NaNoWriMo - off and running: 3702

Well according to the NaNoWriMo website, it hasn't actually started yet. But as far as I am concerned, November is almost 17 hours old. Time zone differences can be a pain. Ask me sometime about the joys of conducting a courtship over a 15-hour difference.

This writing lark is easy, isn't it! The required average daily word count is 1667. I hit 3702 on Day 1. What a piece of piddle! :-) And people try to claim that it is hard.

Actually this was the easy bit. I have been playing that intended opening movement of my NaNoWriMo symphony of prose (and don't that just sound so grand!) over in my head so much that it was to all intents and purposes already written, just not via the keyboard. Not going to be that easy all the time I'm afraid, despite all my pre-planning. Although I could always go back off the wagon for the month, spend my time shit-faced drunk and figuratively spew rubbish out onto the page. On second thoughts, I don't think so. After being sober almost eight years, I doubt my body could cope with the hangovers.

NaNoWriMo - starters take your blocks

In only a few hours local time, NaNoWriMo will be officially off and running. Not that I shall be writing immediately post-midnight, but I will definitely be starting my writing on November 1. I will post some progress reports etc about the experience as I go.

At the same time I shall be also busy growing a moustache for Movember - http://rantbyross.blogspot.com/2009/10/movember-let-growing-season-commence.html

NaNoWriMo is coming

November is National Novel Writing Month. That would be better renamed International Novel Writing Month as it has extended way beyond North America where I believe the concept first started. But IntNoWriMo does not have quite the same ring to it, does it.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Anyway, I have signed myself up. The idea is to commit yourself to writing 50,000 words of your novel during the month of November. So I am gearing myself up to rip right into it.

While I'm at it, I shall also be hard at work growing a moustache for Movember, the fund raising initiative. I shall be posting weekly progress pictures. Let me know if you would like to donate to this worthy cause.

Some recent book reviews...

The Cold Kiss of Death




The Flight of the Eisenstein





Descent of Angels




I have received a great heap of books to review lately so more reviews shall be coming out. Read them here or just monitor my activity at www.awritergoesonajourney.com.

There are those of us that nature has very much designed as anal retentives. We need forms, structure and that sort of thing.

I use a variety of things including software for mindmapping and other things. I have just discovered what appears to be a nifty electronic means of tracking your novel in progress. It is a freebie courtesy of author Simon Haynes. Get it here
http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter_Version.html


Having had a bit of a play, I think it would be quite useful for the other control freak authors out there like me. :)

It ain't always easy

I have been working on a novel for a while now. What aspiring writer isn't? I have been going great guns for a while, having done a lot of development work prior to commencing the actual writing. Writing sessions were routinely producing 2-3,000 words, sometimes more, leaving me feeling quite accomplished. Writers block? Pah!

Today I had a salutary lesson that it isn't always quite so easy. After several hours work, I had barely managed some 400 words. I felt I was almost oozing blood with the effort of trying to get the right words out. I quite deliberately try to write in that first drafting in as spontaneous a manner as possible. However, today that spontaneity just would not come, possible because I was adding in a piece that introduced an important character at an earlier, more effective point, working hard at producing a particular emotive effect.

At the end, when I called it quits and put the laptop to sleep, I was left wondering - was my lesser output a sign of having failed to produce, or was the possible greater quality of the work better on this occasion than quantity? I do not have an answer as yet.

poetry article

I had forgotten that the October edition of ACT Write, the journal of the ACT Writers Centre, was to feature a short piece by yours truly about short forms of poetry. So now I am now not just a published poet (one published poem!), I am also a published author on the subject. Woo hoo - watch the head swell now!

some book reviews

Here are some links to some recent book reviews I did:

memory-zero

saturns-children

lord-of-the-clans

a-world-of-hurt

dark-disciple

woot!

After a dry spell, I have just received word that one of my short stories has been accepted for publication in a webzine. And the publisher also intends including it in a print anthology in mid-2010. The webzine should be out in late November or early December and I'll publish a link in here when it's out.