Keeping track of progress on creative projects
Back in the 70s Berni Wrightson created a coloring book that has been out of print since then. The artist’s Facebook page has been posting pictures from it, and I kicked in to the Kickstarter so I could color the pictures without feeling like I was stealing them.
This is my first effort. I started with the same green I used for the corpses in the Vlad the Impaler Christmas picture, and just went from there.
Photo plus Photoshop. I had some fun making the edges of the tea bag ever so slightly transparent to show the lettering layer underneath.
Answer in the comments.
Inspired by a meme about Vlad the Impaler’s holiday lawn decorations (and a friend’s response to the meme), I added some holiday cheer to a famous woodcut.
For the full effect, imagine Mannheim Steamroller’s version of “Carol of the Bells” blaring at top volume.
After taking a couple of days away from the project, I’ve decided to leave it where it is rather than start something new just to push past 50,000 words. The novel and the short story – which at more than 23,000 words isn’t really all that short – are enough. I accomplished what I set out to do.
I’m going to switch to some other creative endeavors for awhile, but I’ll return to post some outlines and final thoughts for The Fins sometime in the weeks to come.
At long last, VIB is done.
It was a profoundly mixed experience. Some of it – particularly the Juliana Y subplot – is some of the best writing I’ve done in awhile. Other parts were like pulling teeth, and I’m not at all convinced that they won’t be as tough to read as they were to write.
So like wine, I’m going to let this one age for awhile and see what I think of it once I have the benefit of some distance.
As things stand now, I'm a little more than 8000 words shy of the 50k for a Novel Rhino win. I may take up one of the other sections of Sunday Night School. Or I may concede that I’ve met my goal even if I haven’t finished the word quota.
The slog continues. Which is exactly what it feels like at this point. Other than yesterday, I haven’t managed a single decent day of writing since I finished the novel. I fear I may be learning a hard lesson about my psychology as a writer.
For some time now I’ve been dreading writing the Margaret Kelly subplot. Try as I might, I can’t muster much feeling about her one way or another. She’s such a caricature of a character, and I’m not sure what exactly to do about her.
However, I knew it would be a bad idea to write the last part of the story and then try to backtrack to Kelly’s bit. So I dug in, and with good sessions in the morning and after dinner I managed to write her demise from start to finish.
Anyone checking the outline may note that originally her passing was supposed to be more sexual than it turned out to be. I confess I’m not fond of writing sex scenes, especially not if they involve violence as well. Like bad things befalling animals or children, I prefer not to see that kind of thing in movies or read it in books. So why would I write it myself?
Frankly, I think it turned out scarier without the sex stuff.
When I completed her story, I noted that I was almost all the way to 40,000 words for the month. So I finished the evening with the beginning of Steven Raleigh’s descent into madness. If I can get another good writing session in tomorrow, I may be able to wrap up “VIB.”
Where to from there, only time will tell.
Juliana has met her end. Though I recognize that this is a story with nothing but bad people, she’s the first time I’ve written a villain with multiple dimensions and a sympathetic backstory. When one writes mostly Lovecraftiana, most of the bad guys are nonhuman entities out to obliterate the universe.
The trouble with finishing the last 900 or so words of a section like that is that it didn’t exactly leave me inspired to move on to anything else. Hence another low word count for the day.
The Lonesome Death of Juliana Y continues apace. Another slow writing day full of distractions. My current plan is to spend some time doing housework tomorrow to see if that inspires a fresh perspective on productivity.
FFR: The proagonist is currently cowering under her desk.
And off we go to “VIB.”
The transition wasn’t seamless. My morning was unusually busy for a Friday. And once I got home, I spent most of the afternoon on non-Novel-Rhino activities. Even when I sat myself down at the computer, I had trouble getting myself on task. I re-read some of the parts of the story I’d already written, which made sense when I was bringing myself back up to speed on The Lonesome Death of Julianna Y, but I also blew a bunch of time on parts I’d completely finished.
As usual, I got into a writing groove around 9 p.m., and that allowed me to at least get the story up and running. Fingers crossed, I hope to make more (and more consistent) progress now that Thanksgiving break is officially underway.
FFR: Juliana has shut the spider out of her kitchen and is now considering her options.
And The Legrasse Estate is complete.
I wrote a little later into the night than I usually do, but after I finished Chapter Ten it seemed like such a small thing to keep typing long enough to complete the whole thing. This way I can make a clean end to the first part of The Fins and start fresh with the second part tomorrow.
Of the four Novel Rhino novels I’ve written, this is longer than the first but shorter than the other two. That’s actually slightly inaccurate, because this one’s shorter than the overall word count for Deadly Light but longer than the part of DL that I wrote during NaNoWriMo in 2017.
It feels strange to be done with the novel and yet have more than 15,000 words to go for the goal.
Back on track at least a little. I’ve made it quite a ways into the last substantive chapter, approximately halfway through the big showdown.
Another not great day. I was sick in the morning and somehow never managed to get a writing streak going. I managed 600 words or so, but it was piecemeal work at best.
At least Chapter Ten is underway.
I spent a chunk of time between work duties this morning figuring out all the small details for the outline of Chapter Ten. Everything is mapped out now, so all that remains is to write it. I planned to dig right into it this afternoon just a soon as I got home from taking care of a car title transfer at the Wyandotte County Treasurer’s Division of Motor Vehicles.
And that last part should tell you everything you need to know about why I didn’t end up writing a single word today.
Not a feast as epic as yesterday, but not exactly a famine either.
I finished Chapter Nine just as my evening writing time was coming to an end. Exposition and backstory are now completely done, so from here on out it’s all dialogue and action. In the past, writing that sort of stuff has gone faster for me. So we’ll see what the next few days bring.
Feast or famine. So at least it was a feast today. I wrote for most of the afternoon and then got some more done after dinner. My word count for the day topped 3800, which isn’t an all-time best but is definitely the best so far this year.
Chapter Eight is now in the rear view. If I can put in another strong showing tomorrow, I’ll finish Chapter Nine and move on to at least the beginning of the final showdown.
FFR: Emily is now in the middle of what I imagine will be the novel’s final dose of back story.
My first time this month with two bad days in a row. I faced some work demands early on and somehow failed to settle into a writing groove until after 10 p.m.
I think I’m procrastinating, because I actually made some progress on some other creative projects. If this was any month other than November, I would have considered this a productive day.
However, words began to flow more smoothly late in the evening. With luck I’ll be able to pick up the plot tomorrow and run with it.
FFR: Sam’s home but hasn’t yet gone inside.
Not a good one today. Lots of distractions. At least I managed to finish the fight and move on to Sam’s sit-down with Luci.
Then today I bounced back nicely. A long stretch of writing in the afternoon allowed me to almost completely recover the ground I lost yesterday.
FFR: when I stopped this evening, Sam and her husband were right in the middle of their big fight.
Today was the day I guess I knew was coming. My streak of 2000+ days is over. I didn’t even make it to the NaNoWriMo 1667 word daily pace. Farewell, perfect streak badge.
In a way it’s kind of a relief. Now that the streak is broken, it takes a chunk of the pressure off. I’m still confident that I will finish the challenge, probably well before the end of the month.
And in happier news, I figured out to bridge the gap I mentioned yesterday: by not bridging it. When I went back and re-read the first part of the book, I found that the first conversation between Sam and her mom established enough groundwork for them to move straight to the more momentous talk they’re getting ready to have.
I’ve hit a gap in my notes. Chapter Seven is done except for whatever plot development is going to segue into the start of Chapter Eight. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to build a bridge over the hole. Literally everything I’ve come up with is either too contrived, too boring or both.
Fortunately I squeaked by with just over 2000 words before I hit the wall. So now I have until tomorrow to figure out a fix.
I’m sure I’ll come up with something.
This was the day I hoped to have yesterday.
Knowing that I planned to watch a movie in the evening, I wanted to make quota in the afternoon so I wouldn’t have to worry about doing a lot of writing late in the evening. As it turned out, I made quota and then some. And I was also able to round things out a little after the movie. So I finished the day at 3,124 words. That brought my Novel Rhino total to just over 16,000 words, and The Legrasse Estate to just over 34,000.
I estimate that the novel is roughly 2/3 done. I could conceivably finish it (or at the very least come close) by the end of next weekend.
FFR: Sam’s had her encounter in Remy’s art studio, and now she’s opened the door for a guest.
One of the odd things about writing a novel I began more than a year ago is that I keep hitting different milestones almost every day. If there’s no NaNoWriMo 2021 goal to be met immediately, I nonetheless clear some significant point in the overall progress of The Legrasse Estate.
For example, today’s writing wasn’t anything noteworthy for Novel Rhino. But I passed 30,000 words in the novel.
Today was also notable as an exceptionally uneven writing experience. I overslept, which went a long way toward disrupting my plans to produce more than an average day’s word count.
I also got caught up trying to fix some problems that have emerged over the last few days. One of the problems with putting a project down for a year and then picking it back up again is that it can be tricky trying to remember what’s already been established and what remains to be written. In particular, I noticed that Chapter Three already contained a lot of the back story I recently included in Chapter Five. Even worse, a lot of it by rights belonged in Chapter Six (which is where I am now). So even if I’d dragged my butt out of bed on schedule, I would still have faced the loss of valuable writing time to making fixes that would otherwise have nagged at me and made fresh writing impossible.
However, I managed to maintain what has – for better or worse – become a standard practice this November: stumble through as much as I can before dinner, and make up for lost ground by writing like crazy between 9 and 11 p.m.
FFR: Sam’s meeting with Abigail Marsh is now complete, though she hasn’t yet returned to her hotel.
Though this wasn’t the most spectacular writing day, I still managed to clear the 2k mark. I’m over 10,000 words for the month now.
At this point I have seven writing badges on the NaNoWriMo profile. I should pick up another one on Sunday for writing seven days in a row. After that it will be another week or so before I reach another badge-worthy milestone.
FFR: Sam and Luci have finished their field trip to Arkham, and they’ve just gotten back to their hotel room in Boston.
Today was full of a considerable number of non-Rhino-related activities. I genuinely feared that this would be my first sub-par day. And though this was indeed less than I’d hoped to accomplish, a productivity spurt late in the game brought me comfortably if not dramatically over the 2k mark.
The overall total for the novel is now over 25,000 words. It’s weird to be past what I’m guessing will prove to be the book’s halfway point after only four days of writing.
I also noticed that there’s a passage in Chapter Three that gives away too much too early in the game. When I find a day with more available breathing room, I will need to go back and re-read. I don’t think I’ll end up deleting anything, but some of it may need to be moved to another place in the story.
For future readers: at long last I made it to the end of Chapter Five.
Today I got a good writing session in late in the afternoon, and then after dinner I managed another productive hour or two after I got done taking pictures of some glassware.
The big news is that my daily total put me over 200,000 lifetime NaNoWriMo words. Even though I’ve only finished three Rhino novels, my partial completions in April and November 2020 were enough to get me to 200k a little early. Well, that and my three wins were all a little over the exact 50,000 finish line.
For future readers: today’s efforts finally got Sam out of the cemetery and on her way back home.
Knock wood, writing seems to be a much smoother process this time around than it was amid the chaos of last November. I topped yesterday’s daily word count total, which was particularly fortunate because I hit a rut early in the evening and didn’t really build up steam until after dinner.
And even better, part of what I wrote today was actually scary. It came as a shock to me, because I’m working on a section that I expected to be mostly back story, introducing some of the plot points from Lovecraft’s tale. Moments like that always make for a more enjoyable writing experience.
I left off just as Sam learns of her family ties to Inspector Legrasse and Alan advises her to leave town.
I got off to something of a sideways start today.
In past Novel Rhino years I’ve made a custom of staying up until midnight on Nov. 1 and getting the new season underway with an hour or so of writing before going to bed. This time, however, I was too tired to stay up that late. So I turned in before midnight, vowing to work all the harder the next day (which now of course is today).
As if the spirit of Novel Rhino took offense at my disregard for tradition, I woke up at around 3 a.m. and found myself completely unable to get back to sleep. So I shuffled off to my desk, sat down and got to work.
I don’t know exactly how far that got me, but with that opening push plus a late afternoon writing session and another after dinner, I managed to clear the 2000 word mark.
For the record, I opted to begin with The Legrasse Estate. I’m going to try to finish it in as close to proper NaNoWriMo form as I can and then switch to VIB to round out my 50k word count.
For any future readers of the novel, I resumed work where I left off: the Point Poulpe sheriff’s station. And I made it as far as the altercation in the cemetery before calling it a day.
