Nanowrimo: day 11
Remembrance day. Had a poppy; why can they not provide safety pins with them? I always a) make myself bleed due to my amazing lack of physical dexterity or b) lose the poppy when the pin falls out. I would be quite happy to pay 25% more for a poppy if they'd give me a safety pin.
Made a new LJ friend by answering a question posed in a fic title. A really good fic. Wow! All I needed to do yesterday to make a bad day better was go to a German lesson. It also seems like I have another reason to watch Star Trek in Turkish. Oh, I don't understand Turkish; I have no intention of learning the language; I had a Turkish friend once called Gulsche, but she went back to Turkey to be a doctor (how did we communicate? In German). I'll watch it with German subtitles. I'm wondering how good it will be. Will the fact that I don't actually know Turkish make me more or less aware of jarringly bad or unsuited voices? I mean, when I was watching it in German I was concentrating on understanding what I could and only occasionally thinking "Gosh, German!Sulu sounds pretty good" while trying to work out what "I want to kick some Romulan arse" is in German. I feel such a phrase might come in handy some day.
Spent most of the day in the Leeds Met uni library in a desperate attempt to make up my lost Nano count. It worked, somewhat; I got five pages down, and hope to get more down today. I far prefer it to the Leeds Uni libraries; there isn't penis-based graffiti on the desks and I only had murderous impulses towards two people who would NOT SHUT UP. Library, guys; if you want to chat do it in the bar or the food hall or the coffee shop or outside or basically anywhere else on campus.
Incidentally, the pep talk I received in my email was about the benefits of handwriting your Nano novel. I'm seriously disagreeing with it - and not just because of my ring finger blister. Sure, writing your story by hand allows you to take things slower; however, if you're on a 50,000 word deadline and you're meant to forget your Inner Editor I don't think that's such a great idea. I kept on reading back and realising that I'd just written a hundred-word sentence peppered with dashes that changed its thesis right in the middle and thinking "Yeah, I'll have to cut that out in editing". And the strategy of writing yourself away from a bad paragraph - trying to write so quickly you can't see your terrible writing - doesn't work if you're handwriting, which is slower anyway, and your hand keeps seizing up. The paragraph just sits there, mocking you.
Not that I'm going to defect to the computer. Only a very few people have completed the challenge by hand and I'm damned if I'm not going to be one of them. But next year... it's back to the laptop for me. And possibly a genre change. I'm writing a story that requires a lot of worldbuilding and doesn't have too much room for comedy - next year I'll indulge my natural comedic side (I've just realised that my Star Trek and Disability meta post is the no. 1 Google result for "star trek disability" and god-DAMN did I snark at the After School Special handling of some of the disabled characters). I think some novels are just better suited to being written in a glorious 4-week rush than others. Didn't Jack Kerouac write On The Road in three weeks?
Hmm... the auto-detect location thinks I'm in Pontefract. Rubbish.
Made a new LJ friend by answering a question posed in a fic title. A really good fic. Wow! All I needed to do yesterday to make a bad day better was go to a German lesson. It also seems like I have another reason to watch Star Trek in Turkish. Oh, I don't understand Turkish; I have no intention of learning the language; I had a Turkish friend once called Gulsche, but she went back to Turkey to be a doctor (how did we communicate? In German). I'll watch it with German subtitles. I'm wondering how good it will be. Will the fact that I don't actually know Turkish make me more or less aware of jarringly bad or unsuited voices? I mean, when I was watching it in German I was concentrating on understanding what I could and only occasionally thinking "Gosh, German!Sulu sounds pretty good" while trying to work out what "I want to kick some Romulan arse" is in German. I feel such a phrase might come in handy some day.
Spent most of the day in the Leeds Met uni library in a desperate attempt to make up my lost Nano count. It worked, somewhat; I got five pages down, and hope to get more down today. I far prefer it to the Leeds Uni libraries; there isn't penis-based graffiti on the desks and I only had murderous impulses towards two people who would NOT SHUT UP. Library, guys; if you want to chat do it in the bar or the food hall or the coffee shop or outside or basically anywhere else on campus.
Incidentally, the pep talk I received in my email was about the benefits of handwriting your Nano novel. I'm seriously disagreeing with it - and not just because of my ring finger blister. Sure, writing your story by hand allows you to take things slower; however, if you're on a 50,000 word deadline and you're meant to forget your Inner Editor I don't think that's such a great idea. I kept on reading back and realising that I'd just written a hundred-word sentence peppered with dashes that changed its thesis right in the middle and thinking "Yeah, I'll have to cut that out in editing". And the strategy of writing yourself away from a bad paragraph - trying to write so quickly you can't see your terrible writing - doesn't work if you're handwriting, which is slower anyway, and your hand keeps seizing up. The paragraph just sits there, mocking you.
Not that I'm going to defect to the computer. Only a very few people have completed the challenge by hand and I'm damned if I'm not going to be one of them. But next year... it's back to the laptop for me. And possibly a genre change. I'm writing a story that requires a lot of worldbuilding and doesn't have too much room for comedy - next year I'll indulge my natural comedic side (I've just realised that my Star Trek and Disability meta post is the no. 1 Google result for "star trek disability" and god-DAMN did I snark at the After School Special handling of some of the disabled characters). I think some novels are just better suited to being written in a glorious 4-week rush than others. Didn't Jack Kerouac write On The Road in three weeks?
Hmm... the auto-detect location thinks I'm in Pontefract. Rubbish.