Starving artist time!
Hello everyone. It's gone 2am and I'm not asleep. Why's that, you ask? Because I'm doing NaNoWriMo again.
I tried it last year for the first time, and got about 10,000 words into an interesting political intrigue/satire which was loosely based on the exercises from the creative writing class I won from Bing. (Yes, really, Microsoft paid for my writing classes. God bless Bulmer and all who sail in her.) But then I got a job and the free time and spoons sort of dried up. I still have that novel though, and intend to flesh it out because the comments I got from my classmates and teacher were *awesome*.
This year, I find myself jobless and thus with a lot of time on my hands. Somewhere between teaching myself Gaelic for the umpteenth time with Speaking Our Language* and going to the Peter Gabriel concert at the O2 a few weeks back**, I had an Idea for this year's effort. Being me, I gathered my sources together and spent a whole day brainstorming (yeah, some people plan their novels way in advance, but sod that...). So, this year's fantasy-tinged piece, as the first week draws to an end, has so far absorbed bits of:
- The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
- Aeneid book 6
- Creatures from Celtic mythologies
- West Side Story
- A rejected Eastenders script
- Ashes to Ashes
- Heroes
- The awesomeness of Edinburgh
and somehow, this has taken me nearly to 15,000 words, keeping nicely above or near par daily. Partly this is due to actually writing a vague plot outline unlike 2012, and partly I'm being much more regimented. I'm writing it on- wait for it- my original XP desktop, which has several advantages:
1) It has a satisfyingly clacky PS/2 keyboard,
2) It has proper Word installed which gives me a bit more tool-wise than the web one on Skydrive,
3) It's too underpowered to sit and play Warcraft all day instead of writing***
4) I'm sitting in a proper seat in a room which gets the warm winter sun once a day,
5) When I want a break, I can choose between two musical keyboards to noodle about on.
Pete is now getting grimly inevitably used to the 'I'll be right back!' moments where I wander upstairs and don't come back, or when I can't sleep or wake up early because Ideas. (Don't worry! I usually come back and make him watch some Genesis or Pink Floyd on the TV so I can wind down. I think he enjoys it. Well, I do anyway <3)
Another interesting side-effect, which hasn't happened since my MSc studies, is having my appetite replaced by my artybrain working overtime. I went most of last week churning out plot, then looking at the clock and realising it was 3pm and I hadn't eaten but I just need to write this one cliffhanger and I'll have some toast. That along with the New Weight Training Programme inspired by lovely Lori seems to be shrinking bits of me, which is good as long as I keep all the good in-and-out bits ;)
Oh, and isn't creative writing a really good way to expend crap emotions? I'm now taking the daily rage at reading something annoying on the internet, or some pent-up sadness, and throwing it at a word processor. My dear friend Kelly, who's done all manner of script writing and is now a self-published novelist, gave me a lot of good advice about dialogue and now I'm letting the characters just yell at each other and the words just flow out.
It's getting under my skin too. I wrote a particularly unpleasant scene today involving a fight and a death, and it haunted me all the way to the cinema earlier. I was looking round to check something bad wasn't going to happen, and it got into last night's dreams too. My protagonist is such a cruel, beautiful, fragile bastard x
I'm sticking to the rules of no editing until December, which is tough for an OCD perfectionist, but as long as I hit 50,000 words and get it finished I'll be happy. Hell, I might even open the champagne that's sat in the fridge for a year waiting for an excuse.
I'm not going to the in-person meetups, but motivation from lovely friends is always welcome. Tomorrow- er, *today*- is a Saturday NaNoThon, where they encourage donations and a big long session to stave off the week 2 slump. I was originally going to get up early and do a long chunk until the afternoon when I'm actually going to be social, but I might start a bit now. If you'd like to watch some numbers go up and all that, my profile is here and the constant Spotify soundtrack is embarrassingly documented here (may vacillate wildly from prog to cheese to thumpy dance).
If I posted some up somewhere, would any of you like to read it? I haven't shown it to anyone yet, though I'm plotting an exchange with Kelly who's writing her second novel. It might get me posting more here, after all :P
*Most episodes are readily available on Youtube, albeit bad tape quality. It has a certain 90s charm, but it goes at about the right speed for me. Also, the mini-soap is *hilarious*.
**That's a whole other foam-flecked post, which might contain gratuitous Tumblr images and so much fangirling the Internet might fall over.
***But it does have Neverwinter Nights. Dang.
Also available at cryptogirl.dreamwidth.org :D
I tried it last year for the first time, and got about 10,000 words into an interesting political intrigue/satire which was loosely based on the exercises from the creative writing class I won from Bing. (Yes, really, Microsoft paid for my writing classes. God bless Bulmer and all who sail in her.) But then I got a job and the free time and spoons sort of dried up. I still have that novel though, and intend to flesh it out because the comments I got from my classmates and teacher were *awesome*.
This year, I find myself jobless and thus with a lot of time on my hands. Somewhere between teaching myself Gaelic for the umpteenth time with Speaking Our Language* and going to the Peter Gabriel concert at the O2 a few weeks back**, I had an Idea for this year's effort. Being me, I gathered my sources together and spent a whole day brainstorming (yeah, some people plan their novels way in advance, but sod that...). So, this year's fantasy-tinged piece, as the first week draws to an end, has so far absorbed bits of:
- The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
- Aeneid book 6
- Creatures from Celtic mythologies
- West Side Story
- A rejected Eastenders script
- Ashes to Ashes
- Heroes
- The awesomeness of Edinburgh
and somehow, this has taken me nearly to 15,000 words, keeping nicely above or near par daily. Partly this is due to actually writing a vague plot outline unlike 2012, and partly I'm being much more regimented. I'm writing it on- wait for it- my original XP desktop, which has several advantages:
1) It has a satisfyingly clacky PS/2 keyboard,
2) It has proper Word installed which gives me a bit more tool-wise than the web one on Skydrive,
3) It's too underpowered to sit and play Warcraft all day instead of writing***
4) I'm sitting in a proper seat in a room which gets the warm winter sun once a day,
5) When I want a break, I can choose between two musical keyboards to noodle about on.
Pete is now getting grimly inevitably used to the 'I'll be right back!' moments where I wander upstairs and don't come back, or when I can't sleep or wake up early because Ideas. (Don't worry! I usually come back and make him watch some Genesis or Pink Floyd on the TV so I can wind down. I think he enjoys it. Well, I do anyway <3)
Another interesting side-effect, which hasn't happened since my MSc studies, is having my appetite replaced by my artybrain working overtime. I went most of last week churning out plot, then looking at the clock and realising it was 3pm and I hadn't eaten but I just need to write this one cliffhanger and I'll have some toast. That along with the New Weight Training Programme inspired by lovely Lori seems to be shrinking bits of me, which is good as long as I keep all the good in-and-out bits ;)
Oh, and isn't creative writing a really good way to expend crap emotions? I'm now taking the daily rage at reading something annoying on the internet, or some pent-up sadness, and throwing it at a word processor. My dear friend Kelly, who's done all manner of script writing and is now a self-published novelist, gave me a lot of good advice about dialogue and now I'm letting the characters just yell at each other and the words just flow out.
It's getting under my skin too. I wrote a particularly unpleasant scene today involving a fight and a death, and it haunted me all the way to the cinema earlier. I was looking round to check something bad wasn't going to happen, and it got into last night's dreams too. My protagonist is such a cruel, beautiful, fragile bastard x
I'm sticking to the rules of no editing until December, which is tough for an OCD perfectionist, but as long as I hit 50,000 words and get it finished I'll be happy. Hell, I might even open the champagne that's sat in the fridge for a year waiting for an excuse.
I'm not going to the in-person meetups, but motivation from lovely friends is always welcome. Tomorrow- er, *today*- is a Saturday NaNoThon, where they encourage donations and a big long session to stave off the week 2 slump. I was originally going to get up early and do a long chunk until the afternoon when I'm actually going to be social, but I might start a bit now. If you'd like to watch some numbers go up and all that, my profile is here and the constant Spotify soundtrack is embarrassingly documented here (may vacillate wildly from prog to cheese to thumpy dance).
If I posted some up somewhere, would any of you like to read it? I haven't shown it to anyone yet, though I'm plotting an exchange with Kelly who's writing her second novel. It might get me posting more here, after all :P
*Most episodes are readily available on Youtube, albeit bad tape quality. It has a certain 90s charm, but it goes at about the right speed for me. Also, the mini-soap is *hilarious*.
**That's a whole other foam-flecked post, which might contain gratuitous Tumblr images and so much fangirling the Internet might fall over.
***But it does have Neverwinter Nights. Dang.
Also available at cryptogirl.dreamwidth.org :D