 Hello, my name is Jackie and welcome back to my channel, and I am finally getting back into writing Powerless. So today is the 24th of December, which means it has been 12 days since I last wrote anything relating to my Powerless project. So I'd intended to have a week off, and that turned into a week and a half, because I needed the extra time. I also had surgery like on my eyes, so I wasn't able to look at computers for too long, so that was also detrimental to writing a book. But now I'm not, obviously I'm not back on track, because I haven't done anything for the last 12 days, but I have some time off. So in Estonia the 24th, 5th and 6th are all public holidays, and then the 27th is probably going to be a quiet day, I'll be working from home, so even though it is technically a full day of work I will have more time, because obviously I'm not going into the office and coming back and don't really need to get ready, so I'm feeling fairly optimistic. I would love to get the first draft done by the end of the year, which gives me a week, but I'm not putting pressure on myself in terms of daily word count, or daily hours on the book, or even getting to the end of the first draft by the end of the year, just because if you've been following me for a while you'll know that my goal is to build a sustainable writing habit on the side of full time work, and I don't want to push myself and then get burnt out and then I have nothing left to start on the next project, so optimistic goal by the end of the year, but the main thing is keeping consistently at it and seeing how I go. So the plan of attack is that I'm actually going to go back to the midpoint of the book, so if you saw my either week 5 or week 6 of vlog you'll know that I had an idea about basically what the bad guy was doing wrong, which would create more of a sense of urgency, but it hasn't been worked into the earlier parts of the book, so I want that to be revealed at the midpoint, so I'm going to go back there and not rewrite the whole thing, but fill in the gaps that have emerged and redo some sections that don't really work, and I'm going to work from there up to where I am now, or where I was when I stopped writing, which was the final battle scene, and I'm hoping that by going from that point in the book to the final battle scene, the battle scene will work a little bit better because I was really struggling over my last week of writing. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to scroll through the second half of the book to see what the main plot points are and which bits I need to address, and then I'll use that as my guide to start writing. Okay, so I went through the book, I wrote down my notes about the different scenes, and then I sat down and wrote. I don't actually know how long I was writing for, which is about to cause a problem because I need to fill in my spreadsheet, but I'll... so I started... I started this morning around 10 a.m. I think? Maybe 9 a.m. I have no idea. Okay, so I'm going to say that from 9 to 10 I was doing the plotting and outlining, and then I've been writing from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., which means I haven't done a lot of words an hour, but I am happy with the amount of the book that I've gotten through. I've also added in a scene that wasn't there before. So I'm going to now update my spreadsheet and see how I'm tracking, given that I have missed a lot of time, and I was behind before I missed the time. So if you're new to this spreadsheet, this is my daily word count tracking, which I set up once November had finished, and I could no longer track via than an Arama website. So if we jump into the spreadsheet, you can see there is this charts page, which is automatically updated when I update the numbers on the previous page. So I have total word count with the purple line being the target total. That's based on the 1,667 words a day from Nanarimo versus the green line, which is what I've actually written. And then you can also see my daily words per day. So the target words is the 1,667 words. Well, the yellow line is how many words I actually did. And then there's also words per minute section, just because I thought it would be interesting to track what times of the day I'm most productive. Now, unfortunately, because I was a bit burnt out by the end of November, this hasn't gone so well, but I think I will use it in future projects to see just to see when I'm the most effective writer I can be. So let's add my numbers. Now I haven't added anything since I went on my break. You'll see that I got zero words for this week following the 13th because I had surgery on the 13th and knew I wasn't going to get anything written there. And then for the last couple of days are also zero. So that brings us to the 24th when I wrote 2,496 words. That was from 10 to 1 p.m. And let's say that was 180 minutes. Oops. And I'm just going to add zeros to everything else just so we don't have blank cells in my table because I don't like things that aren't complete. So this brings me to 65,474 words that I've written in total. And I should be at 78,349 words. I'm not too worried about that. I'm like I said, I'm not sticking to the daily word count target because I don't think there's much point now. However, I do want to continue filling out this spreadsheet just because it was set up as a continuation of Nano-Rymo. So I think it's still interesting to track. But for future projects, I might set it up a bit differently. Now, if we go back to the charts tab. Yeah, we can see I've had no words for all of this time and then suddenly another yellow line here. So this flat section is where I didn't do anything. And this little bump here is where I started writing again. So all in all, I'm actually really happy with how I went today. I did almost two and a half thousand words, which is more than I was expecting. I also went through the second half of the book and outlined what needs to be added. So I have the scene I added today. I need to rework the next scene to take into consideration the one that has just happened. And I also figured out my dark night of the soul. I forgot to mention that earlier. So during my break, when I was in bed, I actually thought about how it could work. So that's another new scene that will go in there. When it comes to the total word count, so my spreadsheet at the moment goes up to 90,000 words at the end of December. That's not actually a target that I intend to hit for this book. That's just what the target would have been if I had have done my 1,667 words a day minus that week that I was always going to take off. In reality, I think my total words for this project will be more around 70,000 to 75,000. So there isn't actually that much more, but we'll see how I go. Anyway, the good news is that I have started writing again and I'm very confident that I'll be back tomorrow. So I will see you then. Merry Christmas. It is obviously December 25th, so Christmas Day. And I have done nothing yet today. So Drew and I had a call with my family this morning because it was evening in Australia and morning here. And then Drew made the mistake of buying me two games on the PlayStation, so I spent a few hours playing those instead of writing. However, after that, I had very good intentions where I was going to start writing again. But then I opened my laptop and it would not turn on. Or more accurately, the power turned on, all of the little lights indicating that the laptop is on turned on. But the screen would not turn on, which is not very helpful when you need the screen to write. So we're currently in the process of trying to take it apart to see if we can, I think, disconnect and reconnect the battery. And hopefully that helps it. But if this is not sorted in what the next half hour, then I'm probably going to have to write my hand, which is going to be an interesting experience. And then maybe, then maybe I'll go to the office tomorrow and pick up my work laptop so I can transcribe everything. In any case, though, it's almost 4.30 in the afternoon, which means it's pitch black. So I feel like even though it's not technically that late, I do feel like I've lost the entire day. So a little bit anxious to get this sorted so then I can get back to writing. It has been half an hour and my laptop is fixed. So Drew, I'm not even going to say we, it was all Drew. So Drew spent the last half hour basically trying to unscrew every single one of the tiny little screws in the back of the laptop and two of them would not move. So he kept going back and forth. One of them would not move. Sorry, I was just corrected off-camera. And one of them wouldn't move, so we couldn't get the back off. And then he was googling to figure out what was going on. And it turns out there's this little reset button that you can stick like the end of a paper clip in and it disconnects the battery. So after doing all of that, he did that and the laptop's working again. Thankfully. So now I need to get to writing. So three hours ago, when I was originally planning to start writing today, my plan was to continue on from where I left off yesterday. So yesterday I added in a new scene before the heist part of the book. So a new preparation scene. So I wanted to go through the next preparation scene that's already there and add anything else that needs to be added to make sure it works well with the new content. Continue through the heist scene. Not editing, we're just going through to get to the end of it, which is when the Dark Knight of the Soul is supposed to happen. And I want to tidy up the build up to the Dark Knight of the Soul and potentially write the Dark Knight of the Soul scene. Problem is now that it's 5pm, which I know isn't that late, but it feels late because it's black outside. So now that it's getting towards the end of the day, I'm not sure if I'm going to get that new scene written, but I'll see how I go. In any case, I think I can make a lot of progress going through all of that stuff. And then once I've done that Dark Knight of the Soul scene, that will bring me back to the battle scene, which is where I left off before my break about two weeks ago. I've now been writing for about an hour and I've gotten through the scene following the one I wrote yesterday. In fact, I've gotten through the following two scenes. I haven't actually written any new scenes, but just going through those two, I've got an extra 585 words. I am getting a little bit tired, which is which is fascinating to me given that if it were a working day, like I only would have gotten home half an hour ago and I would still be writing. But anyway, I have gotten a little bit tired, so I'm going to read through the next scene, but in terms of writing I'm going to call it a day. And then when I get up tomorrow I'm going to get into the Dark Knight of the Soul moment. So I'm hoping that'll be another couple of thousand words, but we'll see how I go. So I woke up at 4am today because that's something my body likes to do, but the good thing is that that meant that I could spend a few hours faffing around and doing day off holiday time wasting things. And then at 7am I started writing. It is now just after 10am. Drew is still in bed and I've already finished my writing for the day, so if I update my spreadsheet I've written 2,429 words today from 7am to 9 30am and I was writing pretty consistently, so I'll say that's 150 minutes. So if we go to my charts we can see where am I up here. So nowhere near where I should have been, but still inching up. And what is exciting is that now I've gotten through the high scene. I've ridden the Dark Knight of the Soul which means I'm back to the final battle scene and I'm feeling optimistic. Like so my goal in going through the second half of the book over the last few days wasn't to do an edit or to rewrite significantly just because I think there's a time and place for that. I am still first drafting and I want to have the completed book put aside for a few months and then come back to it with fresh eyes. So I was going through this text expecting that it would need a lot of work and hoping that I can get through it without cringing too much and there are a couple of areas where mostly heist preparation where it's like okay I feel like I'm just listing all of the things and having this really expositional dialogue that's very boring. But when we got into the heist like even though I knew what happened and even though I knew what would go wrong like I was almost on the edge of my seat going oh my god oh my god this is happening it's going wrong no. Which um and yes it needs work but given that it's a first draft and I knew what was happening and I was having that reaction I think that's a good sign so I'm feeling quite optimistic. The dark night of the soul I don't know if it's dark enough but I do I feel like it's a it's an adequate all is lost moment like it does feel like all is lost and there's no telling how she's going to get out of the situation which has found herself. So what I have left is the final battle scene which is largely written I'm not sure how much I'm going to change it now that I'm coming back to it and once I've done the final battle scene I've got to figure out how to tie everything up so I know I know who's going to die I know who's going to live I know what's going to happen with the people who live I'm not sure what the final scenes will be to communicate that though. So still a little bit of a question mark in the air having said all of that there's not much left to go so I could potentially finish this tomorrow though tomorrow is technically a work day so maybe not maybe I don't know I could finish it tomorrow or I could finish it this weekend but I'm feeling very confident that I will get it done by the end of the year which was my goal then I need to decide what to work on next which is exciting but that is a topic for another video so I've done my almost two and a half thousand words today I think I'm done for the day but it is only 10 a.m so maybe I'll have another spurt later in the afternoon but for the moment I'm going to go back and play PlayStation because I have earned it today so remember yesterday how I said I'm almost done all I've got left is the final battle and whatever finishes the book I might finish tomorrow well now it's tomorrow and I've realized that the final battle is a scene I spent an entire week on last time before my break so today I'm feeling slightly less optimistic than yesterday honestly I'm not sure how this battle scene is going to go there are a lot of characters a lot of moving parts I'm not sure how to create the sense that you know everyone's moving everyone's dying everyone's struggling to survive when it is from a single point of view I'm also not sure how to come back to the core of the story and the struggle between Hana and her father when there's so much movement happening and what I was hoping would happen was that over the last few days going through the last few parts of the book and feeling in the gaps would like it would create momentum that would get me through this battle and now I'm at the battle and I have no momentum and I don't know what to do so I'm going to start by reading through what I have and see how I feel once I've done that so it's lunchtime and I'm heading to the gym now unfortunately I've barely gotten through any of the book because today is technically a working day and people keep wanting me to work I mean how dare they um so I did a little bit of writing to link between what I wrote yesterday and the next scene which is heading to the auction house for the final battle and we've just gotten to the auction house so I've gotten through like a little tiny bit of the scene I don't actually have that much left of the book to get through I've got about I think another 11 pages in Microsoft Word so there's not that much to read however I have this even though I'm looking at it I have this procrastination feeling just because I feel like it's going to need a lot of work it's going to need a lot of fixing and I don't know how to fix it and part of me is like should I get all of my salt and pepper and vitamin bottles out again and try mapping it out again and just start from scratch or should I read what I have and see if it's redeemable at this stage I think I should just read what I have because I haven't actually read through it yet and I might be building it up to be a lot worse in my mind than it actually is um when it comes to fundamental flaws I know I completely forgot about one of the characters in the room so she's doing nothing for most of the scene so that's obviously something that needs to be addressed but other than that the rest of it might actually be okay and maybe I just need to add in the final confrontation between Hannah and her father so our protagonist and antagonist like after what I've already written because the battle isn't actually finished but there's no way of knowing until I actually read it so now I'm going to go to the gym have a workout see what's waiting for me work wise when I get back home and if there's not too much maybe I can sneakily get back into fixing the scene I'm now back from the gym which means it's time for take two it is coming up to five o'clock and I have only just got into the end of the battle scene and not the complete battle scene but the battle scene that I'd already written so it isn't actually over yet I may be two-thirds of the way through writing the battle scene I'm actually really surprised at how long it took and not because oh my god you took so long you're a terrible lazy person but just that I wasn't writing anything new and yet it did take this long to get through it and part of it was that I reshuffled some things earlier there was a character who I basically forgotten was in the room so I had to insert her in the fight doing that means there's another character now that's sort of been forgotten about and I'm not sure what to do about that but that's probably not something I'm going to solve in the first draft that's something I'll need to return to when I come back to the draft with fresh eyes or when I'm working with an editor so now I feel like the logistical side of the battle is working up until now we're at the point where the big reveal has happened and I'm a bit worried it's a dsx machina moment and I'm not sure if that means it needs to be completely rethought because this new... see I don't want to spoil it so I need to be very vague when talking about it but this new element that's been introduced basically means one person has all of the power in the battle now and that obviously removes a lot of the tension and a lot of the stakes so I need to figure out what the limits are or how to make it work so that there are limits so it's not suddenly a oh bang new reveal everything solved no more work for you so still challenges however I have gotten to the end of what I wrote which was my main goal for today which means tomorrow I would like to finish the battle scene and hopefully that means I can finish the draft this weekend so let's see how it goes it is Saturday the 28th of December and I think I'm going to finish this book today so last night when I was going to bed I actually had an idea that means I figured out the end of the battle scene so I know how to bring it together and how she's going to confront her father and where it's going to end and then I also had an idea for where the final scene could take place because even though I know where everyone ends up at the end of the book I wasn't sure how I was actually going to communicate that in the book so what the final scene would be so I have an idea for that now as well the one pickup or problem that's come up is that I've realized that there might need to be a scene of them getting out of the battle scene and the reason for that is because they are the mafia and the police and fire department and so on are probably going to storm the scene and they probably don't want to get caught by them so since they snuck into the building they also need to sneak out of the building somehow so I'm not sure how I'm going to approach that but I do have the idea for finishing the battle I do have the idea for the final scene so I'm feeling fairly optimistic about today the other exciting thing is that my nano-rimo t-shirt arrived yesterday so I'm holding off on opening it until I finish this draft because that's just like an extra little reward for getting the draft done but now let's start writing I'm not gonna finish today I so I got through the end of the battle scene there was one bit that I did get stuck on for a bit it's a confrontation between her and her brother and yeah it ends with him dying and I needed to make the transition from her deciding she wasn't gonna hurt anyone to her killing him feel real and I actually need to really read it to see if it works but where I got to in the end I think it can work maybe with some editing so I got a little bit stuck on that and then there was the dreaded scene coming in between the battle and the ending and that I got stuck on for ages like I wasn't sure how to do it one of the things you probably know if you've been watching these videos is that I've been struggling with a lot of overly logistical scenes so saying every single thing that needs to happen or needs to be organized in order to make a heist work and that's probably just because I'm inexperienced at writing this sort of stuff but going through that yet again at the end of this battle scene just felt like oh my god do we have to do this so I've written something I don't love it but I'm at the stage where I spent so long on that like a thing about I think three hours now since I started writing and I spent so long on that that now I just feel really worn out and I feel like I could push through and I could try and do this last scene but then I'm just gonna feel like it's a chore that I got through and I got to the end of it and la-di-da it's done and I don't want to feel I don't want to feel like that when I get to the end of my first draft I want it to be this triumphant moment because this is something I've been working on since I mean since the beginning of October if you count the preparation time and you know I want to feel happy when I write the end and I want to feel happy when I open up my nano-rama t-shirt and I want to be excited to walk down to the printer and get it printed out and see this physical manifestation of something that was only an idea a couple of months ago and I feel like even though it's probably only another thousand words I feel like pushing on now means I'd almost be rubbing myself with that experience so I'm calling it a day I yeah I might have some more motivation and go back to it later but honestly one of the things I've realized is when I say to the camera that I'm calling it a day I generally don't go back to it so I'm calling it a day I'm going to have a bath drew and I probably going out to see a movie tonight and then I'll get back to work tomorrow I guess so something I forgot to do today was update my word count so yesterday I did 409 words as you can see there so not too many today I did 3,295 words and that was between 1pm and 4pm and I was writing for I think two and a half hours so it was 150 minutes so if we look at my chart you can see it is going up fairly consistently now that I've started again and my total word count is 72,192 words endings are hard and I mean part of me goes I don't know how I didn't realize this before but then it's also fairly obvious how I haven't realized this before because I haven't had to write many endings but yeah even though I know where I want this final scene to take place what actually happens in the scene is a bit fuzzy and I've been looking at some other examples of books I love and reading their endings and they just do them so well and there's so much more to it than what I had planned like it's not just a climax then scene to tie things up it's climax then aftermath of the climax then scene to tie up thread one of the plot scene to tie up thread two of the plot scene to type thread three of the plot and what's happening is I'm trying to write and I think it's just making me realize all of the flaws that are in the story because I don't actually have enough to tie up to make this fulfilling and satisfying and part of me wants to just go okay why don't I just call this the end of my first draft and leave it and I can look at this when I'm in revisions and then part of me is like well no I need to get to the end I need the experience of finishing something so today is not going as well as I hoped don't worry not actually ending like that I just think this helps show my current level of desperation to get this done oh I really don't know what I'm doing my book hates me once I had to finish first draft my plan was to get it printed and then I would have this physical manifestation of the work I'd done so I checked google maps a couple of days ago and they said that one of the stationary shops at the shopping center across the road actually did printing and they were open on a weekend so I thought perfect I'll just go across the road once I'm done so Drew and I just got back from the shopping center where there was a stationary store but it did not do printing so there is no physical manifestation of my work other than my nano-rino t-shirt which I just opened so my first draft is done and I feel better than I expected actually because this morning when I woke up I was I was exhausted I was so worn out that I actually thought it would feel like the way I described yesterday that it would feel like a chore it would be a real slog to get through and I wouldn't be able to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment when I was done because I just have nothing left to feel that emotion and I am tired I don't love what I wrote it was a slog to get through but now that it's done I am actually feeling you know really happy about it it is a first draft it will need a lot of work one of the reasons why the ending was a struggle was because it mainly realized there are issues earlier in the book that need to be addressed so things like character arcs and themes and things ideas that I had when I first started but that got lost when I was writing so when I got to these final scenes to try and tie everything up there wasn't actually that much to tie up so there are a lot of things that will need to be addressed once I start revising but all in all I'm happy it's a crappy first draft but a crappy first draft is something that I can improve and three months ago even two months ago there was nothing there there was an idea from a random dream that I'd had that could potentially turn into a story one day and now I have what 70,000 words ish in fact that reminds me I should update my spreadsheet with my final word count for the project so today I did 1,995 words I worked from 11 30 a.m until let's say 3 p.m but I wasn't writing that entire time I think there might have been two two and a half hours of writing in there so let's say 120 minutes and that brings the total words written to 74,187 words so about what I was expecting actually and if I jump over to the chance you can see that yeah things are going up nicely obviously not where the purple line says I should be but honestly I never expected to get to 86,000 words with this book I always thought it was going to be around 75 80,000 words so it's done so from here tomorrow I'm going to actually print out the book because there is a print shop next to my office which is open on a Monday and then I will put it in a draw for the next three months or so while I get started on my next project if you think it would be interesting for me to do a sort of first impressions of my first draft video so one where I go through what I think worked what didn't even the experience of drafting and what worked and what didn't what I think is terrible and will lead to change please let me know in the comments and I can create that as a separate video because I'm pretty sure this one's getting quite long other than that please let me know in the comments how your work in progress is going if you liked this video please give me a big thumbs up because the YouTube algorithm likes that and if you are new to my channel please subscribe and then you'll know about any new videos that come out other than that bye for now