crackerjackjoe

09:20 pm: Nothing, nothing, nothing
Just because it was trendy, I got the DDR pad, but being too cheap to buy DDR, I set up StepMania. After tracking down device drivers, installing, troubleshooting, mapping keys, installing songs, finally I rested my fingers and let my son do the dancing.

He found it very frustrating to see each song end with "FAILURE!" It reminds me of the old computer errors: "FATAL ERROR! YOU'RE GONNA DIE WHEN YOUR BOSS SEES WHAT YOU DID TO THIS OH SO EXPENSIVE COMPUTER! NOW READ THIS HEX AND WEEP FOR YOUR SOUL! Error 0x34FA"

Also, today I learned a little about Blerg. It seems to be a purple monster with horns. Or a bad day. I'm not sure yet. Google wasn't sure either. Well, blerg it, I'm just going to use it as an expletitive.

Since santa brought me my digital camera, my next creative plan is to make a photographic comic book using comic book creator and the Gimp. Have I time to do this? Well, maybe if it gets me fired... My son's been putting together his Christmas legos and we've been taking pictures. It wasn't too hard to do close up shots once I read the manual. Like most lego comics artists, I'm going to have to use Gimp to add in the blood, guts and blerg.

In other news, Melissa submitted for CVS! A very good submission, too! I think all I contribute in the way of critique here is routine praise.

I've been sort of writing, if you can call jumbled blogging writing. I now have, count them, 1, 2, 3, 4,
active blogs. Soon I will be more famous than Robert Scobble! Well OK--a narrow group of geeks know who he is, and he's published a real dead tree book.

So, time for a quiz to see if you were paying attention or just skimming. What does blerg mean? Hmm? Louder? I don't think that is quite right--

FAILURE!

01:10 pm: What my cat would probably do at the library.

07:12 pm: I actually wrote 797 words!
The nano win date is now about January first. OK. Back to writing. My character needs to start an internecine struggle and so verbosely.

04:44 pm: NaNoWriMo Schedule
The new strategy is write large blocks of time using an previously written outline.

If I write 6800 words per day for all the weekends, I'd have a book. That has got to be something close to a 6 hour block of time. Likewise, if I wrote no weekends and wrote 2800 words a day I'd have a book--again about a 3 or 4 hour block of time. If I miss my goal about 50% of the time, I'd still win NaNo, if I hit my goal each time, I'd have a commerically viable book and I will retire rich enough to spend the rest of my days in a favela in Basilia, Brazil.

The key enemies to success are:

Good house keeping
Cooking
Working at the office
Exercising
Comics and BoingBoing

04:18 pm: Dana has Alzheimers
Dana keeps losing her keys, can't remember my name, etc. It's a tragic disease, very heart wrenching to watch.

So I spent $10 on Right Back up.

With paliative care and therapy, hopefully I won't have to euthenize Dana.

09:41 pm: NaNo With Dana
Went to Starbucks Coffee on Clarendon Blvd. I give it four stars as a place to write. Don't forget to take your Dana and a mug for a 10c discount.

If something is worth doing, it is worth overcomplicating. I've got the Dana and a goal of finishing NaNoWriMo, so today I spent some time getting ready and complicating things....

Alright, eight keys, so I've set them up like this:

F1- Novel outline. I never know what to write next when I'm writing prose, but I can generate ideas pretty quick if I don't actually have to describe the action and only need to list it.
F2- 1st 3rd of novel
F3- 2nd 3rd of novel I can't write linearly to save me.
F4- 3rd 3rd of novel
F5- Map of Dana, Map of world. I thinking of ripping off the names of streets in Clarendon for all my place name needs.
F6- Personae dramatis. Actually, this is just a list of 24 names, 1 per letter of the alphabet. I can't tell you how many times I'm writing along and I just stop because I need a name and can't think of one. OK, I can tell, you. It was 14 times.
F7- Prologue, Epilogue. This isn't part of the novel, so I think this is fair game for October work. Last novel didn't really get going until I had a reasonable vision of my two main characters. This time around I'm having a hard time imagining the world.
F8- NaNoWriMo Manifesto. All the things I love about novels, all the things I hate about novels. Plus my lists of story questions, lists of conflicts, etc.

Now I have five things to do when the prose typing has slowed. My theory is that if I can just keep typing something, I can get back into the groove.

Last novel was extremely jumbled. This created an editing problem. I needed to yank the naughty bits, list the factual stuff that needed to be researched, put the story into roughly chronological order, etc.

I could have written linearly, but that is too easy. I could have inserted each new scene into the appropriate place, but that requires stopping and searching through several thousand words for a suitable place to plug in the relevant scene. That costs word count.

My solution is to use XML tags, like:

< scene time="1" > blah, blah, blah < /scene >
< scene time="50" > blah, blah, blah < /scene >
< scene time="25" >< pr0n > blah, < need_info >blah< /need_info >, blah < /pr0n> blah blah blah < /scene >


Then, come December, I can whip out a pocket Swiss XML parser, sort the scenes by time, generate an G rated version for friends and family and an R rated version for posting on the scroupleless internet, and generate a list of sentences with shaky factual content that I need to google.

Also, this year I will not use italics. I will not use italics for foreign words because foreign depends on how much you know about a words history and how stupid you think the general population is. I will not use italics for characters thoughts because I'm going to try to keep my characters from engaging in pointless thinking. This year, due to a lack of suitable punctuation, my characters will be forced to make rash decisions and make rude, thoughtless comments to each other.

07:01 pm: A man a plan, a canal, lanacapanama.
According to newsweek and reputable blogs on the internet, my life style is killing me. Apparently I need to head out the the smoky bars, sit around, drink Chimay and swap jokes with the regulars to save my life. Or as newsweek said, I should find a girlfriend who's bubbly nature would compensate for my sleepy awkwardness.

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08:03 pm: Saw Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett was at Olsson's Books. In summary:

Books write themselves if you've done a good job of imagining the characters.
Don't cross writers, they know too much about forensic pathology & the like.
His books are copyrighted in his and his spouse's name for all sorts of reasons--extends the copy right, might cut taxes, and it was only fair since his wife dealt with the fan mail, etc.
There probably won't be a Discworld movie any time soon.

10:30 pm: Terry Pratchett in Arlington Sept 13
Just in time for getting in the mood to write Nanowrimo.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005 07:00 PM
Pratchett, Terry, will be promoting THUD!
OLSSON'S BOOKS & MUSIC/Speaking/Signing
2111 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201

04:37 pm: Building up a tolerance for pain
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