It be NaNoWriMo day the sixth! This afternoon my stats are as follows...

Chaos: 3442
Soul: 4136
Corn-Cob: 4063
Total Written: 11,641
Total Remaining: 78,359/90,000

I'm hoping to get another 2000 words done before the end of the day. I still won't be on par according to my 90k goal (I should be at 18,000 words today) but meh, I just need to keep writing at least 3k every day and try and gt little bits extra in here and there to make up for my behindness. See, that's how frazzled all this writing is leaving my brain. Somehow I think that 'behindness' is an actual word. I know it probably isn't, but sod it, this is NaNoWriMo, where sense is thrown to the ravenous seagulls, reality breaks down and weird words suddenly pop into existence.

Yesterday was pretty good! I went down to Bachelor's Park with Shannon, Sophie and my niece, Amy. While they were in the wee playground area I scuttled about taking photos, since I got ten rolls of film through the post the other day. The night before I was poking about on the internet trying to look up a tutorial on how to use a camera properly - as in, working with shutter speed and lens aperture to get the pictures just right. I figured out that you could see whether you had the correct exposure by looking through the little viewfinder at the top of the camera and holding the shutter release down gently, but not enough to take a picture. There's a little gauge to the left with a plus sign, a circle, and a minus. If the red plus sign flashes, it's overexposed (too much light getting into the lens). If the red minus flashes, it's underexposed. If you've got it just right, the circle in the middle should flash green.

So during my Bachelor's Park shoot, I made sure that the green circle flashed as often as possible by tweaking the shutter speed and the lens aperture. I used a whole roll of film (including two pictures I took of Cheeky the night before and one I took looking down the street of my childhood home - the latter of which turned out to be quite an eerie picture). It's a great time of year for nature shoots anyway; being autumn there's some beautiful experimentation to be done with colour, and in the park there are a few lovely wood carvings of characters from 'Alice in Wonderland'. There's a little birdhouse up there as well - as in, a greenhouse with birds in it - but we weren't able to get in. Some nice, up-close pictures of the birds would have been fantastic.

I got the pictures developed the very same day, at Imaging Solutions in town. £9 it cost me! Compare that to the £7 I'd normally spend at Max Spielmann's in St Helens... blimey. Film photography is certainly an expensive habit. I'm probably going to get a DSLR with my next studet finance payment. Photo printing is only 15p a picture from a digital camera.

Chaos: 3121
Soul: 3325
Corn-Cob: 2052
Total Written: 8462
Total Remaining: 81,538/90,000

I should actually be at 15000 words today, but I've been a bad, bad WriMo. Yesterday I didn't write at all, and the day before I simply didn't write enough to reach my 9000 words goal. With my wordcount today being as it is, I'm on track for doing a regular NaNoWriMo, but I plan on writing much more tonight. I'm hoping to get another 2000 words in at least, and then tomorrow I'll be aiming for 4000.

Afterwards, if I dedicate my Sundays to writing at least 4000, then writing 3000 every day otherwise, I should be on track for hitting 90k, or even a bit more. And in future I mustn't slip up like this; when your goal is as high as 90k, just one day off can jeopardise the whole thing.

I hope everyone else, NaNo or not, are having a good time!

Chaos: 1710
Soul: 1434
Corn-Cob: 1892
Total Written: 5036
Total Remaining: 84,964/90,000

I'm a wee bit behind today, as you can see, due mainly to my own procrastination. If this was an ordinary NaNoWriMo where I was doing 50k I'd be alright - I'd be a full day ahead of myself - but since I'm aiming for 30k per book, I really need to get a move on.

'You Know You Got (No) Soul' in particular is taking its sweet time. I think I really do just need the novels to take off, because right now I'm still establishing stuff in all three, setting the scene for the lunacy to begin. Kevin needs to realise that his father sold his soul. Far needs to decide, rather wrongly, that he is the chosen one, after his village is stormed by the evil king's bandits. And 'Chaos at the Jazz Club' is on the brink of that two-year shift where Lettie hasn't returned and Gemini starts to realise why that may be.

The silly thing is there's only one way I can get these stories to take off, and that's by writing WORDS.

They say if you travel down 367 miles from the northernmost point of the M1 on a windy April the first night, with a particular cloud arrangement in the sky (my knowledge on this is hazy but I'm quite sure one must be shaped like a crocodile), stop off on the field to your left and then cry to the heavens that your toenails are ingrowing, you'll look like an idiot and possibly be sectioned for having a mental disorder that entails an obsession with abnormal toenails.

If you were sensible and went to Slough instead, to a particular lamp post on a particular street, then swung around the lamp post whilst singing hallelujah, you'd quickly disappear before the man in white coats could even entertain the thought of finding you.

And so it was that a young man in a suit, carrying a heap of posters, stood gasping on this same street in Slough, wishing that his bosses would consider their cock-up in giving him a lamp post in Slough, when in fact he lived in Edinburgh. Parking was nightmarish down here, and already he could feel the traffic wardens watching him, counting down the minutes until they could swarm his car like vultures.

( Read more... )

As soon as Kevin strode out into the classroom and disrobed himself, he saw the same expressions of bafflement cross the faces of the art students, one by one. Not bafflement as in 'what a horrible looking creature; his elbows are positively vile!' - he hoped – but more one of genuine confusion. These looks said 'why is he there?', 'why are we here?' and 'I wonder what I'll make for tea tonight?'.

“This is Kevin; he'll be our subject for today,” said the tutor, a moustached man in a turtleneck who hovered near his own easel. “Let's get painting!”

With that a new silence took over; the silence of concentration and a gentle sonic landscape of brushes scratching canvas. But the old, uneasy quiet was still there, and it was weird. Kevin pondered on it to distract from the draught threatening his nethers. He couldn't help but think sometimes that maybe people couldn't quite place him in the world – like there was something missing or odd that set him apart from some bizarre cosmic balance. But most of his thought went on to the fact that he was unemployed and his life was awful beyond belief.

( Read more... )

And floating through darkness, the faint sound of a clarinet. Gemini lifted her head for just a moment, listening to the ephemeral notes dance around the sounds of the night. In her state of half-waking it was simply a strange composition to her; probably Atlas having a late night rehearsal. She didn't put it down as unusual, although it was. Her mind was just the music, and exhaustion. Her head drifted down into the pillow; her eyes wandered the scattered toys on her bedroom floor and she imagined them dancing as the music lulled her to sleep.

She heard it in her dreams, and it was most unlike anything she had ever heard Atlas play. Another world had opened up from whence the music came; she felt it prising a gulf between body and soul and pushing, widening until her whole being was rushing to pieces. The drumbeat of her heart throbbed sharp and loud.

Light slanted across her ceiling an instant later. Outside a blackbird trilled, another chirped in response. Conversation in song. And then the throbbing came again, this time at her bedroom door.

( Read more... )

Chaos: 1001
Soul: 1006
Corn-Cob: 1007
Total Written: 3014
Words Remaining: 86,986/90,000

So, as you can see, I'm off to a fantastic start! I was going to start at midnight like I did last year but I actually went to bed immediately as NaNoWriMo began. This morning I was awake of my own accord at about 8am, and at quarter past the hour I got up and got about 1500 words in before going to university. On the bus I managed a wee bit, but trying to get much done on that bus is ridiculous - there's not much room to open a laptop and in the autumn mornings when the sun's low you can barely see the screen. A fantastic opportunity for writing came up today since I had a free period between my Philosophy lecture and my English Language tutorial. I wrote a couple hundred words in the bus station and by the time I got home I had about 2900 - just 100 left and I'd reach my goal.

That goal has been reached! So now I can rest easy and get on with some university work!

NaNoWriMo is so close. In a matter of hours I'll be putting those first words to paper - or screen, to be more accurate, as this time I have the luxury of my very own laptop with which to write. Yay!

Since my earlier entry it's been a fairly eventful day. My English Language lecture was actually on Language and Mind - psycholinguistics and all that jazz - and it went brilliantly, as usual. I managed to get a lot of stuff down, and I really ought to make a start soon on that essay of mine!

( KFC Nutter and Other Stories )

Tomorrow I'll be getting ready for NaNoWriMo 2011! The whole process has been wildly different this year - with university and homesickness being the two big things on my mind I haven't had much time to 'get psyched' about it like I did last year. I'm hoping that as soon as it gets started and I attend a few write-ins the motivation will kick in.

I remember NanoWriMo last year - walking home from Sian's late Halloween night and having the idea that became 'Arcane Mathematics' - at first I was only going to write 'The Time-Share Presentation of Death' and if that had remained the case I might never have made the 50,000 words. I got home at about midnight, just after NaNowriMo had officially begun, and wrote about four pages, going to bed at 2am, and gthen wrote about two pages when I woke up. By 10am on November 1st, I had reached my first day's word goal. My initial doubts about the novel quickly faded - at first I'd worried it was dull, nothing unusual or worth reading, but soon enough I was writing something that rivalled 'The Great Couch Happening of '69' in weirdness.

This year, I have three novels that I hope will be worth writing. And though I'm not psyched for NaNoWriMo like I was last year, I'm still eager to start because I know that when I do, the lunacy will suck me right in!

Tuesday's my busy day. I usually have two tutorials and a lecture, with a free hour between the lecture (Philosophy) and the last tutorial (English Language). I have to get the bus at 10:30am, and I usually get home around 6pm.

Tomorrow's not so bad; I only have a creative writing workshop from 2-3 so I'll be getting the 12:30 bus and getting home at 5pm instead. I really enjoy those sessions, actually; afterwards I always have this burning desire to write and it's fantastic. With NaNoWriMo 2011 kicking off in six days, this kind of motivation is precisely what I need.

As per usual, what I write this year will be a load of freewheeling bollocks and I can't wait to get going. In case I haven't informed you all as to what I'm doing this year, I'll be working on two novels; 'Chaos at the Jazz Club' and 'You Know You Got (No) Soul'. Both ideas have been kicking around in my head for quite some time so I think it;s time to give them life!

Today's been a laugh, bantering pre-tutorial with Meg, Kerry and Aisling. I can't be a complete social reject in university as while we were waiting for tutorials today I just threw myself in, acted my usual self and had everybody laughing. Making people laugh is probably one of the best feelings ever; I often worry that I'm a bit dull, so when I say something and get such a response it's the ultimate reward - gives me some sense of self-worth. But yeah, today's been good craic and I've been getting along with people even better. Consequently, I'm satisfied.

( Anywho... )

After sleeping on yesterday, I've woken up feeling a lot better. Maybe I was just having an off day - I think it was because I spent so much time thinking about being back in England, with the added stress that my Philosophy course has dumped on me.

I have an essay for Philosophy due in on November 11 and I don't know anything about the subject. Our tutor asked us to read a book called 'Free Will and Determinism' by A. Macdonald for next Friday but it isn't available in No Alibis or on Amazon, other online sites would take too long to ship it and there are limited copies in the library which you can only take out for two days at a time - and no doubt all the copies have been taken out. But I have to try - if I can't get hold of a copy from the library, then there's nothing I can do.

I hope I can get a library copy. If I can, I'll probably read it aloud into the voice recorder on my laptop so then at least I have some sort of copy I can study from. The tutor said we don't have to read it all but I'd honestly prefer to get down as much of it as I can in time for the tutorial.

In other news, it dawned on me yesterday that NaNoWriMo is a mere 22 days away, including today! As I was drifting into waking this morning I had the perfect idea for one of my two planned novels, 'Chaos at the Jazz Club', and I bolted out of bed to get my laptop and type the idea down. It's one that is crucial to the story. And now I can't wait for it to begin! I just need to keep on top of my university work while NaNoWriMo's on. Especially since that Philosophy essay is due in partway through the month.

I've been looking into giving blood again, and a quick poke around the Northern Ireland Blood Transfusion Service website tells me that there's a few sessions in Portadown Town Hall on November 2 and 3. When I donated the first time round, they told me I'd have to wait sixteen weeks before donating again, so I'll need to remember the date of my first donation and see if it's safe to pop along to one of the Town Hall sessions. I blogged about giving blood, so I'll be able to find the date on my journal somewhere!

If not, there's actually a big centre on Lisburn Road in Belfast - the NIBTS HQ, which holds drop-in sessions on weekdays. I walk past Lisburn Road on my way to university every day! So I could just pop in one day when I haven't got much in the way of lectures or tutorials.

I've decided, as some of you Twitter people may know, to dive yet again into the world of sponsored novelling with my NaNo '11 novels. Yes, that plural was wholly intentional, as I intend to write two novels. I have titles and the basic plots of both, and I'm thinking of sponsoring two charities: The Office of Letters and Light, for obvious reasons, and Amnesty International, because we are all human and deserve equal rights.

The only problem is that the Office of Letters and Light aren't on JustGiving, whereas Amnesty are, being a big international charity. So the simple 'create a JustGiving page with joint beneficiaries' or 'create two JustGiving pages' is probably out of the question, for now.

I've tweeted NaNoWriMo asking if they're on JustGiving (this was before I researched it myself and realised they weren't), so maybe they'll realise there are benefits in it for them on getting involved - other WriMos will be able to write to support The Office of Letters and Light!

Anyway, the ideal way of raising funds is through JustGiving. I'm also planning on running two blogs to post everything I write, so that people can take a look through and double-check my word count to make sure they're happy I've met the criteria before they donate.

I'll be creating flyers to distribute around university, around Portadown and in North West England, and I'm hoping to get in touch with Hope Academy, the St Helens Star and businesses on both sides of the pond as a way of generating more funds. All of this on top of my university work! The madness, eh?

I might even contact the charities I want to support to see if they'll try and get me a little more publicity - articles on websites, press releases and so on. It would be so cool if I could raise a lot of money for them both!