Anotherblog

Done it

Done it
I’ve finished the 50 hour Nanoedmo challenge. Phew. Now I’m tired.
I had to take today off work to do so, but thanks to some decent effort over the last week, I only had to do four and a half hours today, and I got that done by 3:00pm.

All in all, I got 16,000 words written, compared with the 60,000 words I managed in the same timeframe in November of last year. As such, I think working by number-of-hours rather than wordcount is the wrong approach while I’m still working on the first draft. For the stated purpose of editing, it is probably good, but I definitely found myself getting too precious about the writing, considering it’s a first draft.

I’m still trying to work out what to do next. The novel isn’t finished. There’s a fair bit more to go - in fact, the real meat of the novel has yet to be written. I’m hoping I can get writing done while catching a lift with Luke, and I’d like to try for a target that isn’t so daunting and/or disruptive. I might go for 300 words a day, or 500 words every second day or on certain designated days, so I don’t have to rush to get around roleplaying and the like.

Any suggestions? I understand that “don’t be such a procrastinating wimp, just write the sucker” is a suggestion, but I *am* a procrastinating wimp, and I’d like to finish the novel anyway.

Fork

Fork
Yesyesyes, more work on Fork. This phase ends on Wednesday, I’m happy to report. Barring disaster, I’ll make the 50 hour target: I’m currently at 42 hours, and a wordcount total of 75k words, of which this month’s efforts have contributed a mere 15k.

There’s lots more to go. According to my plot summary, it looks like the novel will happily get to 100k. I’ll keep working on it after March, of course, but I think I’ll revert to a word count kind of target, rather than hours-spent. Perhaps 500 words, on alternating days. Something like that. On the bright side, I’ve managed these kind of wordcounts going to and from work, in November last year, so I may just end up writing the entire rest of the novel going to and from work, catching a lift from Luke.

Last Exile
The anime series Last Exile, while still beautiful (especially the cloud effects), remains puzzling. I watched the second DVD on the weekend. The main character gets beaten fairly severely, and spends some time in bed. His face is puffy, he has a black eye. People comment on how terrible he looks. Then goes out flying and comes back looking fine, and it is never mentioned again.

I can’t work out whether this is a metaphor, a plot point, or just laziness.

Fork

Fork
Tuesday: good. Wednesday: not so good. Total: 36.5 hours. The writing is going OK at the moment, though it’s a great deal slower than I’d like. My average wordcount has dropped down to about 500 words a day.
Prognosis for tonight, given that I’ve got D&D: poor.

Dinner
Went out to “The Little Snail” last night with Anna & Jon & Kate. Enjoyable. We are determined to do more films this year, and so spent quite some time trying to come up with a horror film. So far, we’ve repeated a great many cliches and not come up with anything particularly new, but I hold high hopes.

Fork

Jennie rocks!
It’s official: both my sisters rock a great deal. Jennie got me a couple of CDs for my birthday, which turned out to be brilliant: Goldfrapp’s “Black Cherry” and Franz Ferdinand’s eponymous album. Awesome. And she included some photos of the house that she and Marco bought in London. Looks nice, chappies.

Les Triplettes de Belleville
I finally watched Les Triplettes de Belleville (which was bought for me by my other rockin’ sister) on the weekend, and it was faaaaantastic. Reminiscent of Delicatessen and The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb and a little touch of Brazil. Wow.

Fork
Yawn, more boring Fork tork, boo hiss.

It’s been going pretty well. I did an hour on Friday, an hour and a half on Saturday, two and a half on Sunday, and two yesterday, bringing my March total to 34 hours. For once, yesterday, the writing felt good: it was enjoyable and I didn’t stop the instant the time was up. The plot is so complicated that most of the time, it’s been a real chore. But that feeling yesterday reminded me of the most enjoyable bits of writing “Lotus”, where stuff seems to really flow.

I’m not sure I ever got really into that vibe with Fork. I’m usually too worried about what’s coming next to enjoy what I’m writing now; the many diversions that made Lotus enjoyable are a pain in Fork. I can indulge them and then struggle to get the plot back on course, or fight them down. Since it’s just a first draft, I usually indulge them. I think the story is better for it.

Which is not to say that I hate writing Fork: the plot is probably one of the neatest ideas I’ve ever come up with, and it’s worth trying to turn into a novel. Most of my enjoyment in Fork is reading the plot, and most of the pain is then trying to turn the plot into prose and characterisation. And agonising over whether this is really a Dr Who novel or not.

Angela has gotten over her psychopathic thoughts.

Settlers
Another game of Settlers today, and I won by getting both longest road and largest army. I suspect next time I’ll get absolutely hammered: I only managed it this game by staying vewy, vewy qwiet for much of it: had the others noticed, I wouldn’t have even got close: other players were very close to taking longest road, but weren’t concentrating on it.

Fork

Fork
Yes, this is a month of posting about my novel, and is therefore dull. Despite RP last night, I managed an hour of editing - we can thank a bus/train trip home, nd the laptop computer, for that one. It’s nice working with a decent laptop computer.

The story is still very waffly and I’m experimenting with plot variations and letting the characters do what they want, which is quite alarming because my main character wants to buy a gun and is entertaining thoughts of killing someone. Fortunately, she procrastinates. Another character, however, is much more psychotic than I’d originally planned, and has already two murders to his/her name. Meanwhile, stupid engineering student got creepier.

I have to keep reminding myself: it’s a first draft, it doesn’t have to be perfect, I’m exploring possibilities. A lot of the stuff I’m writing at the moment is horribly, desperately boring, and will be cut. Fortunately, it looks like there’s enough plot to be able to do this and still come in at 90k words or so. At the moment, the first draft is pointing towards the 120k mark, of which I have done about 70k.

Despair. Elation. Boredom. Despair.

Games
Played D&D last night: the players, along with an NPC paladin, almost got slaughtered by a pack of dire-apes in a random night-time encounter. Apes, tough. Having survived that one, they went back into the tomb of every-character’s-death, broke the seal of the door containing Mr. Vampire, and killed him dead. He didn’t have much of a chance, in the end. There was an anti-magic passageway that he had to get through, and the characters were too alert to let him pass, though he tried to make a break for it anyway. Then he bounced around the room trying to fireball the characters, but weight of numbers eventually meant that he got reduced to zero, turned into gaseous form, and eventually died because he couldn’t get back to his coffin without going through the anti-magic area. Sucked to be him.

Also played some more Settlers, an interesting game. The board was a lot more “crowded” this game, with very few building opportunities. I didn’t have much of a chance at a win, but we had to pack up before there was a result, as the meeting room was booked. Dammit.

Lachlan has come up with a card game based around TV executives trying to come up with sitcoms/soap opera pilots. We’re hopefully putting in some playtesting today.

Finally, Andrew C. has brought in the game “Apples to Apples”, a highly acclaimed party card game that I’ve never played, but am greatly looking forward to. And I brought in the 5-6 player expansion for settlers, as we have five regular players. Should be interesting.

Exercise
In a frankly feeble attept to put off working on my novel in the evenings, I’ve been doing a lot more exercise on those exercise machines, particularly the rowing machine. It actually feels alright. I always hated jogging because my shins and lungs would hurt, and I never got that jogging-high that Dad talked about - mind you, I tried not to inhale all those car fumes either, which may have had something to do with it - but the rowing machine exercise feels pretty good. Pleasantly low-impact, and it encourages good posture ’cause my back hurts a little if I don’t sit straight when I’m doing the exercises.

It also means that I don’t have to ration myself to stay under 86kg, which is also nice.

Fork

Fork
Another two hours done. Again, the wordcount is fairly low, and after reading the Turkey City Lexicon today I had a bit of a panic attack about prose quality. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s only a first draft and that anything that slows down the flow of words at this stage is probably bad.

Still…

Turkey City Lexicon offences in Fork
Brenda Starr dialogue
Dischism
False Humanity
Fuzz
Laughtrack
Show, not Tell
Signal from Fred
Wiring Diagram Fiction
You Can’t Fire Me, I Quit
The Kitchen-Sink Story
The Steam-Grommet Factory
Bogus Alternatives
Kudzu plot
Funny-hat characterization

Settlers
We played a fairly quick game of Settlers today - I won, and I’m still mystified as to how. This game I concentrated on getting a spread of numbers and resources. On my starting turn, the only resource I couldn’t get at all was iron, and I started with wood and bricks so I managed to get a road and settlement to iron pretty quickly. The other weird thing was that I managed to split the board in two with a long road, which made it almost impossible for any other player to even remotely compete in the longest road thing. My properties continually had the robber on them, but it didn’t matter.

I still don’t know exactly what I did right, or how I might repeat it. I think I just got lucky.

Fork

Fork
I’m falling further and further behind on writing. Once again, last Thursday I didn’t do any writing. But on Friday I had a “no sugar” day, which prompted a headache, which in turn prompted no writing. And then, on Saturday, I was lazy.

I got back into the writing on Sunday and yesterday. Two hours each day, to bring my total to twenty-one hours, and therefore nine hours behind the two hour a day target. However, thanks to the magic of only needing one hour and forty minutes a day to meet the target, I’m only four hours behind, really.

For some reason the two hour target, in which I’ve been averaging about six or seven hundred words, have felt just as difficult as the four hours or so a night that I did in November. I think I work better to word targets in my first draft.

Caesarian? I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m in Sydney.
Dad came to visit over the weekend, and was partially but unintentionally responsible for my slackness in writing. We went out to dinner on Friday night with Aunt Elizabeth and great uncle (actually I can’t remember our exact relationship, but it’s something like that) Neil, and then Dad and I chatted and played lots of snooker and billiards and squash. I beat Dad at snooker and billiards, and he beat me by a roughly equal margin in squash. It was excellent having him visit, and he revealed that I can finally talk about…

Caesarian? I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m in England.
Ma & Pa are giving up on Townsville after all these years. They’re selling the family home and moving to England where Dad’s going to do locums (substitute for other paediatrician’s practices while they go on holidays, or other leaves of absence) for a while. It sounds pretty exciting, though really very sad that they’re intending to sell the house: given the size of the block of land, it’s almost certain that whoever buys the place will knock it down and build flats. Big move. Mum & Dad have done equally big moves before - we travelled extensively when Jen and I were young - so I’m sure it’s something they’ve wanted to do for ages, but only just gotten around to doing.

Fork

Fork
Another couple of hours, another couple of hundred words. I only managed one and a half hours of writing/revising yesterday, mostly in the car, but have already made back a big chunk of it today, also mostly in the car. It took about an hour and a half to get to work. George had to do some paperwork at the Department of Births, Deaths & Marriages and we sat outside in the car, Luke dozing, me writing. The writing was, surprisingly, fairly smooth going. It has definitely been rough over the last couple of days, and I think I’m through this lot of crises and into whatever the next section of plot has to offer.

Games
Played Settlers of Catan today. It went pretty well: Andrew C. was so keen on it he wanted to immediately rush out and buy his own copy. Andrew K. wasn’t quite so keen, but he was also suffering from that familiar problem of not having a good day with the dice. We made noises about playing after-hours at work or getting together on a weekend for a games night some day. I can’t see it happening, though - we all live in wildly different areas.

Livejournal
I set up a Livejournal account so that I could keep up with Jon & Kate. There is, however, no point at all in me ever updating the journal entries there, as they would be a straight duplicate of entries here. Maybe it’s possible to mirror entries or sumfink.

Guitar
Learning White Stripes songs at the moment - my guitar tutor took me through “There’s no home for you here”, “Ball & Biscuit” and “Girl you have no faith in medicine.” Surprisingly easy songs, though the power chords in the latter are played very quickly. Good practice.

Fork

Fork
Two hours further work on Fork last night, another 1000 words. It’s a little too easy to let the wordcount slip by mucking around with plot for two hours. I think I’ve done enough plot machinations for a while. I may give myself a further restriction of 1000 words per day.

Alarmed
There’s nothing quite like setting the alarm for 6:30pm and waking up at 7:30am for giving you that extra sense of urgency in the morning. Urgle. I still managed to bring in my copy of “Applied Cryptography” for Craig at work, and my copy of “Settlers of Catan” for the card-playing guys. We’re branching out from Magic at the moment: I introduced them to “Cow Trader” yesterday, and tomorrow hope to have a go at Settlers. It’s a tricky game to set up, though; we may have difficulty getting through games in lunchtime.

Fork

Fork
I managed four hours and twenty minutes of editing on Fork over the weekend. Unfortunately, I conked out on Friday afternoon without doing any writing at all, so I’m now three hours and forty minutes behind my deadline. However, I did manage a half hour of writing on the laptop on the way to work today. If I can do that again this afternoon, it will considerably ease the burden of tonight’s writing.

And it is a burden. I’m in a tricky patch at the moment: I spent a great deal of the weekend working on plot issues rather than writing - I created a separate document for each of the timelines, and carefully went through all the things that were happening off-stage, as it were, and made sure they made sense. Then I had a brilliant - I say, brilliant - idea. It solved a very tricky problem I had been mulling over, and fit perfectly into the themes I’m trying to work into the novel, and made me jump up and down with joy until I realised it also destroyed quite a bit of what I’d already written. Still, I’m going ahead with it. It’s right, it feels good, and it allows me to kill the Doctor again, which is always fun.

Dental horror
I am full of horrified sympathy for Fiona’s plight (and hearty congratulations for her associated resolutions). I am also filled with fillings from my dental expedition on Saturday morning, which was an uncomfortable experience - it’s not even the injections (which the dentist did quite well) or the drilling. The most uncomfortable bit is not being able to breathe because pools of dental liquid have accumulated in my throat, and that super-sucker thing they’ve got hasn’t super-sucked it up.

Anyway, that’s it for me for six months. I always leave these things far too late: the house is well overdue for a pest inspection, and the car is even further overdue for a service.