Actually about another 5K to go. But still.

Words and Pictures

Thursday, November 15th, 2007 09:35 am
How I wish I had a functional camera*: it's such a glorious frosty morning here. Red-leaved hedgerows under frost, smoke drifting from chimneys like blue chiffon, syrupy sunshine.

Nanowrimo is going well. It's halfway through the month and I should be halfway through the 50K: in fact I'm a couple of thousand words ahead of that, though it feels like much more because of losing 4 days to migraine.

I do think my writing habits are especially well-suited to a project like this. In the past I've had difficulty writing short stories, because I prefer to write a 'block' of fiction start to finish without interruptions. Quite a few of my stories consist of a single block that's thousands of words long -- requiring hours of uninterrupted writing time.

Longer pieces, novellas and novels or even multi-part, multi-POV stories,are easier. I tend to write in scenes rather than in chapters, and my basic unedited scene is usually about a thousand words long. I can (and do) write a thousand words in under an hour (though I may eventually spend more than an hour editing it) which means I can produce a building-block of plot before I get out of bed, and another (theoretically) at lunchtime, and another between getting home and heading for the pool ...

Yesterday evening I felt very lethargic, so shelved plans to write and to swim and curled up by the fire with a notebook, scribbling chapter notes. This was almost as good as Morning Pages for getting the creative flow going again. When I write a scene I have a pretty good idea of what happens in it: when I scribble outlines I'm playing, and last night I came up with some pretty good ideas about what happens in the next 10K.

So -- fellow Nano writers, how're you doing? what works for you? and is there a better word than 'block' for 'unit of writing output'?

* still waiting for Fuji to send the copy of the original 'we're giving you an upgrade' letter so I can exchange my current camera, filled with Barcelona sand, for a new shiny one.

Halfway!

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 11:12 pm
though perhaps slightly more than halfway through plot ...
Still, nearly 20K since this time last week!

(since the official Nano progress meter hasn't yet picked up latest wordcount update).

I do have another scene, or even two, ready to write, and it's funny how not writing them feels like not trying hard enough. But I take my inner swot rather less seriously than I did at 20, and it's not as though I have spent my day slacking: a walk, a swim, some housework, 4806 words and multiple LJ posts. Oh, and cat-wrangling.

I have caught up with myself.

I am going to have a glass of wine and go to bed, with pusscats, Dead Serious Academic Text and the knowledge that the next 2K should be pretty easy going, even on a Monday.

Which is grand, as I'm slightly ahead of target (from being nearly 4K behind on Wednesday) and it's only lunchtime.

I have a peculiar sort of earache, which I can best describe as the migrainey headache transplanted about 5cm left. It's hard to locate -- certainly not old-fashioned ache of inner ear, which I suffered from very badly as a child -- but very firmly in one place: problem is, the place where it feels as though it is, is outside my skull. Perhaps I have an invisible antenna or other sense organ protruding from my left temple, and it's an ache in that?

On the subject of invisible things, I realised yesterday that I was still suffering the hallucinations (or visualisations) that came with the migraine-or-whatever. Trust me, the middle lane of the M25, about to enter the Dartford Tunnel, is not a good time for this realisation. Very entertaining it was, though. Shiny and weird.

this next bit may sound slightly weird.
Given that many of my hallucinations are of people, I was vaguely hoping that a visit to St Peter's Chapel would produce ghosts themed hallucinations. It didn't. Though that in turn produced a story-germ, which I have dutifully scribbled.

Right: must be time to get up and go out for some fresh air, though possibly not as fresh as yesterday. Also to get ache out of bones. I'm still aching quite a lot from the tense muscles that so often accompany migraine attack. (And still feeling nauseous and randomly sleepy. This is a week after initial attack. Stop now kthx.)
this makes me happy

In other news: mostly Nano and Builder-Evil Displacement )

And finally, an LJ enhancement that I like a lot -- tag autocompletion (= no more misspelt variants). Yay!

Wordcounts ...

Saturday, November 10th, 2007 09:38 am


Can my Nanowrimo word count include the long letter of complaint I've just written to the property management co, concerning the multifarious sins of the Upstairs Builders and in particular the nasty argument I've just had with their chief about starting work, very very noisily and right above my bed, at ~8am on a Saturday? Just as I was firing up the laptop for this morning's chapter(s)?

No way I can work here, it is too loud and I am pretty stressed about it.

*tries to think positively about Displacement activities*
- book reviews written today: 2 (Dream Angus, The Virtu -- over here)
- favourite fantasy novels reread today: 0
- words of Nanowrimo written today: 4255
- time spent online without agonising headache: over an hour and counting.

November redux

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 10:50 am
An update to New Month's Resolutions:

Since Saturday I have:
- written nothing, due to migraine
- read nothing new, due to migraine (occasional half-hours of quality rereads)
- eaten very little, for values of 'eat' that include 'retain'
- veered between calling myself a slacker and wishing this would STOP.

on migraines )

This morning I turned on my writing laptop and it died. Luckily, after several safe-mode reboots and some auto-file repair, Windoze fired up and I could save my 8K of Nanowrimo onto the USB stick. So I am now online on werk laptop (though 'online' is making me feel sick) looking at new laptops. Though it would probably be better to just use the werk laptop until I can go somewhere and shop properly.
In November I shall:
- write 2K a day
- catch up on my non-fiction reading (this is Research) and not wallow in rereads, even the source text for my Yuletide challenge
- catch up while I should be werking on my fiction reviews: Dream Angus, The Virtu, The Mirador ...
- read that darned Hawthorne book for the Penguin blog-a-classic thing
- not spend money I don't have in the book room at Novacon
- create a Nanowrimo character who is sekritly my solicitor (you know, like in dreams) and give her a painful and undignified death
- get fit again now that I'm off the pills that made me devour every carbohydrate in sight.

November ...

Thursday, November 1st, 2007 09:10 am
NaNoWriMo is not off to a good (or indeed any) start. This is because I am unable to resist temptation. And very good temptation it was too. Unfortunately now my head is full of the wrong things -- and, for some reason, Baroque opera instead of salty shanties. (Did not know until Saturday that Biber had produced an opera. Arminio. Track 1 on the first CD and the second half of track 16 on the 3rd CD are really good. Apart from that there is very little ensemble work -- Biber's forte.)

Anyway,



werk now.

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