Two Kickoffs in One -- NaNo and the Storyworld Go Bag

 

Storyworld Go Bag Filling Up

My new storyworld go bag for my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld was ready for NaNo on Monday night.  I got the printed manuscripts of several WIP installed along with a stack of tabbed dividers with pockets for loose papers.  I don't have the dividers placed at the head of each separate story yet as I need to reorganize the pages.  They are all in protector sheets--two per with often the first page of one story on the back side of the previous one.  You can see how that doesn't suit the concept of a divider sheet placed between stories.

They've been in a vinyl 3 ring binder like that for years and I was always thumbing through looking for the start of this or that story.  I kept putting off tabbing the protector sheets themselves because I'd had the concept of the tabbed dividers with pockets for sometime but I would have had to split the stories between two one inch binders as the first one was already stuffed.  I would have also had to expand into separate binders the next time I printed off new scenes or chapters.

I was hoping there would be more room to grow in the new 3 inch ring binder but after adding the divider tabs it is already over half full.  And with the stuff I put in the expanding file on the left it is already a challenge to zip it shut.  Sigh.

More Pages for the Go Bag

Pictured above is a folder containing the rewrite project for my story Blow Me a Candy Kiss.  The rewrite is still unfinished.  That all needs to go into the big binder but not just willy nilly.  I need to look closely at everything in situ or risk missing all sorts of clues or memories of what I was up to triggered by seeing each item exactly as I left it.  But I don't think I'm going to take the time to do that during NaNo as my focus is on a different story.

I declared myself a Rebel Wrimo a few weeks ago by deciding that I was going to devote this NaNo to the story that started the storyworld even tho nearly 30K words already exist.  But it has become clear to me for some time that all of the stories I start for NaNo that grow out of it all stall out for the same reason: The root story isn't finished. 

Faye's story in The Substance of Things Hoped For impacts every other story either directly or tangentially.  Most of the other POV characters encounter her at least once on their own story arc.  But with Faye's timeline still not gelled I can't gel the other timelines.

So on Tuesday evening I started setting up my new Dell laptop for NaNo.  Once again a prep step that should have been done days if not weeks ago.  But I kept shying away because it involves so much tech stuff I don't feel confident doing without a techie in the house.  One of the things I needed was to install the Whiz Folder ap that I'd done NaNo on and most of my research and journaling and note taking and book reviews and..... ad infinitum since the early 2000s. 

I think it was after 2013 when I started using Scrivener for NaNo but continued using WhizFolders for everything else and thus always needed to have both open so I could keep referencing or adding to my notes in Whiz because I'd not got the material transferred over to Scrivener before NaNo Kickoff. 

And here we are again.

This is what was meant by the ROW80 Goal referencing working with my storyworld files both pixel and paper.  I set myself the goal in April and one thing after another kept taking priority. Whether properly or by simple procrastination.  Until here I am on NaNo Kickoff with a new computer that contains none of my files and only one of the aps I need to open those files. 

The files are all on an external drive that needed to be ejected from the HP laptop and plugged into the Dell. I've kept it hooked up to the HP because once I'd copied the files last spring I did not want to save anything new to the old files as I feared loosing track of what changes I made to which drive.  I know there is supposed to be a way to sync so that any change you make to one will automatically be made to the other but I don't know how to set it up.  There is also the fact that the HP hard drive is stuffed to the gills and had been giving me warnings for some time. Especially around update times.

So Tuesday evening I ran into a snag when I discovered that the company that created WhizFolders had stopped supporting it.  I'd missed the warning emails in 2018 along with my last chance to get the latest updates.  The downloads for the version I owned was also no longer available.  Luckily I remembered that I'd saved a copy of the setup file from the Pro version I bought in 2008.  I'd been using the Delux since at least 2013.  But the Pro would still allow me to read and write to my files.  After some frantic sifting through my email I found the one with the code I needed to input to validate and lo it still worked.

So I spent NaNo Kickoff swimming in my story files instead of generating new words.  And yet if felt like the most productive kickoff ever.  I discovered a Scrivener file in which I'd set up a title page and at least one scene page as its child for every story belonging to the storyworld that I've ever worked on.  Each POV character's story was kept separate as if a separate novel even tho it is probable several of them need to be smashed into single novels with 2 or more POV characters. Nearly each story contained at least one scene I deemed written well enough I was willing to expend ink and paper on them.  I need to cross check these with the ones in the binder now because I can't be sure I've got hardcopy of everything I found in this file.

The Substance of Things Hoped For contains two complete stories aka chapters 1 and 3.  I am still trying to decide whether to do the NaNo words right there or create it's own file.  But I think my concept for creating this file was about keeping it clean as a showcase for scenes that were print ready.

One interesting note: when I click on the top of the file hierarchy the ap treats it as all one file and gives me the total wordcount.  It is closing in on 90K.  If only there was a complete novel in that mix.  Well maybe by the end of this NaNo I'll be closer than ever before to that goal.

I am unsure whether the stories in this file that have a title page followed by a blank scene page are missing words because I felt there was nothing good enough to move there or because I didn't finish combing through them.  Each one of those several blank stories have they're own Whiz and/or Scrivener file.  Some of those Whiz files are named only NaNo plus the year instead of the story title so I have to open them to identify them.

I explored these files all night quitting just after 7am.  I tried to get a nap before time for a zoom appointment at 11 but I felt like I was plugged into an electric socket.  All I could do was rest in the dark with my eyes closed and swim in the storydreaming.  So I was 34 hours awake by the time my caregiver left that afternoon which is why I'm writing my Wednesday post on Thursday evening tho I'm going to predate it.

I better wrap this up if I want to have any hope of getting NaNo novel words for day 2....

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