A little dose of news regarding the WordPress platform:

1) WordPress.com goes live, at least for the time being. If there’s anyone in this world who hasn’t an account there yet, you can go and sign up without having to receive an invite first. From Matt Mullenweg’s blog:

We’ve decided to open up WordPress.com for signups without invites for a bit. The service has been scaling very well since we got the problems from the move worked out. With that done and WordPress 2.0 in its final stages, there is a lot more time to focus on some cool features and common requests for WP.com now. (The design there has been updated, but is still just a placeholder.)

2) WordPress 2.0 is in its beta stage now. I haven’t tested it myself yet, although I may do that tonight if I happen to take a break from writing after the “good job” I performed yesterday. From what I’ve seen of it so far at Looce Tech News, the administration panel is the same as the WordPress.com’s one, which isn’t as pleasant as the Tiger panel, but is way better than the old WP interface. If you want to test it as well, head to this page to grab the downloadable archive. Beware, this is still a beta, so as usual with any upgrade, back up your database first!

Y Tags: blogging | wordpress

A quick note tonight to let you, faithful readers, know that I’ve reached my goal of 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo about half a hour ago. My word count proudly stands at a mighty 50,306, and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself right now.

The story itself isn’t completely done, so I’ll go on finishing the last remaining half-chapters during the last week of November, if only because I really want to be done with it, and not file it as some pathetic attempt at a novel. I’ll do the editing part in January-February probably, given that I have this need to get my hands on a serious, scientific book or two regarding viruses to make sure I haven’t spewed too many inaccuracies in it.

To tell the truth, I’m not feeling fed up. I’m at peace. I don’t have any fears anymore regarding my ability to write a lot and keep on liking it. I’ve learnt a lot during these past three weeks, and the most important part of it all is that if I plan my story, I can go far. Some people can write without a plan, just by letting the inspiration flow. I can’t do that. I need to “force” myself to write even when I’m lazy, not inspired, invoking the writer’s block and whatnot, and having a thorough plan is what works for me. It works just like in my job; as long as I know where to go and what I’m going to write about on a given day, I can do it. This is probably my satori of the year; it fills me with confidence, and even though my style needs lots of improvement, I can now look at myself in the mirror and tell to myself: “I’ve written a novel. In English. Isn’t that great?”

This said, if everything goes well, updates on this blog should resume at a more regular rate now.

Y Tags: NaNoWriMo | writing

I wonder if I’m right in thinking so, or if I am sort of deluding myself with this belief. I know that more than one writer has said that the first million words (or so) an author writes is crap, and I’m ready to swallow this and go on (although I’m probably past the million already given the amount of writing I do, but let’s consider it as a million words of serious novelling, not blog posts, aborted attempts at stories in junior high, and the likes). Now—and this is more specifically related to the “quantity vs quality” argument—can we consider that every word of every sentence of every first draft will always necessarily be crap, regardless of the years of practice a writer has behind her?

Although this doesn’t work the same for all of us who write, finding names for my characters from the start is for me always an important task. I need the names to resonate with the personality they’re associated with, and I need to be able to name my protagonists, rather than refer to them as “character X and Y”. At times, I’ll need days to find THE name, and it’ll usually be triggered by something totally unrelated. At other moments, the name comes by itself, or I already have it in mind, and develop a personality around it. Both methods work in my case, which is something I’m glad about, yet I must admit that the first one can be annoying—what if the days turn to weeks or even months? Remaining stuck because I lack a name to go on with a story can be very frustrating.

Woe is me, I forgot to post this earlier on on this blog (though I have an excuse, my characters and story do invade my mind every waking hour, these days).

Round 3 of the 9rules Network submissions has started today November 14th, at 12:00 am EST; submissions are open during the following 24 hours (which actualyl means less, given that I’m a bit late in writing this entry). This is for English blogs. If you’re interested in applying, here is what they look for in a site. Pretty much self-explanatroy, I think.

9rules is a good blog network, in my opinion, and different from just any other blog directoy, given that there’s a screening process. In the past few months, I’ve been following several of their member blogs, and so far, they have proved to be interesting as well as nicely designed (of course, I can’t speak for all of them, only the ones I know). Even if not applying, they’re always worth being checked.

Y Tags: 9rules | blog | blogging | network