I am an novellist!
To clarify, then, since when I posted it was very late and I just wanted to have one celebratory "woohoo!" before going to bed: Since shortly after midnight on November 1st I have been participating in National Novel Writing Month, the ill-named international event whereby participants attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words or more by midnight on November 30th. Last night I liimped over the finish line with 50,021 words, uploaded it to the official site for validation and the link to a "well-done" page and a printable certificate, and turned in, elated.
The novel itself is an awful mash of ill-formed characters, clunky prose, bad dialogue, heavy-handed cod-philosophy, and plot strands that look meaningful for a few pages then wither away to nothingness and are never mentioned again. It is, in short, a mess, but it's my mess, and while I won't be thrusting copies into the hands of whoever I come across (and I certainly won't be posting it here), I am quite proud of it, and of myself for making it to the end. I've always been one for taking on big projects then getting bored a little while later and letting them die. On every computer I have ever owned, including my current MacBook, there have been fragments of stories, novels, video games and applications, and if I still had my ZX Spectrum and assorted tapes you would find the same. I no longer trust myself to finish any project, so I am pleased to have proven myself wrong, if you like, by taking on a task that actually required some discipline and getting through it, despite the inevitable distractions of movies, video games, and personal hygene.
Although the finished product isn't what you'd call a great work of literature, I think the process of writing it has been very useful and will benefit my writing in future. If there's one thing it has brought home, it is that if you are stuck with a piece of fiction and aren't sure where it should go next (usually the point at which I put it away thinking that inspiration will just strike when I'm not thinking about it, which it never does), just write through it. Don't be afraid to be silly or to write bad prose or (as I did) add a talking cat. So long as your story is moving it will get somewhere, and you can go back and choose a better route once you know where it's going.
If was to do NaNoWriMo again, and if I have time in November 2008 I'd like to, I'd maybe go into it with a bit of a plan, rather than the very vague idea I had when I set off this time. It's not cheating to make notes about your novel before Nov. 1st, so long as no actual content gets written. But at least I got there in the end, and if I can write a bad novel, that's one step closer to writing maybe a good one someday.
A Winner Is Me!
Man, am I glad that's over.
Labels: writing
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postTuesday, November 27, 2007
Poster 0.1.2 Released
Another release of Poster is available on the downloads page, this time addressing bugs with the account manager dialog, and a NullPointer exception being thrown within the preferences dialog.
Labels: poster
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSaturday, November 24, 2007
Poster 0.1.1
Hello. All my words are currently being funnelled into my NaNoWriMo novel at the moment, so I don't have too many to spare just now. Normal service will be resumed once November is out.
However, I have put up a new version of Poster, which should fix some problems with self-hosted Wordpress blogs.
Labels: poster
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postThursday, November 08, 2007
Poster 0.1
As promised, version 0.1 of my desktop blogging tool "Poster" is now available for download.
Labels: development, poster
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postWednesday, November 07, 2007
A Day In The Life
MooshiMooshiSan, frustrated at her friends not updating their blogs, has suggested that all and sundry document today, Wednesday the 7th of November, as completely as possible.
I was woken up at about six by Lucy, the largest and pushiest of our two cats, miaowing over and over again in the way she does when she wants fed. Lucy's breakfast alarm seems hard-wired to go off in the early hours of morning to matter what. God knows why. Rather than stagger out of bed at 4am to feed her, we have one of those cat bowls that have a lid, which springs open on a timer. Normally this is enough to get her to shut up and let us sleep through the night, but not this morning. I figured that I'd forgot to set the timer, but when I got up the lid was open and there was still food in it. I tried giving her a bit more, but nothing seemed to shut her up. I also tried going back to bed and closing the bedroom door on her, but predictably that just resulted in a combination of miaowing and scratching, so in the end I just gave up, wide awake and with no chance of getting back to sleep.
It did give me the opportunity to go out for a run, though. I hadn't been out at all last week, and felt that I had lost a bit of momentum. Sure enough, I didn't manage to go as far as I had been able a couple of weeks ago before falling into the run/walk/run pattern, but it was good to get back into it and get my heart rate up. At home, I took a shower, got dressed, and make myself a bowl of muesli and a glass of orange juice, and a bowl of microwave porridge for R. Once I'd eaten I still had some time before my train, so I checked my mail and RSS feeds, and played a turn on Facebook Scrabulous (to which I am incurably addicted) before heading out the door.
At work I put on a pot of coffee, and got fired into finishing off a job that would have been done weeks ago had it not been for various other issues popping up and taking priority. It felt good to finally knock it on the head, but I am only cautiously relieved, since it's entirely possible that I'll be revisiting it once it goes into the product and testing get their claws on it.
At lunchtime I nipped out and bought a pasta-salad thing from M+S, then back at my desk checked my RSS feeds again and did some work on my NaNoWriMo novel. I'm doing fairly well, having passed the 10,000 word mark, but the last couple of days have seen me slow down. Yesterday I managed to hammer out approx. 700 words on my lunch break, but no more later in the day due to attending my writing class, and a gig immediately afterwards. At lunch today I only managed about 400, but every little helps. I'm generally aiming to reach 2000 each day, which should get me comfortably past the 50,000 word mark by November 30th. The novel itself is, of course, complete bollocks, but it's an enjoyable experience and I'll be pleased if I make it past the finish line.
The afternoon in work was mostly spent tidying up some annoying little issues. At home R and I hummed-and-hawed over what to have for dinner, and whether to go out or not. In the end we settled for spinach quesidillas, which R made, and which were, naturally, awesome. We needed a few items so I went out to Tesco. The lady in front of me in the queue bought a bottle of vodka and a packet of cigarettes, and paid from a Hello Kitty purse.
After dinner we watched TV for a little bit. R intends to go with one of her friends to Ikea tomorrow, so we spent some time looking through the catalogue at chairs and bathroom cabinets. Then I did the washing up, and sat down to do a bit more on the terrible untitled novel. Current word-count: 12,688.
Finally, I updated this blog, and went to bed. Probably. I expect there might be time for a little Zelda:Phantom Hourglass before I turn out the light, however.
And that, dear reader, was my boring Wednesday.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postThursday, November 01, 2007
NaNoWriMo
Like an eejit, and as if I didn't have enough projects on the go already, I've decided to give NaNiWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) a crack this year. This means attempting to write a novel of 50,000 words or more between 00:00:00 on the first of November and 23:59:59 on the 30th. To achieve this, authors will have to produce a minimum of 1667 words every day in November. And, before you say it, of course the finished product will be a load of mince. First drafts of novels usually are. First drafts dashed off in a month certainly will be. There's no time to edit, to go back and fix things, to finely craft your prose. All of those things can be done in December. For now it's enough just to write and keep writing.
The task is pretty daunting, but might not be as hard as I had worried it might be. I managed to spit out about 660 words last night in half an hour before turning in. It's quite liberating to no longer have the luxury of going back and tinkering, and to just keep pressing on, so long as you're writing something. I did have a couple of pints earlier in the evening, which may have helped oil the gears somewhat.
Anyway, if I update this place even less in the coming month, that'll be why. If you are also giving it a pop, or just want to be nosy and take a look at how I'm doing, my profile on the official website is here.
I do plan on getting a first release of Poster out in the next few days, however... watch this space!
Labels: diary, poster, writing
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this post