The NaNoWriMo Wars…
…Weirdness. I have to say I’m still a little confused by Statto‘s anti NaNoWriMo arguments on Dan’s blog…
Personally, I’m in it partly for the seeing-if-I-actually-can-do-it element (if I can lash up 50,000 words in a month, there’s a chance I could try getting proper books published, thus avoiding the need to try and do anything with the rest of my life) and for the challenge, (and to support the other guys that are doing it where necessary) and because I think it’ll be interesting.
What’s more I’ve a vague hope it’ll re-spark my capacity to actually write things, which seems to have totally rusted up lately – I think I lost faith in writing things when I did the largely pointless modules in Creative writing, which did a good deal to batter my self confidence by encouraging me to rate my own work (with the result I always said “that’s shit, that is”)… It’s partly because I’ve lost the capacity to invent things to write about that I’ve stopped doing much other than blog posts and essays, I suspect, and I actually used to do loads… JTA the Movie is fairly desperate for an update, I imagine, but I’ve not been able to think of anything to put into it for the last two years…
(as an aside which might appeal slightly more to Statto than my just saying “and I’m doing NaNoWriMo” – I’m using a plot which is a slightly more sophisticated version of that idea I got in what I think was Year 9 [I’d just been to BYM, so that was early 2000] with yonder man who crashes trains…)
I’m pretty certain that there’s nothing I can say that will cause this to make any sense to Statto at all, which is a shame, but I’m happy to take you up on the suggestion that I write a hundred or so decent World Factbook entries in November as well (Hell, I’ve only got a bunch of essays and Civ IV to take care of this month, I can take on a whole other bunch of stuff no problem!)
So yeah – current challenges for JTA appear to be learn bloody “simian OS,” as it’s apparently called, because the 6680 will want a bit of getting used to, do NaNoWriMo, write 100 things for the Factbook (yes), do some essays, do the Real Ale Ramble (bugger, I still need to book time off work for that) and a whole heap of other stuff that still wants sorting. O, and I want to give blood, at some point. Woop.
O well. Lagging a little over here:
Words written: 1631 / target: 50000
Roll on curry…
Comments
I think that’ll be “Symbian OS”, not “Simian OS”. Heh.
If it’ll re-spark your capacity to write things, go for it.
My only problem with it is that it’s done in a format that seems to promote poor writing! If you’re confident that such a target will result in a decent…well, result… I’m all for you doing so.
I think the train man was my idea… :P I came up with it when I went to drop Dad off at some station, I think. Though, to be honest, I’m not sure exactly how far it got in terms of the more-filled-out version which I now still recall as “my idea” before being amalgamated into the Statto-JTA assimilated joint-mind.
Anyway, good stuff if you’re going to do some Factbook entries, too. I’m not sure if 100 is a plausible target; at 500 words each (which is rather high, admittedly) it’s as muich work as NaNoWriMo! However, I’d hope that if we aim for quality, it’d take as long as 500 crap NaNoWriMo words per article, so it should certainly be as time-consuming… Perhaps we should aim for the Moon (100) and then, if we miss, at least we’ll end up in the cold, dark, vacuum of space, eh?
And I presume Simian OS is some kind of bizarre Linux distro which monkeys run on? I don’t like to be too smug in my wanton punnery, however, since I’d not’ve guessed that you were wrong unless Dan had said so…
[…] So, aye, those of you with suspiciously good recollection of previous things I’ve done may now be smug and remember that, once, a long time ago, I was attempting NaNoWriMo 2005. That lasted about a week, and then I got a) bored and b) stressed out by housemates wankers. […]