It's that time of year again, folks! NaNoWriMo SevRinWriMo is this month, and while I cannot participate in the official writing challenge, I do like to dedicate the month to doing a lot of writing, just like I did last year.

Right now, the plan is for me to post one chapter every week this month. And that means yes, another chapter is due by tomorrow evening (and it will be done, though it will be a bit shorter than Chapter 16 which was freakishly long anyway and set the bar a bit too high, lol). So ideally, new chapters should be posted between Monday and Tuesday each week until December, which will take us right up to Chapter 19.

At the moment and just looking at a very loose timeline of events that need to happen in order to tell the story, it appears there will be between 30-35 chapters total. As I said in a previous journal, yes, Seventh Ring DOES have an ending (it's already planned and decided), I just don't know how many chapters it will take to get there. But I am aiming to get the written story finished within the next six months or so, but preferably less. Reason being is that I have plans to make this story into a graphic novel, but I would like to have the entire thing written and finished so I can begin the storyboarding process and finalize character designs, layouts, a couple of head maquettes, etc. before I begin the actual comic panels. There's a ton of pre-production work that needs to be finished, all of which I hope to share with you guys as time goes on.

Which leads me to December! While I will not be able to dedicate myself to completing one chapter every week, I would like to try and keep up with two chapters a month, or biweekly updates again. I couldn't keep to that schedule this year due to the amount of travel and IRL stress I had going on, but my focus is on getting all the writing done ASAP. And on that note, I do need to mention that while I am pretty picky about my writing normally, I've come to the conclusion that I need to put my perfectionism aside and just get the story out there, which means the quality of the writing may not be up to snuff with my writing style from when I first started (and intended this to be a quick short story, haha). I don't have a high opinion of my writing anyway, but in my mind, I will be lowering my standards for the sake of working through the story and not stopping to nitpick every single thing and rereading each chapter a million times before I share it. Rereading a chapter from start to finish over and over is part of what takes me so long.

So I am taking what I learned from writing for NaNoWriMo a few years ago (and totally pwning it) and applying it to Seventh Ring. I'm not going to constantly stop and reread, I'm going to just power through and clean it up later. I need to be more efficient if I'm ever going to finish what I've started. So I apologize in advance if you guys notice the change, but I'm hoping I will be the only one who really sees it.

I also have a two week vacation in December that I'm planning to use to do a lot of that pre-production work that I mentioned. I've already started working on some concept art and revamping Ari's reference sheet. I'm hoping to get a reference sheet done for each character that's been introduced in the story (that will help when it comes time to draw them in the comic). It'll be a lot of work, but I'll have a lot of time for once! You guys will see more next month.

All in all, exciting stuff is happening and I'm thrilled to see things moving along now that my biggest stressors of the year have passed. It feels good to flex my creative muscles again and get more of this story told. And of course, I have you guys to thank for all of your wonderful comments and encouragement you keep giving me. I doubt I could do it without you all, so I hope you enjoy the ride. ;)