Since yesterday, I’ve been testing Writer’s Cafe, developed by Anthemion Software. As far as I know, this is a UK-based distribution, and I’m not sure if it’s available in other languages than English, but this is all well for me, as long as they allow people from other countries to purchase their software, which they do.Read More
Alright, I’m a blogging freak these days, I admit it.The thing is, as I mentioned some time ago, I have this WordPress.com account sitting in silence, and I couldn’t decide on what I’d do with it. After having mulled over this during the week-end, I came to the conclusion that I could maybe use it to post about NaNo.Let’s not be mistaken, I’m not going to post there three times a day, as I want to go on updating regularly here, and during November as well (if I manage to stop playing Might and Magic VI in the evenings for the Nth time, I’ll get more time for this kind of things anyway! Damned be this game for being so addictive). Knowing the way my mind works, I simply foresee that I may find myself wanting to babble about it more than would be healthy for the readers here—it is something specific, after all, and I don’t want to turn this place in a NaNo-only blog in November. By then, I’ll have lots of other topics to post on the Y Logs, too.Besides, I really just wanted to use my wordpress.com account. Really.So… Yzabel @ WordPress.com will thus be used as “my NaNo blog”.
Am I weird or not, this is the question. I find that it’s easier for me to write certain scenes—especially the ones containing lots of dialogue—if I “act” them first. I know it may feel, read and sound very weird, yet it helps me to get the feeling of the scene, of the atmosphere, and even to create the dialogue itself without having to struggle with the words to make them sound like what real people would say. Nevertheless, I know that were anyone to see me do that through my window, with a pencil and notebook in hand and pacing around acting, they’d probably think I’m a weirdo. Or repeating for a play, with some luck!Evidently, I don’t do that for every scene. I’d have a hard time trying to act a swordfight or a spaceship attack without breaking the furniture by accident in the process, and I know where to stop and where to pick the pen or keyboard again to let only my mind and fingers work, instead of my whole body. Sometimes, I wonder if this tendency hasn’t been enhanced by the few years I’ve spent taking part in theater plays, back in high school, although I know I was doing this whole acting part way before that already.Perhaps I’m a performance person who isn’t fully aware of this yet.
The hunt season is open… I mean, signups are going to resume as of today, Saturday (yes, it is now “today” for me!) on their website. From the announcement there, they’re actually going to be open around 3 pm PST, which means I’ll already be in bed, but I can live with that and wait until my Sunday to create an account.My resolutions regarding this are as follows:— Not writing anything before November (which is part of the rules, so I’m not deciding anything weird here).— Not deliberately working on an outline, subplots and others. I’ll write down whatever idea comes to mind, and they’ll very likely come by themselves in frequent enough waves for me to find myself with an outline by the end of the month, but I’m not going to worry my head over it. I want to start as fresh as possible, just to see if I can do it in a crazy way or not. The thing I’ll however do is to prepare my “magnae cartae”—a.k.a. two lists of what I like and dislike as a reader, so that I know mor eclearly what to focus on and what to avoid.— Sticking to it. By November, I’ll very likely need a break from my two-continents world anyway, and this will be the perfect opportunity to take one. I’ll spend the month on that, then I’ll get back to my “big” novel.— Deciding on a title before the real action starts. No kidding, I’m not exactly good at finding inspirational titles, and I need to seriously work on this flaw of mine.— Music. Lots of music. Music, only music, but music. I’m slowly gathering what I’ll need for next month’s “inspirational playlist”, and I’m quite happy with it so far. It’ll be a joy to write with this in the background.— Coffee and more coffee. If I don’t sleep for a month, it’s alright, I can catch up during the other 11.This said, anyone who’s willing to join in the madness is welcome. We’ll drink to each other’s success in front of our monitors, while pushing the words out of our minds. I hope this exercise in writing differently is going to be wild and fun.