Saturday, November 13, 2010

Another NaNoWriMo Post

6271 words today. Not bad at all. Not the 10,000 I was hoping for, but I'm not going to complain too much.

The brain is not a muscle, as we all know, but it does share a certain characteristic with one's muscles. If it doesn't practice something, it stops being good at it. Whenever I've been away from the sword or martial arts for any length of time, I can feel the disuse on my muscles. The old nerve pathways are grown over, and I have to practice until the path becomes clear again.

Same thing with my brain. I've been out of the discipline of writing. It's been months since I engaged in any serious work. Too much of life going on. Moving, organizing a new place, looking after my little girl and changes at work all make it hard to focus on the big projects.

And as a result, the paths in my brain that give a clear line from the subconscious to the page have overgrown. And I needed to do something about it. That's why I went into NaNoWriMo: to get that focus back. And I must say, so far, so good.

This week I did fall down a bit. I had a busy start to the week and precious little sleep, so the writing levels were no where near what I had hoped for. As a result I am behind on the "suggested word count," which is 23,334. My word count is 16,14

My goal tomorrow is to do 3-4000 words, which will get me almost back on track. Then 2000 a day for the next 4 days. After that, it's time for SFContario, which I have been woefully neglectful in publicizing, but which I promise to do a blog post about in the very near future. Really.

Sunday, November 07, 2010

"Winter's Bone" and NaNoWriMo

Too lazy to do two posts. Also, it is midnight and the alarm goes off way to early (yes, I have an alarm on the weekend. I am, in fact, odd).

Just finished watching "Winter's Bone" and if you did not see it in the theatre, I cannot recommend enough that you go rent it. It is incredible. Amazing acting, amazing camera work, amazing use of landscapes. Incredible use of suspense and one of the most truly horrifying scenes on film.

Way, way cool.

Meanwhile, on the other end of things, I did 2000+ words in a couple of hours today, which has me sitting pretty good for where I'm sitting. I am behind, of course. According the page I should be at 10,002 words by end of day Saturday, and I am only at 8,379. Not unexpected. I have my little girl with me this week, and we had a couple of low sleep nights - night terrors and a visit from a mouse. Oy veh.

But, the mouse has vanished and is hopefully holed up in someone else's apartment, the last two nights we both got great sleep, and I'm feeling very energetic, positive and upbeat about the whole thing. It's all good, at the moment.

And so, soon to head to bed, and visions of another 2000 words dancing in my head.

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