Hi folks, I know I haven't updated since November, I do apologise. I took some time to think about things and then thought 2021 would be a good way to kick things off again. So here it goes.

In November, I participated NaNoWriMo 2020 and it went well. My friend Sophie and I had a race again this year. In the previous year, she had just hit the 50k mark before me; both of us thought through until the last 10 minutes in 2019.

Ahhh... 2019. A different world, where masks were something people wore for all hallows eve and medical procedures... if only we knew then...

This year, I hit the 50k on the 29th November, a whole day early. Better than I expected... but well, NaNoWrimo has this whole badge system so I couldn't stop there if I wanted all of the badges. I'll let Gollum tell you where I stand on that...

Did I get all the NaNoWriMo 2020 badges?

Yes... although admittedly not without cheating. I'll explain why I cheated though. I have a good reason. And the reason is, the little mountain badge told me I had to meet my writing par each day. Now, it's not clear what par it is measuring on nanowrimo... there are many of them...

There is the little graph thing that tells you where you are meant to be each day by marking your progress with a dark blue line, and the target by the light blue line. I managed to stay above the light blue line every day.

The next writing target, and the one I thought the badge meant, is the "how many words needed per day". On the 29th November, it told me I needed something like 300 words, and I got them, plus another 500. In fact, I had hit all the words needed on every day. For me, it was the word daily that mislead me to think it was the daily word count progress bar...

Which Par are we meant to meet?

It was only on 2nd December, after hitting the forums that I learned even NanoWrimo didn't know the criteria of this badged. The forum announced that the par they meant was 1667. I fell behind the 1667 three or four times that month because I was convinced that I only needed to get the words needed today target. And I wasn't the only one... very few people got the badge.

My lecturer talked about the curse of knowledge. That is when the reader assumes the audience will know what they mean because they understand. Whoever invented the par badge assumed that everyone, including their colleagues—who admitted they thought it was the graph—would understand what they had meant. It clearly wasn't the case. So I backdated my "written words" until I got the badge, then I deleted the fake word count to keep my total words true.

I wouldn't have cheated if the criteria was clear, but I felt clarity here was the issue and so I awarded myself the badge anyway. All the other badges I got fair and square.

What about the NaNoWriMo 2020 Project itself?

Well, I hit the 51,600 word mark, so I'd say it went well. I already had 3000 words before the project, so now it is at a total of 55,000-ish words; I would say that's a great start and I left it somewhere in between the middle and the end. It's not finished yet, and it's a complex plot, but I knew it would be.

I learned there are some things that might be a good idea to research. For example, the change of religious beliefs in British Culture and the things that influenced this. The Viking and the Tudor eras, I know, went through a lot of religious changes. And Lately, we've become a multi-faith country with, what seems to me, a lot of agnostically growing. Interesting but heavy topics that took my story down a lot of twisty routes.

I also got some personal writer badges that I was able to unlock while doing the goal. Yes, I really do like badges...

I got the stay at home one, and the made myself cry one.... I'm also a rebel because I continued a story rather than starting from scratch. The personal ones are impossible to collect all of them for example, I couldn't vote in November because I don't live in the states. But I got the ones that I could. I won't list them all here; there are too many of them.

As I said earlier, my friend Sophie and I raced. Sophie also made it to the 50k mark, but this year I take the winner's trophy.

So what now?

During December, I went back to another story of mine, Pirate's by Blood, and I am currently working on that. It has 100,000 words so far and is 2/3rd finished in draft form. I think. So, I am working on completing that.

It is difficult to determine as it is a multi-perspective narrative. It flicks through the minds of: Sarah, Grace, Jane, Ethel, Jasper, Davy, Rán and Tollak. Eight perspectives in total, so I need to try and get them to all weave in nicely.

To make it even more complex, it is in non-linear narrative and spans at least 800 or 900 years. I don't know what it is with me and stories that span over centuries, but what happens in the early medieval period affects my main characters in the 18th century.

I am also still coding in the hopes to improve this website but it is taking me some time. I'll get there. I want to carry on writing and coding while we live in these crazy times. I am also searching for work, but many jobs at the moment are labour intensive, so I'm not employed yet.

On sunday, I'll be writing about Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame and how it portrays Quasimodo's disability.

Thank you for reading, and do please comment if you have any questions. Hope everyone has a good 2021.