Yzabel / October 6, 2012

NaNoWriMo 2012

Since the first time I did NaNoWriMo, in 2005, I think the only year I didn’t subscribe was 2008, because of the competitive exam I was preparing for. Otherwise, this event’s been a part of my life every year. Even in 2006, when I failed and didn’t care that much.

Now, as I’ve already posted on my FB page a few days ago, I’m wondering if I should sign up this year.

CONS:

– I have no specific idea for a new, complete story. Only for novels I should go on working on. So no new, exciting world building project or whatever to keep me fuelled.

– I didn’t pass the Agrégation exam in July, and thus am taking it again this year. The overachiever in me keeps on saying “focus on that only”.

PROS:

– The human part in me, on the other hand, says: “If all you do is having a stressful job AND work AND work more, you’ll turn crazy in no time.” Point taken.

– I’m on holidays from October 27 to November 11. Which means 11 days during which I can easily devote time to writing. Let’s be honest, it’s been years I haven’t had such an opportunity in November!

– It’s time I write for Was again, now that I’ve reworked the story and got rid of the gaping plot holes left in hit from NaNo 2009. Or the last third of Our Darker Purpose. Or even just go on typing my Fragments/RPG session reports (it’s a part about zombies invading the city, now seriously why wouldn’t I want to write about that, right?). It’s not like I’m lacking projects, after all, even though they aren’t ‘new’ ones.

Well… Knowing myself, I’ll probably decide to do NaNo all the same, on a whim, on November 1st, at 6am. That’s pretty much what I did last year, and I wrote 100k+ frigging words *and* did my job *and* worked on preparing for the first part of the Agrégation (which was the part I passed; it’s only the second part I failed). Quod erat demonstrandum, and all that?

But.

The serious, work-only girl in me is still going “tut-tut” and “just focus on WORK.”

Maybe I should smack her with a shovel to shut her up?

Yzabel / November 18, 2007

Some Music To Write To…

It occurred to me that this year, I’ve added a new playlist to this blog to celebrate NaNoWriMo, but have also completely forgotten to actually, uhm, mention it. Considering the fact that I hadn’t changed the old playlist in more than one year, I suppose it was high time that I did so. Since I incidentally added a couple more songs between November 1st and now, here are the titles of what you can listen on it.

As a little game (and because I was asked in a comment on my ‘writing excerpts blog’, which has locked entries due to various reasons, and is mostly used during the NaNoing month anyway), I also added alternative titles. These are not to be all viewed as specific scenes in the novel, nor ar they in any particular order, but they’re the kind of titles I would give if I were to compose my own soundtrack–I cannot write without music, and I’m a sucker for soundtracks, really. If you wish, feel free to toy with these and imagine what kind of scenes they could correspond to. It’s a game I like playing as well.Read More

Yzabel / October 31, 2006

A New Playlist Is (Finally) Here!

It took me one year to come up at last with a new lil’ playlist for the radio.blog here… And given the time of the year, what could be more suitable than one that I will use to keep me pumped up for NaNoWriMo! Of course, once again, this is only but a glimpse of what I’ll be listening to in November.

My genre this year is Fantasy, without dragons and all the fluff. It’ll be more focused on the characters, as well as on the magic in that particular world, its rules, and what being a mage really entails. So, don’t be surprised if there isn’t much… epic in that playlist.Read More

Yzabel / November 20, 2005

I Reached The 50,000 Mark

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.NaNoWriMo, writing

Yzabel / November 6, 2005

Outlining, planning, writing

I probably mentioned this in passing a few times here: shall I go on with writing “depending on my inspiration”, or adopting a more thorough way of planning? I was never sure of what method would be best for me. Would I need to plan carefully, or just run with the inspiration? After a few weeks of trying to change my ways of doing, I’ve started to wonder if, in this like in many other aspects of my life and work, it’s not the middle ground that would work best. And recently, it occurred to me that the problem for me exists in two forms: I don’t need outlining for a short story, but I sure do for a novel.Read More

Yzabel / October 31, 2005

November Is At Our Door… What With The Blog?

I thought I’d make an entry about this. Tomorrow, NaNoWriMo starts, and you can expect me to be busy enough during the upcoming month. However, I’m not sure of how often I’ll keep the blog updated (and my other blogs as well; it all goes in the same basket). I’m not going to make a “will update on such-and-such days only, blah-blah” disclaimer, because I’m pretty sure I will have the opportunity to update more regularly than I thought, or less often, or at different times than I normally do… Not going to make a fool out of myself with a false statement. If I update, it means that I had the time, if I don’t, it means I didn’t have it.What is sure is that:

  • I’ll do my best to keep things updated more than only once every two weeks.
  • I can be a damn fast writer when I need to, trust me. I may actually end up becoming a power engine with words shooting out of my fingers at light-speed. The downside is that I’ll probably not edit, nor even re-read anything, so expect typos.
  • I may go the road of short posts, instead of long essays. These will likely resume in December.
  • Long live the laptop, the WiFi and the 20m CAT 5 cable that allows me to write wherever I want to in the house, including the cellar, and bathroom, and even in front of a movie. No, I won’t be asocial, only multi-tasking!

This said, good luck to every NaNo participant. Thanks goodness November 1st is a national holiday here, this way I can start like a rocket.blogging, NaNoWriMo, posts, updating

Yzabel / October 30, 2005

The NaNo Playlist Is Here

Time to change the radio’s contents again. These are a few of the songs and instrumental pieces I’ve gathered to keep me inspired not only during November, but also while preparing the outline, working on the characters, etc.The novel’s genre is sci-fi with a healthy dose of cyberpunk, so let’s not be too surprised at the choice of songs (even though not all of them will suit fast-paced scenes: I have a few quiet moments in it, too).Read More

Yzabel / October 25, 2005

WriAShorStorWe -“The NaNoWriMo For Lazy People™!”

I stumbled upon this while browsing the Technorati tag about Writing, and although it’s nothing official, it can be a fun little challenge for those who would be interested by NaNoWriMo, but know they won’t have the time, especially by the end of November. The basic is simple: you have between October 31st and November 4th to write a 5,000 words short story (or less; the rules quite loose here). The interest? Pretty similar to NaNoWriMo’s: giving yourself the challenge and deadline to finally complete a story, only a short one.Head to the Defective Yeti blog for the details about WriAShorStorWe.Note: This is to be done in fun, of course.short+stories, writing

Yzabel / October 3, 2005

NaNoWriMo: A Blog

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”.blog, NaNoWriMo, wordpress, writing

Yzabel / October 1, 2005

NaNoWriMo Signup

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.nanowrimo, writing