Look, a dancing robot!

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Lastly, a quick good luck to everyone starting NaNoWriMo this weekend. I won’t be joining you this year, unfortunately, but I’m looking forward to seeing you all sweat!

Anyway, off to play a little Fallout 3 before bed.

Anyway, I thought I’d post the first little chunk of it here. It’s just the start of the opening scene, and it’s mainly dialogue, so it’s probably not the best piece to excerpt, but I thought parts of it were funny.

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“Not that one, you idiot,” said the coffee mug next to the computer.

Mark Dryer stared at it for a moment, opened his mouth to ask it to shut up, but thought better of it. Coffee mugs don’t talk, and he really wished this one would understand that. Only a few days ago, he had been living in quiet bliss, having gone through his entire life without anything inanimate speaking to him. It was one of those simple pleasures that one doesn’t cherish until gone. He nudged the mug away with the end of his pencil and tried to focus on his work.

The square his mouse was hovering over had the number three written on it, and it was surrounded by five blank squares. He held his breath and pushed down the button, and as he released, dozens of squares on the board lit up with red bomb icons.

“I told you,” said the mug, “and you did not listen. This is a simple game. I do not understand why you continue to fail.”

Mark sighed, closed the program, and glanced at his clock for the fifth time in the last minute. The final hour of a work day always seemed to last a lifetime, especially when trying to ignore your newly developed insanity.

“You do understand that the number is a representation of how many bombs are surrounding the square, yes? They are meant to be there as a guideline. You are to use those numbers when deciding which square is free of bombs. Why do you keep taking random guesses?”

“I understand Minesweeper!” Mark shouted at the mug.

“Good for you,” called a voice from the other side if his cubical wall. “Maybe next month you’ll master tic tac toe.”

“I was talking to…” Mark began, but decided it wasn’t the right time to reveal his talking glassware.

Trent’s head popped up above the wall, his glasses nearly falling from the tip of his nose and his curly red hair sticking out from under his baseball cap like the squashed remains of a giant centipede under someone’s foot. “We’re the only office monkeys left in here, man. If you weren’t talking to me, what were you talking to? Your stapler?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not insane,” said Mark as he lifted the empty mug with two rulers and dropped in into his filing cabinet, sliding it closed and locking it.

“I wonder sometimes,” said Trent, as he climbed down from his chair. “It’s nearly five. I’m out of here.”

Mark shut off his computer, wishing he could just throw it out the window instead. Since he started this job, one year ago, each day seemed to drag on longer and longer. He had been so sure of where he wanted to go in life. There was no doubt in his mind, when he was offered this position, a copy editor for Makeshift Publishing, that it was perfect for him. Now that he was here, filling out useless paperwork while trying to stay awake through endless hours and endless days, he didn’t know where he belonged.

“Are you going to the pub tonight? Half the company is going to be there. It’s Thursday wing night,” Trent said, as if he couldn’t possibly fathom the idea of someone resisting chicken fried in week old oil and dipped in store-bought BBQ sauce.

“I think I’m going to pass tonight.”

“Wouldn’t want to cut in to your big night of television, would we? Sometimes I’m shocked you even manage to get out of bed in the morning, after the wild nights you have,” Trent said, disappearing around the corner.

This hasn’t been the best month for me. Near the beginning, I was ill for the first time in ages. Then last week, I had a wee bump on my thigh, which quickly developed into an abscess of pain and misery. It was inconveniently positioned, so it rendered me crippled. After a very slow hobble to the doctor, much pain, and antibiotics, I’m now happily on the road to recovery. Thankfully I can work from home, so I was able to spend the last couple days of the week stewing in my solitary anguish.

I’ve narrowed down the list of any minor changes to my life in the last couple of months to find what could be negatively affecting my physical being this way, which sadly only really amounted to three items: planning to take part of NaNoWriMo, rock climbing, and more actively trying to eat healthier, non-processed, organically-grown food.

I’m either allergic to leading a healthy lifestyle or potential creative endeavours.

It’s been suggested that I just tweak my word count goal to exclude that week, dropping it down to 40,000, but I know that won’t work for me. The motivation wouldn’t be there without that common goal at the end.

I do like the start of my novel, and the plot that’s formed in my head, so I’ll still be writing. It won’t be at the cutthroat pace of NaNoWriMo, but it will get done. While this may be a failed attempt, I do think I’ve gained from this experience. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been trying to come up with a novel-worthy plot. None of the ideas seemed good enough, and I was worried I’d start writing and find myself halfway through a novel with a terrible idea. NaNoWriMo forced me to come up with a plot, and I realise now that it’s not the end of the world of an idea doesn’t pan out; just learn from the experience and start writing something else.

I wish everyone still participating good luck. Those I’ve been following seem to be doing an amazing job, so keep it up.

Friday didn’t go quite as well. I felt ill all day, and I decided to try and nap it off when I got home from work. That short nap lasted 12 hours, and I missed an entire day of writing. I’m still feeling off today, but I managed to bring the word count up to 3454. I’ll be sitting down to write soon, after I finish some cleaning, so I’m hoping to try and gain as much as I can today.

My parents are arriving in town tonight for a four day visit, and my brother will be here Tuesday night for a short visit as well, so it will be a little rocky finding time to write in the next few days. I feel fine skipping out on after-work activities to write, but I don’t feel right ignoring visitors when they’re only here for a short time. I should be able to hit my daily word target still, except possibly Tuesday, but I won’t be able to make much ground on the day I missed.

I was hoping to start off really strong this week, giving myself a little leeway later in the month, but instead I’m already behind. I’m a little annoyed at this, but I still feel like I have plenty of time to catch up. After this Tuesday, I don’t have any major blockers for the rest of the month, so I’m planning to try and raise my daily word count a little each day until I’m caught up.

The story is coming along very well, better than I had imagined. Some of my dialogue has been quite strong, the characters are starting to show their personalities, and I’m working on being more descriptive in my scenes. I’ve already surprised myself with some of what I’ve written, and that’s really great to see. Despite the rough start, my enthusiasm for this has only grown.

I’m using the free Q10 as my word processor for this month. It was recommended to me by Amanda (her fiance, actually), and it’s really working for me. It’s a very simplistic text editor that has a few handy features:

• No installation required. It’s run from a self-contained executable, so you can toss it on a memory stick with your novel and take it anywhere.
• Run at full screen, allowing you to focus on your writing free of distractions.
• Set a word count target. You can set it for your month or your day goal, and it will display the percentage completed at the bottom of the screen.
• Set a timer. This is one of my favourite features. Once the time is up, it will display how many words you wrote during that period. I plan to set it for 30 minute intervals, to remind myself to stop and stretch every now and then. Having a timer while you write tends to keep you moving at a fast pace.
• Auto-save the document at a customizable interval.
• No distracting red and blue lines under your mistakes that will awaken your inner editor.
• Display multiple word counts. I use one for overall word count and one for daily word count.
• Insert notes into the document. By started a line with “..”, it sets that line as a note. You can bring up the list of existing notes whenever you like. This will be really useful when you go back to edit next month. The notes do not count towards your word count.

Just thought I’d share this with you. I’m off to write now!

In order to ready myself for this, I have:

• Written a brief outline – I have the first couple of chapters mapped out fairly well, to get started, and then I just have a set of key scenes and a rough ending I’d like to work towards. I’m not tying myself down too tightly, but I do want some basic milestones to aim at.
• Grown a beard – It’s very Hemingway.
• Cleaned my apartment – Nothing quite distracts me like a messy apartment, so I scrubbed it top and bottom. You could eat off my toilet. I probably wouldn’t recommend it, but your chances of dying have been greatly reduced.
• Created a playlist of instrumental and vocal-light music – It’s a good mix of songs, to create a mood for whatever scene I happen to be writing.
• Stocked up on instant noodles and take-out menus – A man’s got to eat.
• Made sure I didn’t have a girlfriend to distract me – This sure was a tough one…
• Started reading No Plot? No Problem! – I’ve read up until the week by week guide, which I will start Wednesday night. The book’s been light on any real information, but it’s a nice read to build enthusiasm for the event.

I still don’t really have any interesting characters, or any idea what will happen in the middle of the plot, so maybe I’ll have a go at some more planning tomorrow night.

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A handy tool, if you’re planning your NaNo digitally, is FreeMind. It’s a Java-based mind-mapping program that’s quite easy to use. I’ve been experimenting with it while sketching up characters and trying to tie together some sort of plot. I think I prefer to plan on paper, but this is a great alternative.

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Suzie at Words, Words, Words makes a good point about the daily word count goal in her Ten Tips for NaNoWriMo post:

1667 words a day. That’s actually not a lot. Rather than say to yourself I am going to sit down from 7.30-9.3pm every night you should grab every spare minute you have. This is more useful if you have a laptop – you can write in coffee shops whilst waiting for someone, or on the bus on your way to work. Even if you have a desktop computer though, every time you get a spare ten minutes write a couple of paragraphs. They all add up.

1667 words a day really shouldn’t be too hard to hit if I can manage to just write without looking back. I won’t edit, I won’t stop to find the perfect word, and I won’t even reread what I wrote. Just dump the contents of my mind onto paper and then get on with life.

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In the comments for Suzie’s post, Jessica had this tip to share:

The article suggested using a spread sheet program for your outline. In column 1 number the scenes, in column 2 tell what chapter(s) the scene appears in, in column 3 tell the point of view character of the scene, and in column 4 describe of the scene.

I really like this idea. When planning a story, I tend to start by coming up with a lot of random scenes and trying to piece the them together afterwards in a logical order. This will make shifting scenes in the outline a lot easier.

To keep my interest piqued for NaNoWriMo, I’ve decided I should have some writing-related books ready to read during the month. I’m going to dunk my head into this thing and not come up for air until December. I’m searching for inspirational author autobiographies as well as general writing references.

For the autobiographies, I’m considering rereading Stephen King’s On Writing and Terry Brooks’ Lessons From a Writing Life. Both are fantastic, and I’d gladly recommend them to anyone even remotely interested in the craft. For the references, I just found a half-read Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver on my shelf, so I’ll definitely be reading that. I also have my eye on Beginnings, Middles & Ends by Nancy Kress and Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card.

If anyone has any favourite books they’d like to recommend, that would be fantastic. I’m always on the lookout for great writing-related books. I’d be especially grateful for an autobiography recommendation. It’s inspiring to read how someone else accomplished the task you’re setting out to face.