The Marci Rating System

Anyway, I haven't done that yet. But I did finish re-reading it! Here are my reactions as I went along:

File #1: whoops I called it a shuttle but it's a bigger ship than that, lemme just fix that. ::2 paragraphs later:: no wait I was right the first time, it's a shuttle; the bigger ship doesn't show up till later

File #2: OH NO I forgot there was a whole thing I implied about the pirates and what they were doing and the genetic-coded handcuffs... although I mean, it was just a guess? hahaha it SEEMED like a conspiracy but turns out that was just a coincidence, surprise

File #3: I think I've contradicted myself about the asteroids already, but I'm not going to go back and check. OH NO ANOTHER IMPLIED PLOT except I sort of remembered parts of this one at the end? in the sense that I imagined a sort of resolution that was never written and did not relate in any way to the implications of this section

File #4: who is Captain Pike secretly married to?????? (this is never explained)

File #5: lol

IN CONCLUSION:
It turns out this story mostly makes sense, if you assume there is a different, significantly more plot-driven story happening adjacent to it, that the characters in this story are only tangentially involved in & never really understand. (This is pretty much true for all my fics, and is more or less on purpose.)

Happy December, WE MADE IT!!!

When I'm writing (especially nanowrimo), I try not to delete any little bits of conversation that I come up with. If they don't fit, I just push them into a later section and hope they'll sort themselves out. This is often surprisingly successful!

This nanowrimo, there was only ONE snippet that I wrote, and fully intended to include, that just never quite fit into the story. So here it is, in all its glory: nanowrimo 2023, the conversation that never happened. (Or, as starandrea said, 'What's the fic about? Not this!')

*******

“I like that, though. ‘Starfleet.’ It makes sense. What’s an Earth Fleet doing out exploring the stars?”

“Sure, but do you really think the Vulcans did any better, with the ‘Alliance of Federated Planets’?”

“You don’t like Alliance of Federated Planets as a name? I think it’s nice. Classy.”

“It’s not catchy! It doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

He considered it. “It does sound better in Vulcan.”

*AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Anyway, so there are two days to go. With roughly 2000 words left to write, I still have four sections in progress:

1. endless day of conversations, aka 'this is the section where I try to explain the concept that made me want to write this story,' so far it's 400 words longer than planned and I still haven't figured out how to say what I want it to say

2. a party! they get married! (again!) I'm looking to add about 600 words to this section and eventually they're going to need to leave the snack table (I guess???)

3. pirates, somehow?!? time shenanigans??? this section only has 400ish words right now and I have zero plot points, just trying to fill the word count and tie up the linger loose end of the pirates, I guess maybe the pirates could be the old married couple???(???????????)

4. some random snippets of conversation I dropped into the final section so it wouldn't be empty, this is an absolutely classic marcicat nanowrimo novel concluding chapter, the 'talk amongst yourselves, say nice things, the story's almost over' section (PS I put the pregnancy announcement convo in this chapter so it even fills a bingo square!)

*GOAL FOR TODAY: finish two sections? I guess? and try to go into tomorrow with 1000 words or less to go

*final Monday of NANOWRIMO 2023!!! four days to go!!! (AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!)

*prompts remaining: ALL THE SAME ONES FROM YESTERDAY, YIKES

*although technically, I did squish in a pregnancy announcement (in a currently unfinished section), hooray

*when there are approximately 5000 words left to go, you know what that means: WRAP IT UP (but not too fast)

*in other words: aw yeah, the random disappearing and reappearing pirates are coming back!

*also: time to host a party and get these kids married! (again)

*and finally: could someone PLEASE mention curtains, because at this rate that is the ONLY way this story is ever going to fulfill the curtainfic prompt

*WE'RE IN THE FINAL 10,000

*hahahahaha all the last sections of my nano 'plan' are literally just the bingo prompts arranged in a random order; there is no plan; I have no idea what's happening

*I do know that it needs to keep happening for about another 10,000 words

*clearly the characters need to have a conversation about what happens next; that way they can figure it out for me and it will count as words

*they're gonna get MARRIED!!!!! (they are already married; they're going to get married again)

*they're gonna have a PARTY!!!!! (it's like I'm just checking off a list of 'stuff that always happens in my nanowrimo novels' at this point)

*at LEAST one more person is going to say "but you're already married," because it's a RECURRING MOTIF now, and I think it's funny

*Also it's Thanksgiving in the US! Happy Thanksgiving!

*Thanksgiving goal: try not to fall behind. I got some extra words yesterday (heck yeah, using vacation days for perfectly reasonable reasons!), so staying on par would only take about 1000 words. Hahahahaha, only.

*Thanksgiving thanks: I feel very grateful that I'm able to dedicate time and energy to writing 50,000 words of creative zaniness this month.

*A line from this file that includes the word thanks: "Please convey our thanks to the First Prince."

*LOL time to go walk a 5K!

*10 DAYS LEFT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL, THIS IS NANOWRIMO

*Theoretically, since there's one-third of the month left to go, there should be about one-third of my story left to go. Sure. With the BOUNDLESS OPTIMISM of ALL CAPS, let's go with that. ONE THIRD!

*Day 21 is kind of like Day 1, right? It has a 1 in it! So it's like we're starting nanowrimo fresh, and it's only going to last for 10 days!

*Word count goal today: 35,000 (I love the 5,000 days!)

*Last line written: "Apologies. Yours was a rhetorical question.”

*30,000 WORDS ACHIEVED

*There's always a part of me that's like 'am I sure I want to keep doing this?' But I know that if I stop writing this story now, I'll never go back to it -- there's too much that I barely remember about it already, and more that I do remember but KNOW makes no sense. The only thing keeping it going at this point is momentum, and I'm kind of curious how it's all going to turn out. So, yeah -- let's do this.

*Plus, big excitement that the TIME LOOP sections are finally done, woohoo! Now they are in an ASTEROID, heck yeah!

*Current sections in progress: On The Run, Cave-In, Huddling For Warmth

*What has actually happened in those sections so far: backstory sharing time

*My notes for the Cave-In section say "somehow they get stuck there" -- thanks, past me! That is super helpful! They sure will! Somehow!

*VERY IMPORTANT bingo card updates today!!!

*I scored my first bingo! (okay, it was a couple days ago, but I forgot to post about it until now)

*Official first bingo squares: Pirates, Space Adventure, Accidental Child Acquisition, Undercover as Married, Meet Cute

*The time loop continues on -- it's planned for five squares, and I've finished two of them, with a third sooooooooo* close to being done. (*a relative term)

*I am beginning to suspect that my math has failed me in some way (not surprising). There are 30 bingo squares, to match the 30 days. I've completed 13 squares, with three more in-progress. But I'm at the day 16 wordcount goal.

*Maybe it's just because the completed sections so far have tended to be a little longer than 1667 words each? That seems marginally more likely than 'I counted to 30 wrong' or 'I wrote an extra section at some point and forgot about it.'

*It also maaaaybe means that in the later sections, two prompts might be able to get combined into one. Since I have ::checks notebook:: zero notes for any of them, that sounds great to me!

*HECK YEAH, HALF WAY!

*current word count:
so, I have three files now? so my current word count is 3575, but it's too early to do math; theoretically I should have about 20,000 words in the previous files, so about 23575, probably

*current workplace status:
WELL there is a "private executive event" today (all day) at one of the buildings, and EVERY EMPLOYEE received an email announcing the "private executive event" as part of a 'BTW YOU CAN'T COME TO THIS BUILDING ON THIS DAY WE'RE HAVING A PRIVATE EXECUTIVE EVENT' email (NOTE: my boss also thought the email was weird; VERY FEW employees would ever be going to that building anyway, and they really could have just reserved all the conference rooms and called it done, but no, they had to do things in the MOST SUSPICIOUS WAY POSSIBLE)

*current emotional status:
::nervous laughter::

*current cat status:
PERFECTION as usual; the cat is amazing and so far seems to be enjoying the Cozy Season very much

*last line written:
"Obviously they’d been making the most of it."