The Stenographer

The title is a testament to my inability to think of a proper title for this, and the fact that I'm listening to a song by that title right now. Anyways.

I realized that I started this blog for NaNo in general, then subsequently forgot about it while I was doing NaNo this year. But I've been thinking over the last nine days since this year's event ended (and I won) about what it was like, and how it was different, and all that jazz.

For one, I could tell that in the year that had passed, I had lost a lot of my feel for the world. I decided to do a sequel, which was probably a terrible idea, but I was scrambling for ideas and that seemed to be the easiest. But then I wrote most of it off the top of my head (which is never a great plan...) and at least half of the novel was written on the weekends, madly typing after a week of having to go to work, do homework, and otherwise participate in the outside world. Most of it will probably be cut if I ever get the courage up to edit the thing. And whether or not I will put the editing effort into a story that I never really connected to, or developed in any way that would make it worth reading at all.

So I think what I'm really saying is, it will be unlikely that anyone will ever read this year's NaNo, because I already know that it's bad, and I don't need other people to tell me what I already know. If that makes sense.

On the other hand, I did have a blast this year, thanks to my new region. Last year, obviously I was in the East Bay region, and while I had a great time there, especially with the people at the Fremont Write-In. But SacNaNo has a special place in my heart now, thanks greatly to being able to interact with people outside of physical write-ins (and while at physical write-ins, for that matter) on the IRC channel. Whoever decided to set that up was freaking brilliant. Seriously. It was probably the only reason I made myself keep writing all month long. Otherwise, knowing myself, as soon as I hit the brick wall (which happened unusually fast, because of the aforementioned suckiness of the novel...), I would have totally just been like "AHH! Life and stuff!! Kthxbai." And stopped writing for the month. Instead, I hung out on there and got tons of encouragement from other people in my region who I otherwise wouldn't have gotten to know, because Sacramento is a seriously FAR FLUNG region. There's no way to hang out with all the people in person. But on the IRC, I got to know people from all over, and participated in enough word wars to drag my word count just barely over 50K by the end of the month. And when I did, there were people there, cheering virtually, which was definitely more epic than when I won last year and was just hanging out at home cheering for myself.

The plus side of this whole experience, aside from the social aspect, was that I think I may finally have broken through the issue where I couldn't write anything of worth because so much crap had built up in my mind. Like, I was actually starting to think of things to write about that were interesting and that I might be able to do something with. Part of it was hanging out with and talking to people who have a similarly literary mindset. That always helps. Part of it was just finally getting 50,000 words of crap out in one fell swoop so that I could actually think about these more worthy things. Whatever it was, I'm super excited. I just need to take advantage of it while I've still got it, and do my darndest to not lose it again. We can only hope...

On Occasion I Think I'm Brilliant

It's true. It's actually much more frequent occurrence when I'm in the process of editing my NaNo novel, which I find to be a good sign (hopefully). If nothing else, I feel like the massive creative output of NaNo forced some of my best lines out of me, IMHO. Well, it was probably that and the fact that I used a sip or two of rum to overcome writer's block for most of November... but on the plus side, I still think it's funny when the strongest thing I've had to drink is some black tea at a coffee shop that was left to steep for a little too long. Maybe for my next post I shall attempt to find some good sections and see if I'm the only one who finds them funny.

But for now, there is actually something else that I thought was brilliant recently. It was completely unrelated to writing. I was just chatting with a friend, and he mentioned that he could go on for days about the flaws of certain versions of D&D, while simultaneously creating a character and a new campaign. I laughed when he said this, and told him I did the same thing with certain interests. Then I realized that there should be a way to quantify this effect. I decided to call it the "Facebook Effect." You all know this happens. I try to avoid being one of the people who has to post about how much the new Facebook changes stink, since I know full well that no matter how much I dislike them, I'll keep using Facebook. So will everyone else who complains. I thought it was at least clever, and so why not blog about it?

I feel like this happens more often than we like to admit, though. Seriously, there are so many instances where something pops up in our life that annoys us enough that we feel the need to complain about it. Take Windows as another example. When Windows came out with Vista, the complaints started coming within weeks. But those dedicated to PCs still used it, because their dislike of Vista wasn't nearly enough to convince them to switch to Mac. Granted, everyone who had sense upgraded to 7 as soon as it came out, but for the years in between we all suffered in a not-so-silent manner. I've never quite figured out why we do this. Is it just another form of catharsis? A way to make us feel better about our problems? Because, really, for most of the instances I can think of, they're really first world problems. "My computer is so slow, I can barely play my games," and so forth. Slightly less life or death than "I can't feed myself this month."

There might have been a point to this. It got lost in my own personal world and I'm not up to an intense expedition currently. So, just in case anyone ever reads this, I'll end with a question. What do you think of the "Facebook Effect"? Real, imagined, brilliant, or just obvious?

Success!

Now that I've actually posted something and had it work, I feel like I can actually type a full post without expecting disappointment when I hit "Publish" and none of it shows up.

I figured that it was probably time to start up blogging again, especially seeing as I'm possibly looking at freelance writing jobs to bring in some extra funds, and this can only be good practice. Maybe I'll even end up not sucking. One can only hope.

I've recently acquired an interest in tabletop RPGs, and have wanted for awhile now to play. The issue currently is that I have no one in the area to play with, and I'm also a total noob (but admitting it is the first step, I've been told). I'm thinking of going to the used bookstore in the area and trying to get enough money to buy a Player's Handbook for D&D by selling the Twilight books that I can safely say I will NEVER read again. I find this to be a more than fair trade. I only hope that the bookstore will agree. Maybe my interest is rooted in the lack of characters I've created, which after NaNo seems criminal. Actually, even when I was barely writing over the summer I was still creating different characters, though admittedly they were incredibly shallow and needed personality surgery to be viable in a decent story. So the fact that the only one I've created in the last two months has been for my next writing project (more about that later) is odd. It's one of my favorite parts of the writing process. I see RPGs as a way to fix that, and create serious character development skills as well. Now the trick is to find a way to play when all the people I know of who play are about two hours away. And also, learning without my head exploding. But I see that as a minor obstacle.

In writing, I've been doing this project with a friend called the Letter Game. We basically just created characters and a general setting, and then had them start writing letters to each other. It's very interesting, and different than I thought it would be. For instance, I'm used to coming up with basic plots, adding the twists where needed and then letting inspiration drive the rest. That's what worked best for my NaNo novel. I created Point A and Point Z and left the others up to the journey as it unfolded. Harder to edit effectively, but the experience was definitely worth it, especially since it gave me a distinct goal to work towards as opposed to my other, more open-ended attempts at becoming a novelist. You know, the ones that crashed and burned in a fire worth of a Balrog. But for this newest project, I'm not the only one coming up with twists. She is too. It's a rather disconcerting experience, having half a plot already planned out almost out of habit and then having to completely revise it to fit the new information she just provided. It's good for me though. Makes me learn how to be really adaptable in my writing. Now I just have to figure out a way to reply, and I can maybe move past the block in all my other endeavors.

I feel like this is sufficient for my semi-triumphant return to this blog. Perhaps I can figure out a way to motivate myself to keep it up. Who knows... the possibility of money usually helps.

This is a test, because this has been glitching out. If it works, there will be an actual post.

For some reason, the last couple of times that I've tried to post here, it hasn't posted any of the body. I feel like I should figure out why, but first I'm going to try and see if some recent browser reconfigurations fixed the problem before I put actual thought into it.