More like 8 and a near-half by now...
Yes, as those who still read this blog might have surmised by the new little gadget in the sidebar, I'm taking another swipe at NaNoWriMo this year. (That's National Novel Writing Month, for the abbreviationally challenged. And it's actually worldwide, but InNoWriMo just doesn't have the same ring to it.) I have an idea, one I've kicked around for a while without ever getting to take substantial shape, so hopefully I can pull off my second victory in as many years. I've had the further inspiration/kick in the tail of just finishing a lousy book, so my sense of irked indignation that that junk got published and I'm still picking away fruitlessly on the keyboard is all fired up. (That kind of thing usually makes for good emergency fuel when I'm staring at the screen wondering what the frell I'm doing.) It should be interesting this year, because I'm working on a second draft of another story and I hope to keep picking at it between NaNo bursts. Yeah, I know... not the greatest timing. But I'm trying to increase my overall productivity, with the goal of having a marketable product to annoy editors with in 2011.
In part to keep myself from jumping the gun on the new story, and in part to keep up my lifelong tradition of procrastinating, I downloaded a new (free) program: yWriter 5. It has some fans on the NaNo forums, and it looks like it might appeal to my nitpicky style - it lets you keep track of character info, scenes, subplots and more without having to scribble it all down in a notebook beside the computer and hope to heck you can remember where you wrote it (and what you wrote, if your handwriting's as illegible as mine.) Theoretically, you can rearrange scenes and such with a few mouseclicks, as well, which could be very useful. I'm currently testing it with a dummy story. Yes, I'm writing a story to test software on which I intend to write another story. So far, I'm still getting the hang of it. It works completely differently than I'm used to, but I can already see how it'll be nice in some respects. Kind of like having your little notecards and margin scribbles right there onscreen with you as you go.
So, let's see... that would be two stories I'm actively working on, and one in the rough planning stages that I intend to start in 9 days (give or take a few hours.)
Oh - and I really need to get my tail in gear and start, if not finish, my annual holiday ornament blitz while I'm writing one novel and editing a second. My workbench is still mothballed (or rather ratballed), but we're working on a solution to that issue as I type, and I have an idea that shouldn't be too time-consuming to do. Assuming I can get started before too much longer.
Should be interesting, to say the least...
(For the bored/curious: The stepping stone picture was one I made with my own two hands, as part of a family stepping stone project. It was supposed to be more complete, but we had some issues with the cement mix on that batch.)
2 comments:
I *was curious about the stepping stone so thanks for sharing that - it's beautiful!
I might have to look into that software even though there's no chance in the deepest cargo hold that I'll manage writing this coming month.
All the best with the challenge!!
We actually did two rounds of stepping stones this year: my aunt had some projects she wanted to get done, and we had a lot of junk left over from Round 1. I did a phoenix the second time around, but the red on the glass marbles I used didn't stand up well to the post-drying scrubdown... still looks kinda cool, but not as I'd intended it.
Maybe you should try what I did in 2008: an alternate, unofficial, concurrent writing challenge for November. (I aimed for 30k words - that's only 1000 a night - and actually hit it. That's why I decided to bite the bullet and try the real deal in 2009.)
undreock - Indie rock band who thought they were too clever for words, using a typo as a band name.
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