Anotherblog

Writing

Writing
Let’s see… writing is taking up so much of my time, I’ve barely felt capable of doing anything else. I’m very much looking forward to finishing it. Fortunately, I’ve pretty much stayed on track for 60k - I’m currently at 44k, which is only 2k behind my target. On the other hand, I have D&D tonight, which, unless I am particularly virtuous tonight, will mean I’ll be 4k behind, tomorrow. Still, the end is in sight. I’ve written (as I’ve seen Jon do) all the remaining bits-to-get-through in square brackets, and am in the process of knocking them off. There’s a good bit coming up that I’m looking forward to writing. It always becomes easier as I get towards the conclusion - one of the pains of Fork was that I didn’t bloody finish it last November, so had it hanging over my head all year. This won’t be the case with TOWATSOW.

There will be a lot of lying around and doing nothing in December. Apart from catching up with Film Forensics, of course, and restarting Cesura, and making a tropfest film with many miniature cars. And I’d still like to write a TADS adventure game, and try and develop this kanji game I’ve been thinking about (like gin rummy, except with kanji primatives going together to form kanji).

Nano & Games
Went to the nanowrimo meeting on Saturday, and then went off and played a lot of roborally with Dave & Kyla and friends on Saturday night, as well as the rather intriguing game “Wyatt Earp”. All good fun. Somehow managed to stay on target with writing anyway, though got perilously close to having to go back off sugar, thanks to the ministrations of Anna’s mum.

Shaun of the Dead
Borrowed the “Shaun of the Dead” DVD from Dave, which turned out to be loaded with lots of lovely extras. Quite delicious, and it has been distracting me from writing the last couple of days. Still love the scene in which Shaun goes to get the cornetto in the morning. They mentioned on the (first) commentary that when Shaun subsequently gets back to the sofa and puts his feet up, there should be blood on the sole of his shoe, and that that missed it. The sounded rather blase, but it would have been an incredibly good gag and I really wish they’d remembered it.

More CB

More CB
Yup, that was a fine and good visit. We talked lots, played many games of mahjong, and none of us did any writing on my novel, so for the first time this month, I have a 0 wordcount for one day. Anna, who had been on a quick holiday up the coast with her cousin, got back too, so it was all totally celebratory and stuff.

This weekend, then, I have lots of catching up writing to do. Dag-nabbit. Saturday may be tricky, as I’m going to another Nanowrimo event, and then Dave & Kyla’s place to play roborally. I really hope that I don’t fall behind on Saturday because I’m going to a Nano meeting. That would be, like, ironic.

CB

CB
My “little” sister CB should be in town now, over to Australia for a brief holiday. She and Aodhagan will only be in Sydney for a day, so I’m taking a short one and going home this arvo.

Writing
Yeah, it’s really hard, but I’m no longer worried about getting to 50k. I’m at 34k and there’s plenty of plot to go, and I’m really rather enjoying the main character. This is a better book than Fork, so far.

Kanji
Despite the writing, I’ve been able to keep up with the kanji (unlike Film Forensics, which is unfortunately competing in the same mind space). I’ve just passed the 500 mark, one quarter of the way there. All of us in the kanji group are pretty wobbly with the recent ones - we’ve been going at the rate of about 40 a week for the last month - so we’re going to have a few weeks of revision. A couple of us have been working on the kanjitest program. I was getting irritated by the multiple choice version, as sometimes I would accidentally see the correct answer in the list before I had a chance to look away, so I added a version in which it doesn’t show the answer until you hit the “reveal” button, and then it asks you whether you got it right or wrong. As it happens, this allows me to go through the test a lot quicker now, too - I don’t have to look away, work out the answer, look back, find the answer in the list, and click on it. The “I was right” button is directly behind the “Reveal” button, so I don’t have to move the mouse at all as long as I’m answering correctly. This is good especially when I’m catching a lift with Luke to work, as his sharp cornering makes it occasionally difficult to do the multiple choice.

Also, it was a nice exercise in writing Python code, which I’ve never done before but was very simple.

Life, the Universe, and Everything
Luke and I have been listening to the radio adaptation of Douglas Adams’ third book on the way to and from work over the last week. It’s reasonably good, but suffers greatly from having been a book in the first place: unlike the original radio series, the narrator has to come in and explain a lot of what is going on. In the original radio series, the narrator was used mostly to go on wild and entertaining tangents in the guide of the Guide - in this one, he’s used a great deal more to narrate the action. Very obviously an adapated book. Still, I found myself getting back into it as it went along. Must go back and listen to the original series again.

The funeral

The funeral
We had the viewing on Sunday and the funeral on Monday, and it all went fairly smoothly. The church was completely packed, much to my surprise - all the family friends came out of the woodwork, and there were a lot of people I’d never seen before too. The procession of people past the coffin, and then coming past the family to offer condolences, took about twenty minutes. I was silly enough to be sitting next to Anna’s mum at the viewing, right at the front and centre, which meant that as the priest did his thing, everybody was repeating the prayers and crossing themselves repeatedly except me, tall guy just standing there at the front. Oh well. Anna’s Dad wasn’t particularly religious anyway. I was one of the four pallbearers at the funeral, and I can report that coffins are really, really heavy. The undertaker was helping support the coffin at our end, and my arm was still trembling by the end of it. I suppose there are good reasons they often have six.

More writin’
There’s really not much to report on the writing front. Every day I confront the fact that I have run out of things to write, consider giving up, and manage 2000 words anyway. So I’m on schedule, 18k words into the novel. It’s going well, which is to say that the writing isn’t as crap as Fork yet. So I’m reasonably happy. However, because I didn’t get the Film Forensics done before November, I am now running very, very far behind on them. I still haven’t posted last week’s forensic, which will (when I eventually get some spare time) be on the film Van Helsing. Fortunately, Winston has offered to do another guest review, so this month won’t be a complete write-off, so to speak.

Boarder
Tristan moved in last night, and immediately went to sleep. He was rather pooped after a full day of moving the majority of his stuff into storage.

Anna’s Dad

Anna’s Dad
Anna’s Dad died on Wednesday night. He had been ill for several months. He had lung cancer caused by smoking and asbestos, and a couple of weeks ago he stopped eating. On Tuesday night he had a stroke, and he died on Wednesday night at about 11:00pm. June, Anna, George and Bill are coping OK. There was a big wake yesterday, and we sorted out all the funeral details. It’ll probably be on Monday.

Mandate

Mandate
My incredible super-powers have been acting weird lately. Well, they were weird to begin with - I’ve never quite gotten to grips with the “high score” area now present in the top left of my vision (who’d have thought driving to work was worth -590 points?) - but they’re weirder than usual today. Whenever I hear or read the news and see the US news, and Bush or Cheney say the word “Mandate”, I suddenly hear the word “bullshit” directly afterwards, very loud. It’s very strange. I mean, the Republican party got 51% of the vote. That’s 3% clear of the Democrats. If that’s not a mandate, I ask you, what is?

Further amazing things

Further amazing things
I took the day off work today because I was feeling a wee bit stressed about the novel, the short film, work, and my amazing but disturbing super-powers. So I’m in full procrastination mode. Unfortunately, my super-powers extend to super-procrastination: if I start to visualise a game of solitaire, it appears floating in the air in front of me, and I can play it just by flicking my eyes back and forth and blinking at the appropriate times.

Nonetheless, I got 2k words done yesterday (sorry, Herr Fellows, I’m back to daily wordcounts again) to start off my brand new story, “The Old Woman and the Sea of Washing”. I’m really not sure whether there’s enough plot for an entire novel, but that’s what I thought for Lotus, and it worked out fine. Not to mention, Fork, which I thought did have a reasonable length plot summary, ended up being 160k words long. I don’t know whether I’ll create a webpage and post it as I go along this time. I’m terribly paranoid that this isn’t as good as the other ones, due to the irreperable damage dealt to my writing style by six months of reluctant 400 words/day.

Anyway, here’s the opening paragraph:

The Old Woman and the Sea of Washing
Agatha Wrigley grasped the rail with both hands and sat up straight as the bus negotiated the roundabout. She was on the Elderly Or Pregnant Seat directly behind the driver, which was fine because she was elderly or pregnant. Elderly, actually, although she couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility that she was pregnant as well. You never know. A woman was once made pregnant by being shot with a bullet that had gone through a soldier’s testicles. And there had certainly been cases in which a post-menopausal woman had given birth. Years ago, Agatha would have laid down a towel on the seat just to be safe. Nowadays, she liked to live dangerously.

Battlestar Galactica
I finished watching it on Sunday night after borrowing it from Jon & Kate on the weekend. It finished just as well as it had started. Very, very good.

Potential boarder
One of Bill’s friends has been looking for a place to stay, so we offered the spare bedroom of our place. Could be for a couple of months, and the extra income will be most welcome. We met up last night and had a chat to see if it would be a good match, and he’s pretty cool, so as far as I’m concerned he’s in. His name is Tristan.

Anyway, I’d better get on and do some writing. The first 2k words were rather difficult, especially after my usual 400 a day for the last couple of months. I thought that regular writing would make the 2k easier. I’m pretty sure they’ve made it harder. Thank goodness for my superpowers.