Things slowed down this past week, to the point that last night, I fell a few hundred words behind quota. I know it’s easily fixed, but I feel bad that I let it happen. It would of been easy to pump out a few paragraphs, but honestly I couldn’t think where to go with the story where it was, and still is. Today I’ll be using time at work to write down a few pages of notes of where the story could go so that tonight I can write the couple of thousand words I owe.

I suspect a major reason behind this drop is the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which I’ve taken to playing, because hell it’s an Elder Scrolls game and they’re fantastic. The worlds are immersive and it’s easy to forget all about things like NaNoWriMo when you’re busy fighting a dragon then absorbing it’s fucking soul.

It’s a great game, but I’m going to have to try to force myself to push it back a bit so I can get these fifty thousand words done by the end of the month.

Rather than do a video, I’ve decided to stick with what I know, and that would be writing a blog post.

So we’re a couple of days into week two and things are going excellent. I’m currently sitting at almost 18,000 words and going strong. This is courtesy of the NaNoWriMo word sprints available on Twitter, who have helped massively.

I really feel confident this year. I’m doing well, and provided I can keep going at this pace, I should hit fifty thousand words early.

As usual, here’s my NaNoWriMo profile, where you can see my progress.

Well for those people who read the lame things I post here, ZombieSkittles has it’s own Google+ Page! Why? Because. What will it be used for? Not much beyond having another way to spam you.
Where’s the link? I suggest you click on that rather sexy logo on the left.

The only two things I dislike about the new Brand Pages on Google+ is the lack of a badge similar to the one I use for Facebook in the sidebar, and analytics. Lucky, both have been promised in the future, but how far away these features are is not certain. Hopefully it’s not a long wait.

Coincidentally, Rubenerd.com and Rex Havoc (An epic blog site and awesome story respectively) both have Google+ pages you should add to your circles while you’re there.

I hereby pledge my intent to write a 50,000-word novel in one month’s time. By invoking an absurd, month-long deadline on such an enormous undertaking, I understand that notions of “craft”, “brilliance”, and “competency” are to be chucked right out the window, where they will remain, ignored, until they are retrieved for the editing process. I understand that I am a talented person, capable of heroic acts of creativity, and I will give myself enough time over the course of the next month to allow my innate gifts to come to the surface, unmolested by self-doubt, self-criticism, and other acts of self-bullying.

During the month ahead, I realize I will produce clunky dialogue, clichéd characters, and deeply flawed plots. I agree that all of these things will be left in my rough draft, to be corrected and or excised at a later point. I understand my right to withhold my manuscript from all readers until I deem it completed. I also acknowledge my right as an author to substantially inflate both the quality of the rough draft and the rigors of the writing process should such inflation prove useful in garnering me respect and attention, or freedom from participation in onerous household chores.

I acknowledge that the month-long, 50,000-word deadline I set for myself is absolute and unchangeable, and that any failure to meet the deadline, or any effort on my part to move the dealdline once the adventure has begun, will invite well-deserved mockery from friends and family. I also acknowledge that, upon successful completion of the stated noveling objective, I am entitled to a period of gleeful celebration and revelry, the duration and intensity of which may preclude me from participating fully in workplace activities for days, if not weeks, afterward.

-James

This is an excerpt from No Plot? No Problem! and a sort of joke “contract” for NaNoWriMo. I felt like posting it on here and “signing” it to kick off the novel-writing month that begins in five minutes.

Whelp, in just over six hours this year’s NaNoWriMo begins for me. This marks my fourth year attempting it, and the third year going into it with no semblance of a plan. I have no plot, characters, or even vague ideas. I’m going with hovering my hands over the keyboard and seeing what comes out of it. Will it be good? Probably not. Will it make sense? I sincerely doubt it. Will it be fun? Well shit I hope so.

I bought the official NaNoWriMo handbook on Kindle, No Plot? No Problem! to see if it has any handy tips or good motivational tools. Surprisingly it’s actually interesting to read, and is getting me pumped for the event.

I’m debating whether or not to bother making personal log videos or not. They were really only for me to talk about my progress out loud but I didn’t really make good use of that. We’ll see.

Wish me luck. Also, add me as a writing buddy if you’re participating too.

I’ve started writing in my journal again. I’ve been aiming to write in there regardless of if anything interesting happened that day, as a sort of exercise for myself, and just to record my life out of personal interest.

This along with my friend’s interest in calligraphy, has made me start thinking about something; how often do most of us write? When I say write, I don’t mean “writing” using a computer, as that’s typing. I also don’t mean when you grab a pen to scrawl down a quick reminder or a phone number. I’m talking about sitting down with a pen and paper and writing a page for any reason, whether it’s a letter to someone, for a journal, or even a draft for something that will get typed up later?

The more I think about it, the more it feels like it might be true, that handwritten articles and the act of handwriting itself is becoming a lot rarer. I remember in high school, I’d see the handwriting of many a classmate, and be absolutely appalled at their messy writing. I can only assume the teachers were as well, which is why it started being standard practice for essays and projects to be typed up and printed before being handed up. I mean, if the teacher can’t read it, how can he mark it?
At the same time though, how are people able to improve their writing skills when they’re taught to rely on the computer to make everything neat?

I’d love to see more people handwriting things. It would make me happy.

Looking for something to do to kill some time on your journey through this wide open space we call the Internet? Well, might I make a suggestion? Yes? No? Get to the point? Okay.

Over at The Geekorium, my friend is writing a daily story called Space Flight 704. The story feels very much like a comic book, and daily chapters are bite sized, so it only takes a few minutes to read.
It’s a fun and enjoyable read, and I suggest you give it a look¹ if you have a few spare minutes. Right now. Seriously.

1. Though I assume most people who read this are friends of both of us, and therefore will already be reading the story, or at least know of it. Oh well.

I love message boards. While I’m not as active on them as I used to be, I used to live on roughly twenty different forums, and would post left right and centre. The conversations had on them were priceless and I had lots of  fun.

Darren Rowse, creator and runner of Problogger and TwiTip has recently opened his latest venture; Problogger Community. The website is a paid community message board specially for bloggers to promote their sites and discuss blogging techniques. After just a week it already has well over two thousand active members.

I paid for a months subscription (at the moment the site costs $1.95 USD a month, but Darren has said that as the site gets bigger and things get added the price for NEW subscribers will go up, so it’s pretty cheap.), and wasn’t sure what to expect.
However, once my payment finally went through and I had access to the boards, I was impressed. While some of the discussions don’t prove directly helpful, it’s good reading. There’s a community challenge held weekly as well, which is a really good idea to encourage interaction between people and their blogs, and plenty of opportunities to be exposed to other people’s writing styles.

It’s a great way to improve my writing and blogging, and I thought it’d be something cool to show you guys, if you were interested and had the money to burn.

It’s almost that time of year again.

For those that don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. From November 1st to the 30th, the objective is to write a whole 50,000 word novel. No editting or anything like that, just writing.
Why? To get creative juices flowing. And I know a few people who have been planning and writing novels for years, and being a complete asshole I feel the need to belittle their work by doing this.

Last year I attempted it for the first time with a zombie story (of course). I’d worked it out that I’d need to clear roughly 1700 words a day to reach the deadline for the month, and a little extra. I was way ahead by the end of the second week when disaster happened. Scene: I’m at my laptop, fresh cup of coffee next to it, and finishing a DVD. When it finishes I decide to grab another to use as background noise while I type away. My bed is parallel to my desk, and my DVDs on the other side, so I lay across it to reach them. After a couple moments deliberation I settled on a movie, and flipped onto my back. That’s when I heard the ominous shut down noise of the computer and leapt up. The entire cup of coffee had fallen and poured over the laptop, killing it. No more novel, no more work, and a lot of coffee everywhere. It was a terrifying day for me.

After a few days mourning, I sat on a rusty old desktop from probably five years ago, and tried to start another novel. In the few days I had left before the end of NaNoWriMo, I managed to write 11,000 words of utter nothingness. Of course, that novel never got finished. All that’s left of it is the blurb, which I posted to DeviantArt in case anyone ever wants to see it.

This year I plan to actually finish the 50,000 words, and maybe even finish the novel itself. To be able to say I wrote a whole novel is nothing short of fantastic in my mind. As a plus, some years the organizers have a prize for winners. Last year every winner got a single copy of their novel published for personal ownership. Even without the prize though, it’s a fun even to participate in, provided you have the time.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo as well, add me as a Writing Buddy or something, because I’m awesome.

I’m one of those guys who have a journal to write down feelings, and make the pages soggy with my tears. I’ve posted an entry on here before, and tend to just write random personal thoughts that probably shouldn’t be put out there in public.

However, how do you decide what to write about? Do you write about each day? There’d be a lot of boring entries, and half of them might be the same, unless you were exceptionally amazing. Or just particularly eventful…events that happen?

I’ve attempted to keep journals in the past, but more often than not they turn dark and I end up tearing pages out. I also wrote too much in them to the point that I ran out of things I wanted to, and they end up getting thrown in a drawer gathering dust. Trying not to do either of these things has proven hard, because what’s happened is now I rarely write in it. I don’t want to write anything bland or “emo” in there, but I do want to write in it. Then there’s this blog. A few times when I’ve wanted to write something in the journal, the urge to write it for the “public” has been stronger, and it’s ended up on here.

Trick is, I’m yet to find that middle ground. I’m just wondering if there’s anyone else who’s had this trouble, or doesn’t. Do you keep a journal of some form or another, and is it working out for you?