#NanNoWriMo

Or, if you don't speak hashtag, and really, why would you, it's National Novel Writing Month. I'm not sure why it's has "national" in the title, since it seems to be a pretty international thing these days, but yup, November is the time of year when a surprisingly large number of lunatics commit to writing a novel in a month. This year, I'm one of those lunatics.

I'm not sure what other people accomplish; I can't write a novel in a month, even if I weren't working full time, but I also imagine others are more driven than I am (seriously, that wouldn't be hard). Conversely, I also know that the likes of Stephen King and John Scalzi don't get their stuff done in a month–and Scalzi's novels are under 100k (I believe he said they tend to sit between 80-90k), so expecting someone to pump out a 60-80k novel in 30 days is unreasonable. Also, you try writing 2k words a day (which is what Stephen King does). Unless you start repeatedly typing "balls" over and over again, it's hard to do with fiction. Especially for those of us who self-edit as we type, removing many extraneous words (no, "that' is not necessary for much beyond padding a word count). Less hard for academic work–not easy, mind you–or editorial pieces, but never easy.

That said, it should be entirely possible to get the barf draft out in a month. It won't be pretty, but it will be something complete to work with. At least that's my goal. Barf a full first, very rough, draft into Scrivener by 30 November, then leave it be until January or so, when I'll go back and start editing it for various plot holes, bad phrases, etc.

And I'm cheating. I took this week off from work (and the whole month off from Girl Museum, which is really weird for me, as I've not had a proper break from GM since I started in January of 2010), so I get an extra 2 days. Possibly up to 5, if I extend through the first weekend of December. Also, I wrote the first chapter several years ago, so I'm around 1100 words up to start with.

Though I'm only working on Chapter 3, and fairly certain that I really only have one chapter, just with a couple of breaks in it. Meh. I can sort that nonsense out later. Barf a draft up, first!

Don't expect this to be a regular thing, but for now, I leave you with this, the very beginning.

“That went well, I think.”
Anya looked at Lila in disbelief. “In what world did that go well? Sandwich is missing part of his little finger and all of his eyebrow, Nate is still unconscious, and you, well you’re just having a bullet dug out of your shoulder. None of that can be defined as ‘well,’ Captain.”

I wrote a thing!

You can read it here: http://standardissuemagazine.com/arts/here-come-the-girls/

I'm quite chuffed about it. Very little editing done to it, none of it onerous (just things to standardize to their style). It feels quite good to have written something that someone else has published, not felt the need to edit, and frankly, done it all in less than a week (though it was arranged about a month prior to that). Most of that week was spent trying to get images sorted out, anyway!

Go me! A positive start to a new year. May it be better than the shitstorm that was 2016.

Done

2016 fucking sucks. Get the hell out, and don't come back. I'm done with the shitstorm that is politics, war, and death of this year.

RIP Carrie Fisher

I'm With Her

The next white, hetero, middle-class, middle-aged, English-speaking male who decides to mansplain American politics to an American is going to be told to shove it where the sun don't shine.

I was told today that sexism isn't the main problem that's facing Hillary. By a colleague I like and respect, but who plays the video game of life on the easiest setting (see above) and thus doesn't get the inherent, endemic sexism that surrounds us.

Vote early, don't vote often because that's against the law, and frankly, vote Hillary. I'm With Her, because he's a dipshit who wants to set the world on fire just to watch it burn.

Also, Secretary Clinton is probably the most qualified person ON THE PLANET to govern a country. Just sayin'.