invasion eventually occurs it actually feels like an invasion.

But I think the lack of early action is throwing me off of my usual sense of story pacing, since I normally use those conflicts as my kind of milestones to tell me how far into the story I am.

I’m not too worried though. I don’t have much farther to go now before getting into the heavy stuff. And I know from previous projects that I tend to pick up the writing pace as I get closer to the end of a story. I may get over the 50,000 word mark before the story actually finishes, but in plenty of time to get the story finished by the end of the month.

I’ve recently made my Pinterest Board for this project public. It’s already given me considerable inspiration. I’ve also got a music playlist I may share later once I have a more solid idea of what songs to use. Lot’s of 80’s style electronica. The music of David Bowie and the Tron: Legacy soundtrack have been serving me well.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? How’s your project coming along? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you 🙂