It varies. It can take years, when it’s bad - it’s not entirely dissimilar to depression in some ways. Then again, if it’s just the brain being temporarily exhausted after a crunch, a few days are enough.
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Oh my 
years? 
Can you do anything to like stop it. Is there like a breathing exercise or something like that that can stimulate the brain to continue?
I can relate on account of fatigue though.
Sometimes you write until you are mentally tired and want a break from everything related to the book. You don’t want to see it, touch it, nor hear about it. If it had a smell you wouldn’t even want to smell it.
The ideas still come for me but when the fatigue hits it’s like you’re not motivated to do it. I don’t wanna say lazy, but it kinda makes you lazy to write something.
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Well it’s usually a stress reaction for me, so standard methods for reducing stress apply. Of course, sometimes I also have story-specific blocks, in which case figuring out what’s bothering me with that story solves it (which may take awhile for letting my subconscious process it), but in that case I’m still fully capable of writing some other story (which is one of the reasons why I like to have multiple ones at works at the same time).
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Interesting. You know what’s funny? I have the same exact thing too with writing fatigue!
For example:
At one point I was pooped writing Velocity and didn’t want anything to do with it for a bit. I decided to jump into something else in the meantime(something fresh) and started writing some fanfics. I was enjoying those a lot until time passed and my motivation for Velocity went back up.
So it’s kinda interesting that we have book specific blocks/fatigue. Sometimes doing something else can help to clear up the fatigue.
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Hello Thread!
I love that you’ve kept going monthly with Halloween and other event highlights, which I haven’t joined for years, just some silent lurking. I recently learned of NaNoWriMo’s ending. @poison_mara will be moving from Halloween Jam to NaNoWriMo Unsanctioned soon. 
Obviously I had to post here too. So many changes. I really miss Eiwynn.
This will be my 10th game. My process has changed slightly through the years, but one thing that hasn’t is that I rarely share any details of my WIP until the first is draft, or sometime during that conclusion. Ultimate form of Show don’t Tell?
I love the first part of the process. The creative part when nearly every idea goes into the maybe bin and you deep dive into subplots and game mechanics. This one stayed there longer than most, but I really like what’s come out. Life got busy and less time for writing, and time passed. It got rewritten about 5 times through my notes.
I’ve finished before, but life has also changed gears since Life of a Wizard in 2013, which was written through 2012. I’ve been in this thread many times since then for different games.
My timing has lined up well with NaNoWriMo. November is busy with life, but it always is, yet I’ve written before. One thing I liked with NaNoWriMo was the near daily push, to really keep going each day, and I love numbers, so a daily track triggers my video game mind. I like the 50k target that turns into a daily count. That helps me a lot.
So, I have to calibrate my word count and reset the scale. My game files are dated 2023, although some of my Notes date back a few years earlier than that. I have a bit of a rat’s nest to clean up first and see what’s still useful in there. I’ve popped in and out of the files in between, adding concept ideas. It’s all for gameplay mechanics. My Notes file is packed and complete with the narrative and story part. This is something other authors don’t have to deal with.
Oh, and DashingDon fell too. That’s going to add another layer. Crap, I really liked that one. I’ve never reliably run ChoiceScript from my computer. Another change and another hurdle.
And, my first day has gotten much shorter. The Blue Jays are in the World Series and tonight is the last game! Full time job and family. Where did the time come from before?
But I need this push of motivation. I think there is a shortening window of time for our games. With the rapid advance of AI, it’s going to change everything. There’s a good chance that this might be my last chance to write a game/story like this before the markets are overwhelmed with bigger and better AI versions. Ironically, this circles back to the fall of NaNoWriMo. Time passes and things change.
Good luck everyone with your own personal goals. Let’s go!
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NaNoWriMo the organization isn’t a thing anymore. But writers all over are still participating in the challenge!
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Thank you for posting this each month! As before I am hoping to keep writing Westbound Travel and potentially posting an update with the romance chapter and the Westerne City chapter and the rewrite of the first two chapters by the start of next month. Obviously I have an insane amount of writing left to do even after this update, wrapping up each of the companion’s quests, the final ascent to the Numinous Throne and the secret route left to write, along with various death and epilogue scenes, easily a 100,000 words or more, but still, I have written 300,000 words so far of this, which for someone who has been messing around with choicescript since 2014 is the closest I’ve come to finishing a game, so excited!
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Last month was productive but slow. I knocked out two more chapters and I’m halfway through a third, but this third one is significantly more complex coding wise so I have hit a but of a rut. Should be fun once it’s done! That being said, goals for November:
- Finish chapters 5-7, with 5 and 6 uploaded
- Total added words: 20k
- Polish my stats screen and variable management
- Survive midterms (!!!)
Good luck to everyone this month!! May you all find success in all your endeavors at whatever stage they are in!
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Now that I’ve finished my entry for the Halloween Jam, I intend to continue working on Quiver. I want to write Chapter Four over the course of November
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Words cannot describe how excited and nervous I am about this release.
You’d think that after doing this for a dozen years and having done seven of these already, I’d have gotten used to the pre-release jitters.
No, not really. Every new release is a new roll of the die, and no amount of experience can let me judge precisely how well a new title’s going to go over on release. Half of that is because I try to do new things with every game I make, but the other half is the simple fact that I don’t trust myself to gauge the quality of my own prose and narrative design.
There’s also the fact that writing A Time of Monsters is both a very new and very familiar experience to me, in ways that make it feel like more of a challenge. Obviously, writing a World of Darkness licensed game puts certain constraints on setting and lore that I’m not used to working with, and it doesn’t help that it’s not a franchise which I’m intimately familiar with. I’ve tried to do the reading here, and I’ve gotten as much help as I could from people who are intimately familiar with the lore, but as with any sort of knowledge, I won’t know how well I’ve done until I hit the exam - or in this case, the release date.
At the same time, there’s the fact that A Time of Monsters is set in Greater Vancouver, which is a place I know intimately - or at least I’d hope so, given that I live here. While that does mean I should know what I’m doing, it also means that there’s an expectation that I know what I’m doing. That I create an authentic, true-to-life version of the place I call home. It’s not just enough to meet that bar for people who’ve never come here, it has to ring true for those who’ve lived in this place as long, or longer than I have.
So, I feel like I’m facing heightened expectations in two ways: in rendering an existing fictional world as authentically as I can, and in rendering the vibes of a real place as authentically as I can - while also writing a story which has the potential to make or break my entire career.
So yeah, no pressure, I guess.
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I always have ideas in my head. He’ll even during the writers block I still had ideas and new additions to the lore. I just couldn’t sit down to write.
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Is it because of writer’s fatigue? Just not feeling the mood?
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I have no idea, maybe I am just a procrastinator.
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Trackbear link posted in my first post in the thread.
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This month I hope to keep focus and finish off the last branches of the Halloween Project that I had to seal off before the deadline. It’ll be too short to publish, but I’m hoping to practice finishing a draft before I start editing it.
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happy november! i love november, it’s one of my favorite months (the other is february i think). i don’t really like the cold though, which is kind of funny. i just love the sound of the word ~november~
goals: finish chapter 1 of deux à deux, then release it along with the completed prologue!
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I think you’re going to do brilliantly!