11.30.08

Traveling Man

Posted in Bailout, NaNoWriMo, Rants, Site News, Writing at 7:53 pm

So I’m back in Pittsburgh. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving… Really, I’d have more to say but right now I’m just a little tired. The weekend was good, with a few hiccups, but I’m ready for bed already. Oh, and for the record, I did hit my 50K goal for NaNo on Saturday night, so there’s that– I’ll probably spend the rest of the week finishing up the last four chapters before I get even more distracted by Chrono Trigger. I swear, that game is so good it’s bad for me. Anyway, catch you all… eventually. Oh, I have game and anime reports due on the LJ at some point this week… so I suppose I’ll see you there.

11.22.08

Setting Up Shop

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Shameless Self-Promotion, Writing at 3:26 pm

I seldom make blog posts “in the field”– the fact that I use the WordPress app for the phone makes me glad it was free– but right now I’m sitting in a Panera Bread in Monroeville, my usual writing place, and I’ve just hit the halfway point of the new draft of Blueberries. I still haven’t figured out a new, more appropriate title for the book yet (Blueberries stemmed from a conversation near the middle of the original draft), but that’s later. Right now, the halfway point is as good as any to give the usual update on how things are going.

( Beyond this cut there exist spoilers. Read at your own risk… » )

Overall, I’m looking forward to being able to present this to you guys when the time comes. With Thanksgiving coming up, I’m certainly not going to be able to get the whole thing done before the first of December, but I’ll definitely hit the 50K mark; I’m just barely under 40K right now (and I really ought to get back to that, in point of fact) but I’m planning on getting a couple thousand more each night before I head back to the homestead on Wednesday morning. Trust me, you’ll know when I hit 50.

Oh, and once this writing is all done (and the thing is formatted properly), I’ll be doing quite a bit of catching up; I’m looking forward to announcing my 30/30/109 list. Ciao, kiddies.

11.11.08

An Embarassing Rash

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Site News, Writing at 5:18 am

Don’t know if you guys saw it on the forums this morning, but there was a little bit of a spammer’s streak. This hasn’t happened in a very long time, and I was a little surprised; but the offending accounts and posts have been removed, and all is well again. So, yeah.

I’m halfway through the word count requirement for NaNo, but in point of fact I’ve only gone through a third of the plot that I wanted to do. I’ve also pulled that plot slightly off the rails, too, so I’ve got to do some revising of the outline to this point. Ultimately I’m still in good shape; with any luck I can get a little bit more hammered out in the next few days and have another chapter done by the end of the week. (Of course, I say that heading into what’s probably the hardest chapter to write well… and I can’t really skip around on this project.) We’ll see how things work out.

Ciao for now, folks.

11.09.08

The Little Things

Posted in Gaming, NaNoWriMo, Rants, Writing at 7:43 pm

I don’t want to obsess over this too much since there’s nothing more that I can do, so I promise you that this is the last you’ll hear about the mouse. Until the situation changes. Or the little bastard shows his face again. Yeah.

Beyond that, the novel writing continued fairly well– I’m only half a chapter behind where I wanted to be (after schedule slip), and I’m sure I can pick up the slack over this week. I was worried that I was going to hurt my hands more, but using the wrist brace helped tremendously to a point where I don’t think I’m going to have any trouble tomorrow. So there’s that.

And yeah. I like Burnout Paradise. I was going to write up a lot about it but I figure that it would mostly just be preaching to the choir right now. A choir of screeching tires, shattering glass, and squealing twisted metal. Fun fun crashy.

Catch you folks tomorrow. Maybe. Don’t count on daily updates just yet, but I’m trying to get back into that habit, I really am.

11.05.08

…Already In Progress

Posted in Bailout, NaNoWriMo, Rants at 4:36 pm

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I’m back to my usual boring existence of writing and not doing much else. So we’re back to boring blog entries for the time being. Deal with it.

11.03.08

Oh Yeah, That

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Rants at 11:48 am

I managed to forget putting my wrist brace into my bag. Which is forgiveable enough, as I haven’t needed it for a month or so now. Until this weekend, when I spent twenty hours typing. Yeah.

Also, I keep forgetting to add xkcd to my links list. This post is mostly a reminder of that but also a reminder for the wrist brace, because DAMN do I need it this month.

11.02.08

Knuckle Up

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Rants, Shameless Self-Promotion, Writing at 6:54 pm

So, a fifteen-grand-word weekend. Not a bad start, if I say so myself. Of course now my hands feel like they’ve been stomped on repeatedly by the Incredible Hulk. While he was wearing golf cleats. Do they even make cleats in his size? If they do, they fell on my hands.

So I’m calling it a night fairly early; I got to bed late last night, the time change has screwed my time sense up beyond all salvation, and I want nothing more right now than to collapse into my warm comforting bed. So yeah.

I might just be able to swing daily blog posts this month, too. Don’t count on it, but I’ll do my best.

11.01.08

Already Behind

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Site News at 6:22 am

Yeah, the procrastination started bright and early this morning. I took the time to update my Links page, dropping off a few services I don’t use anymore and a comic which hasn’t updated in over six months, and adding in a couple of the newer things I’ve picked up in the meantime (such as Netflix and LotGD). It might not be terribly interesting, but it is something that I did.

Now, off to get ready to raid the convenience stores for half-price candy write.

07.28.08

Dedication Effect, Take Three

Posted in Anime, NaNoWriMo, Writing at 8:58 am

It might be a little out of the blue, but this week I decided that, given everything going more or less smoothly and given that I’m ahead of schedule on the Backlog project, I’m going to try to get back into the swing of writing the second draft of Harvesting Blueberries. It’s been a month since I last touched it, and probably two or three months since I was seriously setting time aside for it. Most of the Otakon preparation is complete (or not able to be handled until the start of next week) and most of the usual daily-drama stuff is on auto-pilot this week, which provides me with the ability and the opportunity. So, we’re going to do that.

The jury is still out on whether or not I’m going to have to get the ‘humpy’ MS Ergo keyboard. I may have to take a trip out at lunch to see about it first.

On a completely unrelated note, Laura Bailey was announced over the weekend to be a guest at Otakon this year. Which presents me with the problem as such: do I want her to autograph a Fruits Basket disc, or do I want her to autograph FMA? Because unless the session conflicts with, say, the JAM Project concert, I’d like to be there.

06.24.08

Writing Tip: Avoiding Word/Phrase Overuse

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Rants, Writing at 9:30 am

Most folks I know tend to have a handful of words or phrases that they use with alarming regularity. Recently, I’ve noticed the word “actually” showing up in my work with a bit more frequency than I really want to see it. Overusing a word or phrase treads the fine line between a stylistic hallmark and a meaningless filler-word, and it can be the sign of a stagnating vocabulary.

I decided to avoid using the word unless it was absolutely necessary. So, in order to facilitate the negative reinforcement of using the word, I set up TextExpander to automatically replace the word once it was typed with an extra space. There are easy ways around it– for example, TextExpander can be fooled if you don’t type the letters all at once (for example, starting with “actu”, typing the next word, then arrowing back to finish up with “ally”)– but it’s more work than just typing the word straight-up. That thought process leads me to think of something better to put in its place– or, more likely, to rephrase my thought so that I don’t use it.

The principle can be applied to any text replacement program available on any platform, but it does require that you know what words you’re seemingly overusing.