# starting stuff
INT	MIN_GUESS	5
INT	GUESS_TO_WIN	3
TXT	ENDGAME_TEXT	You've seen enough. You're in the flow. You have an idea of about how much you should write and reflect.
0	There's a definite pattern here. You feel like you're writing out of inertia, which is better than not writing out of inertia, but perhaps there's a shortcut worth taking. How much can you write? How much should you? At what point do you need to cut it down, and at what point is individual effort and busy work self-defeating? (Fourth-wall stuff: you may wish to push P.)
1	You missed NaNoWriMo for the xth year, but this time, you're going to do it. It's not about New Year's resolutions, or any of that. You have speech-to-text software. You have ideas. They're worth writing.	But you'll also need to reflect. And no, that doesn't mean only getting suckered by thoughtful clickbait. It doesn't even mean reading books by good writers. It's time to see what you can do.	You suspect you need to do more writing than reflecting. But how? When?
2	The first chapter is the easiest. You've gotten here before. Especially when you decided to start with a tour de force.	But you enjoy having a whole world in front of you to build. That part's tricky. So much to sync with the previous chapter, so many details and, yes, the stuff you have to delete or modify.	The scaffolding which seemed to work nicely as a starter idea has to go. Still, you need to push ahead.
3	You had a good writing streak there. You balanced writing and reflecting decently enough, and you saw some pretty clear results. You recall hackneyed advice about building writing muscle and such. Maybe you can do it!	Oh, and one other thing: you can type more than one W or R per command. To save a bit of busy work.
4	You're in a pattern, now. You're slightly worried you might get mired in it, but it's better than the alternative. Sometimes just writing so much every day kicks ideas around.
5	Writing is about seeing patterns and trying to express them. Perhaps there is a pattern you can see in your writing/reflecting cycles that may help you go quicker. The planning is a bit exhausting. Even knowing how many writing/reflecting cycles would work could be a help. Which ones work, and why? Maybe there's even a pattern?
6	You charge forward with brute force. You're learning, even if the nitty-gritty of planning is weighing you down a bit. Perhaps you can guess what's going on, or you can keep poking away.
7	You really couldn't have imagined such combinations of work and breaks, and enjoying them, when you started. It's fun to find those disused corridors of your mind. But what if they dry up? Perhaps it's time to take a big-picture view and move on.
8	Maybe it's time to look back on your patterns of writing and reflecting sessions.
# reject two reflects in a row
x	rr	No, that is too much reflecting at once. You need to prioritize writing.
# random-ish sequences
$SEQ2-1	The time flies by. You're more exhausted than you expected, but you also wrote more than you thought you would. Your reflection was actual reflection, not just spacing out. You change up how you write and reflect this time. It works well. You've kept things fresh. Before you know it...
$SEQ3-1	You reflect on someone from childhood. Someone you should've liked more on paper. Why? Who was at fault?	That person from childhood. They came up again. You felt guilty not liking them. But you realized you didn't have to. Advice both corny and clever  helped you.	That old childhood friend-on-paper comes up again. You connect a few dots and realize it would probably have been even healthier to reject them even sooner. This would be useful, if not too didactic.	You reflect a story or two about that old childhood friend. You find a good name for them--a bit hilarious, nothing too mean. You obfuscate some details and add them for effect. You had some fun, and you don't want to embarrass them, but the whole story's worth saying.
$SEQ4-1	You think of adults from your past. You're older than some of them, now. Their advice seemed profound at the time, even though you didn't want to believe it, because it seemed nasty, too. Some was proven wrong, by social psychology studies or general experience. What if you could streamline that realization process for the next person?	From thinking of adults, you go to thinking of kids a year ahead or behind you in school. Somehow they always seemed to be able to elbow you out. What was up with that?	You remember standing up for yourself in seemingly insignificant places, and how that meant something to you, maybe more than it should've, but you long believed there was something there. You begin to chase the thread.
$SEQ4-2	You recall taking journeys around your high school, through the back corridors by classes you'd never take, whether they were too advanced or remedial. Nameplates for teachers you later matched up in a yearbook.	It wasn't just the high school you explored but the town. And yet you'd missed obvious places. You didn't pay attention To where bars were in high school, for obvious reasons. But you always wished you would have explored, or just known where they were, because everyone else seemed to. Whether or not they had fake ID's.	You recall paths not explored both around the high school, and also inside it, particularly in the mechanical and shop wings, and also those areas parents said not to visit, were just plain dead ends. Google Maps showed you some of what you missed, but you always wanted to recapture that wonder, and maybe somehow have a shortcut to see everywhere in town.	You think of other places in your current life you could visit. Perhaps places you met to, work places you figured you should, but you couldn't be interested, or even places you had taking the bus or bike by. There was a lot to say, regardless of how close you had been to certain landmarks. You could pick the best ones, for sure.
$SEQ5-1	You recall buying your first television in college, and how you really didn't watch it once you bought it with money from your college job, but it was still important too. It was more, you had it now, and you were kind of just using it to get away from your parents, or to show that maybe you owned part of the house in some way.	You also recall semi worthless things you bought with your first paycheck, but they weren't really worthless, because they were fun, and you remembered them long after you couldn't really use them, or perhaps you realize there were better things.	Other possessions, current and former, flash 5. What about that thing you always wanted to have as a kid, but when you got older, you realized it was impractical, but it was fun to dream about? What about all that junk on commercials? You could relive the fun of watching them without having them take up space, what with YouTube and so forth.	You spend time looking at the books on your shelf. You're pretty sure you enjoyed them all, and you remember how you just wanted to have them there, sort of as a trophy to say, yes, I read all this, even if I didn't read enough in high school, and I'd like to write something even a fraction as good as them that I could pass on, if possible. But you always just said that to yourself. Now you're at least trying.
$SEQ5-2	You recall that friend from childhood back in chapter 3. You actually decided to look him up on Facebook, nothing to stalkery, but just to see, what was he like? How he changed? It was sad to see some certain cues you took for granted, ones you didn't see when younger, which made you remember why you sort of rolled your eyes at him.	You recall other friends, too, for a bit more recent. Friends in college, and even people you met while out and about, even if it was just at the chess club, which is more social than you would think. There was a lot of banter around blitz games.	It isn't just other friends you have to recall, but various coworkers. Those you could commiserate with, and those you commiserated about. You learned a lot from those coworkers, with how they sort of lined up with people from your childhood, not exactly, but you saw the patterns a bit clearer, and stuff you couldn't quite express seem to make more sense.	You worry a lot that some of your writings on past acquaintances veers into self-help, which may be a problem, because could you really help people to be better, or just more like you? Not that that's a bad thing, but you remember some "helpers" who were either helping in bad faith or clueless now. You can laugh a bit at them, now. Maybe you can share those laughs.
$SEQ5-3	Way back when, you probably watched too much sports, or listened to it on a spotty AM radio. ESPN was relatively new, and basing your happiness on sports games beat basing your happiness on certain other people's whims.	More thinking to sports teams. You couldn't pretend to write the next Fever Pitch, but you think you could have somehting to say. About silly game-day superstitions where if you got stuff done, the team would win. They spread to off-days, too. It was practical, if not sensible.	You remember being blown away by hyperlink scoreboards and the availability of cable but then finding streaming radio of your favorite homer announcers more apropos. You'd spent too much time on sports websites and realized what really paid off.	More on sports! You remember being exasperated at fantasy football drafts in your office. You didn't get it. Wasn't being a fan enough?
$SEQ6-1	You remember creative writing classes in college. You sort of had to take them, to get the writing intensive part of your degree, and you sort of wanted to see how good you were, but you also figured the people who were actual majors would sneer you.	You reflect more on those creative writing classes, and also about the reading club in high school, which you sort of wanted to show up at, but what the heck did you have to write? You remember being able to write criticism and proofreading and so forth, and you also remember the papers that came in at the end, which people didn't have time to discuss publicly. You remember putting Manila envelopes in the personal mail slots of various classmates, but not getting any back.	You remember the feeling of wishing you had done more, wishing you had volunteered to have your story right earlier, wishing it had been done earlier. Then those times in the computer lab where you almost wanted to start laughing at your writing, or pumping your fist because you actually had an idea . World, that would have been weird, compared to the bleary eyed people who just wanted to get a paper written. That was you, most of the time, except when it came to writing.	Probably the biggest shock, though, was when people had nothing to say about your writing, but then after that awkward class session, someone said, hey, did you actually write that all by yourself? It was better than flattery.
$SEQ6-2	You think back to the stuff you never quite got done in high school or in college, and the stuff you wanted to, even though you knew it wouldn't further your career. One of those was old Apple RPG's you never quite completed, or maybe Infocom text adventures. You found some, with emulators, on the Internet. There were some ethical issues, but you figured the profit potential was long gone, with all the new gaming systems and such.	You remember the first few guides you wrote, about games you knew like the back of your hand, and the maps you drew, and eventually that expanded to games you hadn't tried yet, including ones on the Commodore. You took chances. But you wanted to say to that voice over your shoulder, hey, don't worry, I'm just being derivative here. Not really trying to do anything new!	They're memories, too, of any S emulators, and the game systems you never had. How using save states felt like cheating. But at the same time, technology was technology.	Perhaps the most rewarding guides were for games that you played but never got through. You remembered saving up a bunch of quarters to play smash TV at one arcade, and you got almost all the way through, but you got stuck at the end. So you sat down and got through it once you had MAME. There were a lot of young dreams achieved, not groundbraking ones, but worthwhile enough to tie together into somerthing, to suggest games were about more than just solving stuff or blowing stuff up.
$SEQ6-3	You remember math team stuff in high school, which, well, it was something to do, and it was something you were pretty good at. You remember being scared of proof writing, but that was probably where you would have to go, or you might get bored with with the contest, which only had so many interesting problems you could do before they repeated.	You were quite bluntly swamped at proofreading, but there were summer programs where you got better, and you remember how some people in the advanced math or science courses reported US hopeless about writing proofs, until the next year, it seemed like you knew so much, and they thought it was just kind of weird the stuff you wanted to look at. With friends like that, who needed enemies? Well, they were your friends on paper.	Of course, you do math contests would end in high school, and you didn't know where to go from there. You figured games might fill that need, but what really set you with a long was, you wanted to make math contests and puzzles or games for other people, to say you are actually creative. Of course, that little voice behind you told you you better not go actually trying to be really creative, but maybe games and such could be a compromise.	So you wound up writing a few games, mostly text adventures, nothing with creative art. Some people who didn't like your stuff anyway were morally incensed that your cover art was, well, terrible. But that was worth working through. And in the process, you realized a lot of things about other help people had given you, which wasn't help, and how these people would have laughed at your dreams, small as they were, but you still felt obliged to listen to them. And, of course, you we're surprised you still had ideas for games after so many years. But they didn't quite feel like the real thing, as writing did.
$SEQ6-4	You don't know what prompted you to finally buy a writing notebook in college, and dedicated as such. You had one notebook per class, of course, but those often never got filled, or you wound up doodling in them, or you wondered maybe you were taking too many or too few notes, and it wasn't exactly because you wanted to. As time went on, you wound up writing more and more creative ideas in the margins, and you wanted a place to put it all.	You remember writing ideas in your notebook, maybe from discarded card catalog cards from your job at the school library. You enjoyed transcribing them and saying, hey, that's a good idea, or later, hey, that was a good idea and I see how to expand it now. But it was hard to focus. Still, you got through it, and then with your own personal computer, you typed everything out again to a file. You saved and expanded it through several iterations of flash drives and external drives and Dropbox, always having a few backups.	Eventually you established daily files, but those were too erratic, so you went with weekly files, and you even established a baseline for how much that got done, even if it was only raw material. Yours on, you even rolled out a sorter that sorted sections automatically , and it helped to at least feel organized. But there was still the process of getting your hands dirty, looking at the old ideas and not feeling you fell off too much from them, or they weren't really worth writing anyway, so why bother?
$SEQ6-5	There were so many times you sort of wished you could write but you didn't know what, and slowly you started finding time to write down ideas. Maybe it was using a paper towel at the Athletic Club, or maybe the back of the receipt. Sometimes you saved a good spate of writing too long, worried it wasn't as good as you hoped, or it might be a waste of time.	Of course, there were ideas from reading a good book, too, and sometimes that conflicted. You remember trips down to a local community library, which somehow felt much nicer than more prestigious universities libraries. You could just do what you wanted, and you weren't worried you were wasting libraries time, you could sign up for time at an Internet terminal, maybe for two hours, and you would have to use that time. No browsing, it helped sharpen focus, and often, a lot got done. Google documents were insanely helpful. Sometimes there would be a book to read as well. Sometimes not.	You found even more ways to do things, and it felt sort of weird, talking into a phone to have notes transcribed in Google Keep, especially in places where people would talk and listen to themselves for a long time, but they sort of had people around them that they corraled to listen to them, so it felt social. There was so much organization to do, and sometimes you just gave up on it to play a game that you'd played before, but notes did pile up in certain files, and you realized you had enough critical mass to write something.	Unfortunately, at some point, with all those writing notes and watching files grow bigger and bigger, to several megabytes for the main notes file, you said, oh, there used to be too little to build on a story with, and now there's too much to sort through. But of course there wasn't, as you realized when you sat down and read through a file, and you saw the duplicate ideas, or you saw certain themes that were pretty obvious once similar ideas were in place. But it was still hard to get ahead. It was so much fun to say, yes, I have proof I have the raw materials to write something. But it was scary to maybe try to build and fail. Still, struggles like that were worth writing about.
# notes for writing a bunch of things in a row
~w	Writing always starts well, of course. There's an idea to poke at. Nothing's gotten stale, because you haven't poked at enough ideas, often enough.
~r	Sometimes you think thinking's the easy part. Other times, it's the hard part. Sometimes it's a useful break from writing and work, and other times, it's just putting stuff off. Confusing.
~ww	Well, how about that? You sat down and wrote for two chunks in a row, straight. You don't always have to, but it's good to know you can.
~www	Your focus keeps getting sharper. You're not particularly concerned about the quality of your writing, but a brief re-read, and hey, that thing you wrote down out of inertia? It reads better now than that thing you struggled over until you thought it was perfect, or as close to perfect as you could get.
~wwww	You almost wonder if you are writing by rote, with this lack of breaks to reflect. Eh, it'll shake out when you proofread stuff.
~wwwww	Perhaps you really are just writing for its own sake, but it beats the alternative.
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