Introducing Project Victor–a.k.a. Grim’s solution to the whole NaNoWriMo problem

Hey all! I am super excited about this post! Partially because the reason I’ve been gone for awhile is because I was putting off posting till this particular post was ready…but then I was putting off actually making the thing I needed…just…real life has been a thing, okay. Don’t judge me.

Regardless. So you probably know what National Novel Writing Month is…the website, the software interface, and the community surrounding it? If you don’t, maybe go look it up, ‘cuz I don’t feel like explaining it. (you need to picture the last sentence accompanied by a shamefaced laugh.) Okay, the other thing that you probably know is that NaNo, whilst being something all of us enjoy using, in terms of interface and connection with other writers, has kind of gone nuts. Promoting…things. (Things that just got shut down by the federal government, so take that, NaNo, you devious dolt of an organization! Ha! Haha! (um, don’t mind me))

As a result of that, a lot of Christian and Catholic writers have had to reluctantly say goodbye to the software and the connection with others that it provides–myself included. I was certainly regretful about it. I never liked NaNo as an organization (they’ve always been a little nuts), but some of my fondest writerly memories are in spending time chatting with my friends on their site, or using their word trackers to slowly, satisfyingly watch my word count grow. I used to always do Camp NaNo in July and try and get a stupidly large amount of words in–and between the nice community aspect and the convenience of the trackers, I did actually get in 60, nearly 70 thousand in a month one year.

Okay. So dang. NaNo is not a thing. Alas. What now.

Ahem.

So this may not surprise you, but writing and music are not what I do during the day. I only moonlight as an amateur ethnomusicologist and a literary goblin haha. During the day, I actually work for a family owned oil company as a bookkeeper/billpayer/all those accounting things. Which is something I do plan to tell you guys about sometime, because as much as the job description sounds boring, it is…quite the amusing job to work sometimes. Anyway, so in that job I have spent a heck ton of time on Microsoft Excel. Like. A lot. And so I’ve learned quite a few things about it. I’ve got nothing on my boss, whose spreadsheet skills are truly magnificent and whose Excel workbooks are a thing of beauty and joy forever.

But I know my way around a spreadsheet, okay?

You can probably already tell where this is going. Being the pigheaded German that I am, settling for anything less efficient than a NaNo style interface was not going to cut it for me. And being the rather lonely (mind your business I’m fine) writer that I am, the idea of missing out on my month long online writerly party every year was not just Jake. Okay. It was not cool. Or hip with the kids. Or whatever. I don’t know what I’m saying.

Ahem. Like I said. You could probably see where this is going a mile off but…yeah. Step right up folks.

Look I even made a logo for it! (um…I was bored.)

Yep. It’s exactly what it looks like. Grim the failed techie has gone at it again. Help yourselves. Instructions as to how to use it are on the first page–if you get lost, drop a comment and I’ll try and help. Feel free to share it around to anybody who might find it useful. It’s nothing fancy, but it has all the essential parts and pieces–aside from the fact that it only works for 31 day months, but I might try and fix that later. Anyhow. There is one thing about it that is actually more convenient than NaNo–no doing of my own, but Google’s chat function, whether on Docs or, as in this case, on Sheets, has always worked way better than NaNo’s. Thusly we have that much improvement.

As to the name of this little trainwreck, it has a threefold meaning. 1. the obvious objective during any writing challenge of becoming a ‘victor’, so to speak. 2. Victor Frankenstein, because I Frankensteined the thing together. 3. Christ the Victor, who cares for us in all things, even stupidly unimportant ones like our writerly community having to disband due to the Alphabet Mafia.

So yeah. That’s that. Help yourselves, share it round if you want to, and if you do use it, please, do be sure to read the instructions carefully and not edit anything that’s not explicitly mentioned as being editable. I mean, you can do whatever you want, but depending on your relative tech skills you may not be able to fix something if you break it, y’know, and I wouldn’t want you to get stuck. 🙂

Speaking of relative tech skills, if there are any spreadsheet wizards out there reading this who have suggestions on ways to improve Victor, please do tell. I know my way around the things, but I certainly wouldn’t call myself skilled.

So yeah. That’s that. I may be back on Monday, but considering we’ve just had two posts, probably it’ll be a little later? God bless you my friends, and enjoy! Feel free to ask me in the comments if you have any questions. Hopefully this will be of some use to some of you dears, and Deo Gratias if so!

And you probably thought I was going to forget the actual link, didn’t you. You’d almost be right. Here you go!

Project Victor