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  • Dark Liquid 1:39 pm on December 2, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: cars, driving, insurance, nanowrimo, ,   

    So NaNoWriMo is over, though if I’m honest it ended for me barely a day after I began so I reach December with barely 1 days worth of words written, let alone the whole 50k minimum. I wasn’t really expecting to have the time or energy to work on it, as the commute to work after 2 years is starting to wear me down, so I’m not really too cut up about it.

    And on the happy note of the commute, I finally passed my driving test. I passed it by the skin of my teeth, more by luck than I’d like, but hell, I’ll take the win after the umpteen failures I’ve already collected. Now I have the fun, fun, fun time of trying to get car insurance that isn’t cripplingly expensive. It’s looking might it actually might be cheaper to buy a brand new car on finance and pay the insurance on that, as the insurance on my current car (which depressingly I realise I’ve owned for almost a year without being able to drive it) is more than double the quotes I’m getting on new cars and the finance costs of new cars over 5 years or so are roughly equal to the insurance premium (which should hopefully drop after the first year) whilst also having better fuel economy. Kinda sad that I buy a used car, only to find almost a year later it’s as if not more expensive for me to own and run than a brand new one.

    Money, money, money! Arrrrgh!

     

    • Chelle (@Asheyna) 5:37 am on December 3, 2011 Permalink

      YAY for the test! Driving is cool, like bow ties, and fezes. Good luck with all the car stuff… I hate gov’t/administrative crap… makes me want to buy an island (you’d be invited of course).

  • Dark Liquid 5:43 pm on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: nanowrimo,   

    NaNoWriMo Cometh! 

    NaNoWriMo is on the horizon once again. After putting out a call for suggestions on what story to develop via Google+, the story Crowd Dodging won out, so this years NaNoWriMo will be a tale of three teenagers inventing their own sport, losing control of it to big media and then fighting to take it back.

    Or it will be, if I can actually get it written.

    I’ve been having trouble outlining it, coming up with scenes, etc. The idea just don’t want to form in my head. This is typical of me, I’m not a great planner in any sphere, for example in programming I find it much easier to think through ways to do something by trying the actually code a solution, rather than by planning it all out with flow charts and everything else beforehand. However, I do like having lots of goals to meet, which, without a plan, is quite hard. I think instead I might have to outline as I go and use my notes more as a map to refer back to for consistency, rather than as a guide of where to go.

    However, what I have done so far is working out well. I’m using Zim, a desktop wiki application to keep notes, which I save to a dropbox folder so I can access them wherever I go. Mapping out my protagonists is going reasonably well, I’m currently using the Dresden Files RPG character generation sheets to flesh them out a bit (the game uses FATE as a rule system, which is fairly story-focused and works very well). I’ve been doing with using Fiasco or Do as scene generators, but neither really suit the genre I’m writing for, so I’ve not bothered.

    The worst thing though is that I’ve been quite busy recently since getting off holiday, so I doubt I’ll have much time to develop my outline further or even get any writing done. Which is why I’m worried about not having an outline, because without clearly defined goals, I’m likely to flounder in the limited time I do have!

    But what the hell, lets have a go anyway.

     

    • Chelle (@Asheyna) 6:09 pm on October 26, 2011 Permalink

      Well you’ll have me cheering you on! And giving you random weird suggestions for scenes. I too am having trouble plotting too much of my novel, no real clear outline although I know the major plot arc from beginning to end. I plan to just see what happens.

      I hope you find the time to write it, Crowd Dodging is such a neat concept!

    • Mykell 7:46 pm on October 31, 2011 Permalink

      Love it, and so excited. I hope we both make our count this year…

  • Dark Liquid 3:54 pm on October 18, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: nanowrimo,   

    Help me choose a project for NaNoWriMo

     

  • Dark Liquid 8:45 am on November 28, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: laments, nanowrimo,   

    No More NaNo 

    Okay, NaNoWriMo just isn’t for me. I’ve tried, oh how I’ve tried, but it just isn’t happening. This is my 7th or 8th attempt now and like all but 1 its ending in failure. This November I was just too busy, the i-series event just took it out of me and I didn’t recover until I was almost 20000 words behind and even then still felt too mentally drained to be fully creative.

    Furthermore, my story sucked. I never got any of the research or organisation stuff I wanted done and so it was utterly, utterly terrible. While that didn’t bother me per se, it made starting writing again hard as the compromise I have with my inner editor is that I will at least try and maintain continuity which necessitates re-reading what I’ve written to remember where I am in the story. Reading you own writing and hating it is incredibly demoralising though and so that’s part of the reason I’m calling it a day.

    To be honest, I think I’m throwing in the towel permanently. Winning NaNoWriMo is definitely the excepting to the rules with me and being that I’m often so busy in November I just don’t have the time and this on-going illness of mine really doesn’t benefit from the stress of the challenge. Frankly, I’m not getting anything out of it any more, which is sad because I really did enjoy it and so sadly I have to bud BaNo adeiu until my life has room for it again. I’ll keep on writing of course, but at my own pace on my own terms.

    Farewell NaNo, it was fun.

     

    • jade 6:59 pm on December 13, 2010 Permalink

      i found with my psychical illness that everything just became effort, and then the psysical became psycological, depression and genral brain fog came with my diegnosis of fibromyalgia but also depression came with my later diegnosis of BPD, and concentration went with the later later DX of schizotypal disorder(like schizophrenia but with a mood disorder to boot) all that and the tim since then and now things in my life have just got fewer and fewer, you know like having to leave uni because i just coudnt concentrate anymore ect, which adds to depression and becomes a circle or a rut.

      all i can say is its good you still have stuff to do, because it helps, you dont want to oneday wake up and just want to stay in bed because quess what there is no point. i think your doing amazing with everything you have to do, plus want to do, all along with your illness, you carry on, and thats great, i wish i had the same.. motivation.
      ive been out of education for a year and abit now and well i havnt worked in forever, and mostly i feel guilty and just plane bored out of my mind, heh people who know me think it must be great not having responsablitys, but id trade any day, these days i pray i had a job where i was good at it and responsable.

      anyway, i think just as long as you kep doing somthing.. anything it will be good for you and your sleep, depression and even the psysical stuff.
      just dont get into the thought that if you stopp doing somthing you have always done that you must be ill and this is the point of no return, fuck that.. it isnt, you carry on writing and im sureoneday youll do nano again.

      i dont know why im rambling on at you about this, but i guess from my own experience i just wanted you to know that being ill dosnt make you some kind of crippled ghost.
      im sure even i will be doing somthing oneday, after therepy who knows… anyway sorry im rubbish at typing, sorry if this made no sence whatso ever.. my cognition is totally fucked because of my DX you know.. ranting and raving noncence :P

      anyway just wanted to say chin up really, but in a really long round about way.

      -jade, ps say i said hi to dru and hope shes ok too.

  • Dark Liquid 8:37 pm on October 13, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: nanowrimo, panic, planning,   

    PlaNo WhinO 

    I don’t really have any kind of plan or pattern to writing. I don’t have a method or plan of attack, generally I just play it by ear. This isn’t exactly the best way, but I’ve always found I tend to flounder and get stuck with a sort of ‘analysis paralysis’ if I think things out to far or try and plan to exhaustively. I’m historically terrible at estimating deadlines or any kind of project management, so I’m a little confused as to why I’m trying to do so this time around for the coming NaNoWriMo.

    Maybe it’s because this novel I’m writing this time I’m actually serious about trying to publish. Maybe I’m insane to think I can, to be honest, I’m riddled with doubts, I’m not sure I’m in love with this story in the same way I have been with previous works. I dunno, gah! Doubts, doubts, doubts.

    Regardless, I’m going to tackle it head on and make myself go through the effort of multiple drafts and revisions. So far I’ve mapped out character, event and location relationships using some mind mapping software and I’ve slowly been making a list of various plot points I want to address. I’m still a little hazy on a lot of the specifics of the plot developments but I’m planning on expanding on the points I have – not writing the story and ‘cheating’ at NaNoWriMo, but rather just writing slightly more detailed story cards, brief scene coverage and more detailed notes about what is going on between the characters at that point in time. I’m going to start drumming up some character cards as well, making something akin to character sheets from roleplaying games.

    I tend to find that I can be a lot more organised and creative when I can organise my ideas visually and more important, spatially. Playing with some physical cards, organising things, making patterns I can actually see and move with my hands – I think it’ll help. Then again, maybe it wont, it’s not something I’ve done before and maybe I’m invested in it merely as a kind of crutch, hoping it will save a story I secretly believe is doomed to fail.

    One thing I do know is that I should stop double-guessing myself and just fucking do it.

    It going to be harder than ever this year though. Last year I wasn’t going to be at one of the i-Series LAN gaming events and last year I didn’t have minecraft eating my soul and every spare minute of my time. It’s going to be fun this year though and even though I’m dreading it, I’m really looking forwards to actually writing properly rather than whenever I feel it, on a whim, without any real goals or developing existing works rather than constantly churning out new ideas and leaving them without an ending or most of the time without a middle or much of a beginning either. Writing something with a proper goal in mind is important and exciting but it’s scary too, ugh.

    Well, I need to come up with another 250 words to bring myself up to this days total if I want to stay on a roll. Sustaining 750 words a day has suddenly become hard. I’ve also suddenly started playing minecraft, yeah… correlation in this case definitely does mean causation I’m thinking. I’m also not exactly writing without distractions at the moment either. Last one I wrote whilst at work and needed to go and get lunch in the middle of it, now I’m writing while watching TV and yeah, it isn’t working.

    Ugh 150 words now. It’s not even NaNo yet and I’m already struggling. There is no hope for me. I need to find something to kick my arse, the trouble is the reward thing doesn’t really work with me because meh, I can do without, after all I don’t have the thing now and so I’m fine to do without. A problem with the whole Epicureanistic mindset I guess. I’m just going to have to focus on the sheer awesomeness of what it will be to get published or the not quite as much awesome, but still pretty good thing of getting an agent or publisher at least show some interest or the lesser still, but none the less satisfying set of rejection letters from agents and/or publishers. Getting a response at all would be a good thing, it means that I’m actually a real writer rather than just a poser that churns stuff out but doesn’t actually write.

    Stats

     

    • Asheyna 10:04 pm on October 13, 2010 Permalink

      I hereby volunteer to kick your ass for you!

      Seriously… I’ll be a cheerleader. I’ve found getting my 750 words really easy some days, and insanely difficult others. One of the things I read somewhere was that even if you just write “I don’t know what to write” over and over again you’ll come up with stuff. Sometimes I’ll start with “I have no idea what to write, it seems kind of silly, I don’t know what or why…” and just sort of let my brain spaz lol.

      You are a writer, and a brilliant one! Having talked to you a little about your novel I’m excited for it. Whether you manage to write it all during NaNo, or it’s just a start I sincerely hope that you do write it.

      *huggles and cheers*
      Ash

  • Dark Liquid 1:06 pm on November 29, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: chrome, nanowrimo, , tgr, ,   

    I Did It! 

    This year, like every other, I’ve been throwing myself at NaNoWriMo, desperately trying to squeeze out 50000 words of pure novelly goodness. Every year, I’ve failed, usually even before I reach the half way mark. This year however, I finally did it.

    nano_09_winner_120x240

    I won NaNoWriMo!

    I’m completely chuffed. it’s a story I’ve wanted to write for ages even even though this particular revision of it is absolutely terrible, I’m proud to have finally completed it none-the-less. I may edit it come March in NaNoEdMo but for now I’m just blown away to have achieved it at all.

    If you feel the need to read a piece of utterly terrible literature that emerged from some in-depth world-building combined with basically no story planning whatsoever, then you can find the story on Protagonize.com. It’s called Triad: Hath Three Parts Wrought, and it’s a piece of shit but I love it :)


    Yesterday evening (and most of the very early morning today) we had a party round Lorcian’s new flat as a sort of belated house warming. We did a massive radio show special for around 5 hours or so on TGR with several of the other GRN DJs that came down to visit. We had a laugh, everyone got very drunk and we played highly disturbing, homoerotic Japanese muscle flexing games on the Wii (which I apparently have a knack for, I held the highest score of the night!)

    In other news, I’ve completed a whole month at Multiplay! It’s been awesome and I’m really enjoying myself there. There been some minor technical hiccups since switching from developing on a Mac to using Linux (everyone else there is using Windows but I’d literally go insane if I had to) but I feel I’m really starting to come into my role there and hopefully things will progress a bit faster now that I’ve found my feet. I still miss Textmate and any of the alternatives I’ve tried have various issues. At the moment I’m using netbeans, but it’s terribly slow when doing code completion after having been running for a few hours, especially on a large codebase like I’m working on. I’d like to try the E text editor but it’s been an arse trying to compile it under Linux on Ubuntu Karmic. I might try running the Windows version with WINE, though I don’t fancy relying on a non-native piece of kit for my primary editor.

    I’ve recently switched to using the Chrome browser daily builds from the karmic ppa and damn, it’s crazy fast. I am astonished at how fast it runs and for now it’s become my primary browser. It really makes the web an entirely different place, the difference is that much.

    So yes, it’s been an interesting month. Rubbish and filth are piled high where both Dru and I have been ignoring chores, housework or basic human hygiene in lieu of writing as much as we can in any spare our we have so we’ll have some interesting times ahead but all I can think of now is how awesome it is to have finally won NaNoWriMo.

    Hell yes.

     

  • Dark Liquid 6:41 am on December 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , nanowrimo,   

    Another Year, Another NaNoWriMo, Another Failure 

    Once again I have failed NaNo, following what seems now to be a tradition over 3 years old. This year Dru and I decided to try and work on a single story together, each of us putting in 50000 words. Dru won because she is awesome. I failed with only 25500 words.

    Post-mortem – What went wrong

    Well, I think the main problem was, ironically, one that Dru was worried would effect her and I was quick to dismiss – that of us writing parts that involved other’s characters.

    The plan from the beginning was that we would each take a handful of characters and we would run through their individual plot lines until they met up, where one of us would take over (depending on whose character met whoms, etc, etc. I ended up with two characters, while Dru ended up with 4, pluss all of her secondary characters. My characters on the other hand were mostly solitarry or aloof and didn’t really have much in the way of a supporting cast which I think only contributed to my downfall.

    Without enough characters, I began to run out of stuff to write. While Dru could happily plough on through, I needed to keep these two characters going with little support from the rest of the story and not only that, I needed to keep the events of two characters aligned with the events of four other ones, something that made the task of writing for them even more difficult.

    Another issue is that I find Dru’s writing style quite hard to read, especially when it’s during the heat of NaNoWrimo and horribly unformatted and unedited. Trying decode the wordstorm so I can work out what’s going on and align events in my own plotlines was taxing and demoralising.

    Mostly though, I have only myself to blame. I refuse to ‘cheat’. I refuse to use dirty tricks to bump up my word count. I want to write a novel in a month, not just 50000 words of babbling garbage and mindless repetition. It didn’t have to be a good novel, but it still had to be a novel, otherwise I’d have a character start stuttering at the beginning and never stop until they’d repeated the same word 20000 times or something.

    I also didn’t want to give up doing the things I usually do, like watching various TV shows, playing the odd game on the PS3 or doing roleplay. All of those ate time I could have used writing and maybe if I’d had to inclination to forsake these for a month in favour of writing, I’d have done better.

    The Good Bits

    It wasn’t a complete failure I suppose. This year I’ve got further than ever before. My last record was 14000 so reaching the halfway mark this year was a definate improvement. At this rate maybe I’ll win NaNoWriMo come 2012…

    We also have an unfinished (I was meant to write the ending but never did) novel of 75000 words so far and hopefully during editing we can turn our awful spewing of crap into something beautiful, or if not that, at least something we can read without wincing with embarrassment.

    I don’t know if I’ll do NaNoWriMo next year, but then again I never do until the few weeks before. Guess I’ll see next year.

     

    • Dru 9:08 am on December 2, 2008 Permalink

      *hugs* Oh honey. I kept giving you the option to take some of my charas, but you declined. and you have to be obsessed if you want to win!
      And I didn’t cheat, all the much. I only had the charas play ‘eye spy’ for 500 words because I was stuck, everything else was pure story.
      But it doesn’t matter, this was a learning experience and as long as you try and remember what happened this year and don’t apply it next it’ll be fine and you’ll win because you are wonderful and awesome :)

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