Posts Tagged ‘writing’
Nano 2009
Once again I’m participating in NaNoWriMo, and once again I’m hoping to do better than the years before. Last year was my most promising start as I banged out close to 10,000 words in just a couple of nights. Unfortunately life took over as it always seems to and the writing fell off to the wayside. I started NaNo the very first year that I sort of had a creative falling out as it were. The hope was that it might rekindle the writing flame. Unfortunately it hasn’t panned out. I’m not blaming NaNo here, but the last several years my life had gone through so many changes, both good and bad, that everything was just spinning and it was hard to find any focus.
Over the past several months the writing bug has come back and I’ve been acting on it. Right now, the fact that I’m staying at home cleaning and fixing up the place as actually helped. When any kind of inspiration hits me it’s a lot easier to just put down what I’m doing (or finish it up) and grab a little bit of writing time. I’ve had lots of mini ideas, but nothing really full blown. Still, even when I used to write frequent that was true. I have many many files of unfinished stories. I go through them sometimes for inspiration.
About a month ago when Zombieland came out in the theaters we went to see it. One of our friends had a Zombie novel with him and that gave me a chuckle. I know there are a lot of horror themed novels out there – a great deal of them focus on vampires (most emasculated ones) and werewolves. Then there’s all your other creepy horror. I knew there were a couple novels that centered on zombies out there, but I didn’t realize that like the more popular vampires and werewolves it was becoming a genre in its own right. Denise quipped that I should write a zombie novel as I am a huge fan of pretty much every zombie movie no matter how horrible it is. I laughed. Though over the next couple days the suggestion bounced around in my brain and I began to jot down a lot of notes. It wasn’t long before a full fledged idea was in place. Right before NaNo is to begin. Sometimes these things just come together.
In a couple days NaNo will kick off and I think this time I have a good shot at hitting the 50,000 word mark – and quite likely beyond that. I’d have to say that a full fledged novel in this genre will probably weigh in around the 80,000 word mark which is getting close to twice what you need to “win” NaNo. It’s not inconceivable to manage this in a month. It just means it’ll take even longer before I get around to finishing up cleaning the basement. Of course this sounds like the proverbial win-win scenario to me.
Tags: eat your brains, writing
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Oct 29th, 2009
A Method to the Madness.
One would assume now that I have more free time on my hands it would be easier to get back in to writing – even if only something as simple as more frequent updates to this site. The truth is its actually been a bit harder to get back in to the writing habit on any level. Part of it probably stems from the fact that I haven’t written regularly in quite awhile so I’m still a bit rusty about getting the things out of my head and on to “paper”. The other reason is right now faced with so much free time my brain has scattered to the four corners. I try to do too much all at once, and that just gets terribly exhausting. This is even more apparent when I’ve tried to sit down and actually write something. I’ve become too rushed with it, especially when attempting a blog post of any substance. It’s like playing a game of speed chess, I have this ticking clock and I have to get the next sentence out before the time buzzes. There’s no time to think, only type, I’ve got to do it right now! This runs contrary to what I would have thought it would be like when presented with all this extra time. The end result is that I end up with writing that feels very forced and in several instances doesn’t even convey what I had intended.
The way to combat this is organization. Simply sitting down and saying, I’m going to write something, is not a productive endeavor. It leads to the rushed, forced feeling. In the end it makes the writing feel almost like a chore. I’ve always looked at various ways to become more organized, but generally never implemented much in the way of a system. I never gave it enough time for that system to take hold and become so routine that it was just another of the many processes I go through on any given day. Now, with a lot of time available to me, it seems to be the perfect opportunity to begin finding a system of organization, research, and writing that helps everything come together; something to make the process flow and seem more natural rather than a chore. This search for a system is also a wonderful writing opportunity.
As I research and test out different ways in which to better organize my writing life (and perhaps other aspects of my life as well) I’ll share them here. There are many methodologies, and each person has to find the one that works best for them, but perhaps for other people looking to get a better grasp on things some of what I chronicle might be a spring board to discovering your own method for gaining control of the spiraling chaos that life can sometimes become.
Tags: blog life, organizational skills, writing
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Feb 7th, 2009
Changes? Did I really say that?
All right, so I thought there was about to be some major changes to the website. More specifically I was going to change the entire engine that drives this blog, but after some experimentation I’m quite happy just staying with Wordpress. Sure, there’s some things that I’d like to see, but nothing that is of major importance – and pretty much every other solution kind of sucks, or is just serious over kill for my needs. I think the only major change is that I’ve made three posts in a row – it’s been awhile since I’ve done that.
However I’ve started cleaning up a lot of my older stories – putting some polish on them, so that I can post them to this website. Several are very short stories, others are incomplete, but maybe putting the polish on them, and putting them up here will help inspire more writing on my part. I’m hoping the creative spirit is going to be a part of the new year, but we shall see. In the meantime keep an eye out for those snippets sometime in the next couple of days.
Tags: deep geek, writing
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Dec 26th, 2007
NaNoWriMo Begins!
It’s November first, and that means I need to get cracking on this novel thing. Of course it figures that the very first day of November is a crazy busy day for me. I might skip out on swinging by Pixel for a sip of the casked Flower Power. That one I already have a good idea of what it tastes like, and I couldn’t actually be there for more than a few minutes anyway. I have a hockey game tonight, so by the time I get home it will be close to passing out time – I’m sure I’ll be exhausted. However I’ll try to manage to put in a brief writing time after hockey. I won’t hit the 1600ish words I need to average each day, but I should be able to make up for that this weekend.
Tags: writing
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Nov 1st, 2007
NaNoWriMo ho!
So for the second time I am going to make a go of NaNoWriMo. Last year I tried to accomplish the 50,000 word “novel” but I petered out on it rather quick. I’ve mentioned a few times that I’ve been looking to jump start creativity so I think this might be just what the doctor ordered to get things off the ground. Even if I don’t manage to “win”, I’m hoping it will at least get me back in to the swing of writing regularly.
I don’t have any particular idea for what kind of novel I’m going to attempt – but I’m not going to even really contemplate that until November 1st. I figure the best way of going about this is to just jump right in to the mix by writing whatever comes to mind at that particular moment and let my brain take me wherever it is that it wants to go.
50,000 words in 30 days, huh? Break it down and that’s about 1667 words a day. That’s a couple of single spaced sheets of paper. I know I can do that. In college I could rattle off a couple pages on just about anything in an hour or two. I’m going to have to forget about the over all goal and break it down in to smaller objectives. It’s an easier way to operate, breaking a big thing down in to smaller chunks. If I manage to keep that pace up for the first couple weeks it just might give me that confidence boost needed to plow through to the end of the month.
There’s still a couple more weeks before it begins, so I’m not going to give it much thought until the thing kicks off on the first.
Tags: writing
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Oct 14th, 2007