Anotherblog

Almost over

Almost over
Ah… the pain of the National Novel Writing Month is almost over. I have achieved the 50k words, though I got nowhere near the 90k I was hoping for with 3k per day. In retrospect, the novel was far too complicated to manage that without it going even further off the rails than it did.

It was great. I’ve learned a lot in the past month. I’m definitely doing this again next year.

In the meantime, I’ve got a little further to get today and tomorrow: if the words flow well, I might get to about 65k.

What now?
As far as Fork is concerned, I think I’m gonna have to finish off the first draft over the next couple of months. Dave is in a similar position with “Bard Wars”, so we’ll be able to gripe away at each other.

There are also other matters, like putting together the Spit albums before Christmas and editing “A Lotus Blossoms in the Monastery Garden”. The former should be easy and fun, and I’m weirdly ready to get back to work on the latter: although it has been a long time since I was working on the first draft - a year - even when I was working on it in September I felt a little too close to it. I think working on Fork might have helped with that. I know what’s to be done, and I’m much more ready for it.

Return of the King
I had a strange dream about this last night. I was in some way working on the project, or possibly related to Peter Jackson, and I was rather skeptical about the modern-day segment they had at the end of the film to replace “The Scouring of the Shire”, and I was trying to find Peter Jackson to tell him about my concerns. Then I suddenly realised that the impact of these modern-day scenes - which showed the main characters, happy but old, in retirement villages in suburban Sydney - was actually pretty neat. The scouring of the shire stuff seemed too melodramatic, and so the more gentle, banal finish to the characters was devistatingly real and added a wonderful bouquet of complexity to the films.

Belly Dancing
I didn’t go to the belly-dancing competition, but I did meet up with Chris T. and Polly and Nola who were going, with Anna. And they had a jolly good time, or so it is written. Meeting up with them was excellent as well: I had been procrastinating all day on doing any writing and had gotten very depressed about it all, and they cheered me up a lot so that I ended up writing 3000 words between 8:30pm and 1:30am, which is as fast as I’ve done any of this year’s writing.

Day off

Day off
I took yesterday off (!) to do some writing, after a couple of slack days. It was very, very slow work. I managed just under 5k words in the end, but most of that came in the evening. I was sitting at the computer - no internet access, no games - for much of the day without getting much writing done, because I kept getting distracted into touching up the plot.

I ended up making a lot of modifications to Chapter 13 - it’s about twice as long as it was before - and finally put up the 7k Chapter 14. I think I can safely say that I won’t get all the way through the plot, as the final event of Chapter 14 marks the half-way point.

World: 234
Australia: 12
Sydney: 2

Filming
I didn’t manage to get much novelling done on Tuesday or Monday because I was hard at work making and editing a short film for a presentation at work. I was very pleased with the result, and it went down a treat. Happy.

Athos

Athos
There are some who follow Athos, the god of atheists, who demands disbelief.
Her worshippers will freely admit that she is a figment of the imagination, and invent wild and contradictory stories of her words and deeds, and even her name, and the proper procedure of her worship.
There are some who do not worship her but do believe in her, and these are the unluckiest of all mortals, for Athos denies them the loving embrace she extends to all other humans.
Or so some worshippers claim.

Here are some references to Athos:

Media Gods
Nothing
Kern

And finally:

LITTLE KNOWN (and justly forgotten) GODS OF THE DISCWORLD
© Michael Jones 2000 (Discworld and individual characters © 2000 Terry and Lyn Pratchett)

RATIONAL, The God of Atheists

NUMBER OF WORSHIPPERS: Countless Thousands

NUMBER OF BELIEVERS: None

MOST IMPORTANT WORDS TO HIS FOLLOWERS: “I’m not here! You can’t see me! Oh bugger…”

Gods are created as the focus of belief. Atheism is the denial of the existence of a God or Gods, and to deny the existence of something is, in itself a form of belief. And in the Discworld’s high magical field, such strong belief (even belief in the nonexistence of a God) must be manifest somewhere.

And so is born Rational, the God of Atheists. Rational has thousands of worshippers - people all over the Disc refuse to believe in the Gods. This makes him one of the more immanent Gods. Unfortunately, he does not have a single believer, making his influence very weak. He is seen occasionally around Dunmanifestin, where he spends most of his time trying desperately not to exist. On being spotted by another God, he usually bursts into tears and does his best to hide. Rather than being angry with him, the other Gods tend to take pity on him; it’s hard to stay angry with someone whose main goal in life is to no longer exist.

If the God of Atheists had a High Priest, his name would be Dorfl. But of course, he doesn’t. Only Gods have High Priests. If he had a Holy Book, his prophets would be Philosophers. But of course, only religions have Holy books.

Mission Accomplished

Mission Accomplished
Well, to the extent that I’ve now reached 50,000 words, yeah. I didn’t get a start last night until pretty late, so I was going until 2:30am to get the 3000 words it took to reach 50k. What a relief.

I was really struggling with the plot - again - which is why it took so long to get started, but I’m reasonably happy with what’s happening now. I think I’ve guided it roughly back on course, anyway.

Anyway. Tired but happy. I’m not going to set myself a big total for today.

Position
The rankings get kind of meaningless after 50k because most people seem to stop at this point. So my ranking will just start going up at this point.

World: 367
Australia: 14
Sydney: 3

Rugby
Miracles of miracles, it was actually an exciting game. Lots of running and playing and although there were a lot of penalties in the game, both sides scored a try and it never felt like the penalties were cheating. I count myself satisfied: it was nail-bitingly close, Australia lost, and England played an exciting game.

Parents
Mum and Dad are now off to the Blue Mountains and back home, respectively. It were grand to have them come ’round and visit. We had dinner with Anna’s folks on Friday night all together, for the first time all at their place, and it were incredibly filling and I was thus deprived of sugar for all yesterday. Last night they went to see the rugby, live, and were very gratified that it didn’t rain as much as it could have. Particularly nice having them over ’cause we won’t be spending christmas with them this year.

Nanowrimers

Nanowrimers
Nanowrimers? Nanowrimites? Nanowrimowris? However you want to call ‘em, you may recall a bunch of us met up last Saturday and had a good long chat.

Here’s a pic.

Progress: Better

Progress: Better
I managed some pretty decent writing progress yesterday - 5000 words, the most I’ve managed in one day on Fork. I didn’t advance the plot terribly far, but it was nice to be writing and momentarily lose myself in what I was doing without checking my wordcount-so-far every hundred words.

However, I really have no idea what I’m doing today. Or rather, the plot calls for me to do something that I don’t think I can justify any more, and I’m not sure whether I want to do it anyway. If I don’t do it, though, it’s going to lead to further plot complications and god-knows-where. So I’ve been delaying today’s writing.

World: 431
Australia: 20
Sydney: 4

Slight drops in world and Sydney rankings thanks to Thursday’s very poor effort. I did 500 words at lunchtime and then none at all in the evening - Dad arrived and we chatted and drank wine, and well, that was that.

Anyway. I’d better go and do something about today’s wordcount. Lachlan came over today and we chatted about the short film we’re shooting on Wednesday (and for which I’m taking the day off) and he invited us to a party tonight. It’s a costume party with the theme “porn star.” On the other hand, he’s showing the rugby world cup final.

Speaking of which, I’m not sure who to support. Australia beat NZ and are therefore bastards, but England has been rather boring so far. Mum & Dad have tickets for the final thanks to a cousin in high positions.

The Two Towers: Extended Edition
Finally, after watching the Extended Edition, I like The Two Towers. I was a bit dubious about it when I first saw it in the cinemas. The Farimir bit seemed a bit odd, and Helm’s Deep, while spectacular, seemed to have some striking design flaws. The entrance, for example, had no drawbridge, and a gate that didn’t appear to be very reinforced.
When I saw it the second time I liked it a lot more, but it didn’t really grab me in the same way as Fellowship. Now that I’ve seen the Extended Edition, it has finally completely won me over.

A further slip

A further slip
I managed my 1000 words last night, which was nice. I didn’t start until 10:30pm or so, thanks mostly to my own slackness, but also to mum - we sat around and chatted, and watched a film and then we had dinner and mum watched Prime Suspect 6, and I tried not to be distracted by it and failed.

I didn’t watch any of the Two Towers at all.

I’m beginning to get a bit frantic, which I think is the problem. There’s a lot of cool stuff to get through, and some difficult, uncharted stuff that I have to write in order to get to the cool stuff. There is one thing that is certain though: I *will* finish by November 30th. I *will* beat 50k. I might even beat 71k, even though I’m currently behind my last-year self to the tune of about 3k words. He took a 3 day break when he hit 50k, the lazy fool. He won’t knew what will/did hit him when he saws me fly past.

World: 426
Australia: 18
Sydney: 4

I’m picking up dad from the airport tonight at about 9:00pm, which may adversely affect the whole wordcount thing, but I’m still going to aim for 2k tonight. Hopefully I can get a bit done at lunchtime today.

Rank

Rank
For completeness’ sake, I’d better put my ranking up:

World: 413
Australia: 18
Sydney: 4

Wow. World ranking was in the 200’s just a couple of days ago. This is actually mildly inspiring.

Postscript

Postscript
I had a look at last November’s archive and note that I only managed my 2300 words last Nov. 13th (which is when the LOTR:FOTR(EE) DVD arrived) by getting most of the DVD watching temptation out of the way, and starting the writing at 11:00pm. If I’d followed that model, I could have watched TTT for another hour and a half. Mind you, I’d have had to work until 2:30am.

Mad. Completely mad.

Also, I have worked out that I am 3000 words into my 8000 word plot summary. In other words, one day short of the 2/3 mark, I am just over 1/3 of the way through the plot.

I think I can safely get stuck into it now.

Yeah, well, that worked a treat

Yeah, well, that worked a treat
Wow, count one point for Two Towers, and one against self-control. I managed approximately 200 words last night.

Actually, I only (!) watched about two hours of Two Towers stuff. The rest of the time was taken up by guitar practice and sleep. I started writing in bed at about 10:00pm, hoping to at least get 1k or 2k words done, but fell asleep almost immediately. Must’ve needed it, too, ’cause although I set the alarm for 6:30am, I was still hugely sleepy in the morning, and only just got up in time to rush over to Luke’s place and catch a lift to work.

Crappy.

I didn’t do any writing on the trip to work, and I only managed 100 words at lunch time. At least I finished chapter 12 - I’ll post it up when I get home, ’cause I can’t do it from work.

Once again, from the relatively easy writing of Monday night, I’ve hit another rough patch, in which the plot summary just doesn’t tell me what to do for a while. I’ve got the dangling plot ends about two chapters away, and it’s just a matter of nudging the story in their general direction. And hopefully putting some more exciting material in.

Tonight
However… mum is in town tonight, and dad is arriving tomorrow, so there’ll be a fair bit of distraction getting around. Fortunately I’m taking Friday off to get seriously stuck into the writing. I have no doubt I’ll get to 60k, despite the current setbacks, but I’m not sure whether I’ll beat my old 71k total for Lotus, at the moment. On the bright side, there’s plenty of plot material to get me to 90k. On the down side, there’s beginning to feel like not enough time. Even with these extra days.

My target for tonight is 1000 words. I think that’s mildly realistic.

Jen
My sister Jen has gone one step crazier than buying a house in Sydney: she’s bought a house in London. You go, sis! Actually, it’s just outside of London proper, I am lead to believe, but regardless it means: congratulations!