National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is approaching! Every year, people across the world, not just the nation, try and write that novel they’ve always said they’ll write. The official charity that supported the event imploded earlier this year. But the event goes forward with or without official support. There’s tons of other organizations, businesses, and charities that are trying to pick up the pieces, but I don’t have much to say on that. I’m focused on trying to do the challenge for myself.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in November. Whether that finishes a novel or just provides the first part isn’t important. My book might end up being longer, but I don’t know yet. The goal is just to write, not edit, so the final word count might be less as editing prunes the count down. Most novels are actually longer coming in close to 100,000 words so 50,000 is really just a starting point.

Another important part of NaNoWriMo is that the writing has to occur during the month. I’ve written a tiny bit of my planned novel before the month, so I don’t get to count those words for the 50,000 word total. The outline that I’ve already written is allowed though.

Here’s the 53 word bit I’ve already written

Djeiclay heard the porthole click as it cycled through to another world. He examined his fingernails as the porthole continued to click. Every five seconds a new world appeared in the porthole. Djeiclay glanced at each world for a moment. Too dry, too wet, too cold, too early, too late. He pressed the…

I’ll be writing my novel on the blog. Hopefully with a new post every day for whatever I’ve written that day. With 30 days in November that’s an average of 1,667 words per day or about 5 pages.

Each post will have chapter titles which don’t count for the word total. At the bottom of the post I’ll put how many words were in that post along with a running word count. With 50,053 being our target number by the end of November 30th. I’ll also slap these little button things at the bottom to help navigate for people reading the posts. And anyone reading better keep in mind that this isn’t edited.

Post Word Count: 383

Total Word Count: 0+53

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I’m Isaac

Welcome to the GoCorral website! I’m Isaac Shaker and this is a place for me to write about D&D and occasionally other topics. I host a podcast called Setting the Stage that interviews different DMs about their campaigns. I’m currently focused on completing the Cimmeria campaign setting and turning it into a book.

Setting the Stage Podcast

83 – Call of Cthulhu's Garden (Hem and The Sprouting) Setting the Stage, Campaigns for D&D and Other RPGs

Hem tells us about their actual play campaign, The Sprouting. Within the world of The Sprouting, Earth's history diverged during the 1800s when an eldritch horror was summoned into our reality. The horror lay in wait for centuries, building up a secret army of plant monsters. In 2020, the plant monsters struck, ruining infrastructure and attacking population centers across the world. One hundred years have passed and our heroes learn that the next stage of the plant apocalypse has begun…We also discussed some of the difficulties and pleasures of actual play podcasts and how the RPG community varies internationally (Hem is in Iceland).If you want to try listening to The Sprouting its available on all major podcast platforms. You can learn more on The Sprouting's website.For other shows produced by Hem check out Blighthouse Studio's website.Hem mentioned The Lucky Die actual play show of theirs several times which used D&D 5e.And the broader network of Fable and Folly has their website too.Check out the Setting the Stage website!Want to be on the show? Fill out this survey.Join our Discord!Support Setting the Stageon Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
  1. 83 – Call of Cthulhu's Garden (Hem and The Sprouting)
  2. 82 – Tarot Ghosts (George and Fears & Fortunes)
  3. 81 – Biopunk 2287 RPG (Seiya and Synesthesia Synthetica)
  4. 80 – Dynamic RPG Countries (Travis and Tetara)
  5. 79 – Dragon Age Degenerates (Zoe from Degenerates with Dice)