Archive for the NaNoWriMo Category

In the mood in the moonlight.

Posted in Music, NaNoWriMo on October 19, 2008 by Woodsmoke

I have a mind to write my entire NaNo whilst listening to nothing but Glenn Miller and Oingo Boingo. Would five CDs worth of Miller magic cover 50,000 words? Add to that nine (downloaded- don’t tell!) cds of Danny Elfman howling down my speakers and the mood is pretty much set.

Roleplaying with NaNo characters is amusing, especially when the opposite RP-er is using her sex-crazed succubus to tempt my repressed character into wickedness.

Attempting to organise all my poetry into three distinctive categories: Static Cats, Pagan Prayers and Unusables. Unfortunately, more of them are in an unfinished state than I realised, being scribbles torn from notebooks. A Static Cat is written on the back sheet of a Pagan Prayer and the unusables are thrown about all over the place. Give me six extra right arms for the copying up, because I don’t EVER want to lose the originals- not just original scribblings, but original feelings, often lost in the edit. I’d much prefer to keep them for future reference.

Honour the glorious poets. Their shades that left us are now returned.

Natural oppressor.

Posted in NaNoWriMo, writing on October 17, 2008 by Woodsmoke

Is it wrong that I come up with the way my main characters die before I get the rest of the plot done? Or that I had it in mind that at least one of the five characters had to be deceased by the end of the book? It’s a common plot-point, in many many hundreds/thousands of books, I know, and people die in literature all the time: But to enter into a plot with the determination to kill off a character right from the start?

Oppression is in the author’s nature. It depends on how far you go… how they die, how many people die and are all those deaths necessary? Well, with the characters in question, at least one of them really is. My poor boy just wasn’t looking after himself, and even this modern world can’t beat the sickness caused by obsessive behaviour and reclusiveness!

Playing the bad guy when writing is only fun when the characters get to counteract it at the end. This time they don’t and though I’m not one for writing schmaltzy endings, this one would be better for me personally if it had a happy finale. But we sacrifice our wish for what needs to be written.

In other news, I am reading again! I can’t put down the His Dark Materials books at the moment. ^.^;;

Honour the glorious poets. Their shades that left us are now returned.

Lobster Lullabies and napkins.

Posted in NaNoWriMo, comedy, writing on October 13, 2008 by Woodsmoke

Influence? Watch Stephen Fry either performing acapella as a musical instrument on Nevermind The Buzzcocks, or putting lobsters to sleep (rubbing their backs and singing a lullaby O.o) in Stephen Fry in America. Random at the least and disturbing at the utmost.

Itching to get November 1st over and done with. I can’t do anything more to my NaNo planning and I want to get typing! But while I can’t start my NaNo, my poetry has hit a wall, as well. I can’t get on with it!

Muscling Muses

Posted in NaNoWriMo with tags , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2008 by Woodsmoke

A main-character that I don’t want to write about at this time of year will not turn a mute button on herself! She is non-NaNo and is therefore nothing but a pest right now. She muscles in on the writing space in my brain and wont let go. Egotistical tramp.

Suddenly my enthusiasm for writing my NaNo novel, The Words Between, is either down so far in the dumps it can’t be seen, or has taken itself for a very long and dangerous walk. I have a feeling the previously mentioned MC may have played a part in its’ disappearance- holding it for ransom in some steel-locked room in my deepest subconscious? The payment is three whole chapters in her story. TOUGH LUCK. My playstation2 is partly to blame, I know, so on Saturday I’ll be carting it over to my grandfather’s flat and leaving it there, so I don’t get tempted to play Final Fantasy instead of working out plot points.

Even this blog counts as procrastination, but at least I’m WRITING something, rather than staring at a tv, pressing triangle-x-circle-x-square-triangle-down-left-R1 oops Gameover!

Perhaps the Snowflake method will work for this book. We’ll see.

Honour the glorious poets. Their shades that left us are now returned.

When all else fails, try insanity.

Posted in NaNoWriMo with tags , , , , on September 29, 2008 by Woodsmoke

Tres amusement, the lunacy known as POTC: Dead Man’s Chest bloopers. When tears are coming from the eyes, you know it’s brilliant comedy. And completely off the cuff!

KILL HIM!

I will now stop procrastinating and write up my character bios. AHEM. Writing letters from the POV of five different characters doesn’t strike me as being easy. Authorial schizophrenia maybe a fascinating new brand of psychological disorder…

Honour the glorious poets. Their shades that left us are now returned.

NaNoWriMo, poetry and all that ink-soaked malarkey.

Posted in NaNoWriMo with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 29, 2008 by Woodsmoke

October begins on Wednesday and the mad-cap planning for National Novel Writing Month begins: I started mine already, having rejected three other novels which would take far more than a month or two to plan out and write. Trying to focus on the story begs the question of whether I’m cut out for the novelling life, poetical endeavours. NaNo is the test of faith for any writer, an Arthurial challenge to test one’s devotion to one’s characters, stories and verses.

I have enjoyed scribbling verses since childhood and, later in life, original stories (and gods forgive me, Mary-sue fanfictions, for a necessary bout of escapism). But whether or not I have the determination to complete a novel and ignore all doubts that I have about it’s plot, realism and reception is an entirely different arena. Every novelist or poet struggles with this, I know, but it’s always that feeling that YOU are the worst writer in the world; YOU will be mocked and jeered by a hundred sneering critics, like some village idiot thrown into the mud.

The more I look at my NaNo plot, the more I think of it as something akin to a soap-opera storyline and I fear ever more that I will give up halfway through, beaten down by my own fears. I try to take my friend Steph’s advice: just to keep writing and writing and writing and hell be damned, it’s no one’s business what goes from my mind onto computer or paper. I only wish I had that kind of courage.

I will write. I wont have anyone thinking that I wont. Wish me luck!

Honour the glorious poets. Their shades that left us are now returned.