Well, only one person showed any interest. Since I haven’t been doing much of anything other than working on this story all month, however, if I want to crank out a post this week I suppose that dipping from this well of 30,000 or so words I’ve created is as good a solution as any. So, without further ado, please enjoy this not-entirely-finished snippet from what may be the third installment of the forthcoming serialized story posting project…
Month: November 2013
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HalfANaNo
As of last night there are more than twenty five thousand words in my serial story writing project thing that I’m currently using NaNoWriMo as a motivational system for convincing myself to get the damned thing written.
25,000 words. And I’m not even sick of this story yet. Hell, when I “won” NaNo back in 2002 I was questioning my choice of story ideas within just a few days. This one? I’m still excited about it!
I mean, sure, it’s going to be terrible. It’s mostly dialog, punctuated by the occasional action scene and/or bit of carnage. I can’t help it, I’m writing what’s fun. Also, I couldn’t do it without the wonderful yWriter software which lets me write whatever scene I want, wherever in the story I want it. (Its other features include goal tracking, detailed character information, imports and exports, automatic backups… really, if you want to write and haven’t chosen a tool yet and want something more than Just A Word Processor, yWriter is a hell of a way to go.)
Now, you’ll note that it’s more than halfway through November and 50,000 is a long way away. That’s fine. I never intended to “win” NaNo, just leverage its word-count-tracking and social-dynamic intensity to stimulate wordcount on the project. When the project’s done, I stop. Seeing as how only nine of the twenty-six planned installments are lacking any words at all (more than half of the “chapters” are essentially done in fact) I think I’m making good time.
Projected start of posting? Early December ideally, but no later than Solstice if I can at all help it.
And if there’s enough interest, I’ll throw a sample onto the journal here at some point.
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Uninterrupted
Here, today, I would like to commemorate a rare event. I’m not sure that “rare” is even the right word. It’s almost unheard of.
Last night I slept for at least eight uninterrupted hours.
No loud noises, no random waking for no reason, no insomnia, nothing. So yes, I’m marking this on the calendar. Wow.
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One Night In Portland
I’m going on record (ha ha) with an unpopular musical opinion, and I don’t really care who knows it.
Back in early 1985 two singers released their own versions of the same song. I was thirteen years old at the time, right in the target demographic for Top-40 “Z” stations like Z-100 here in Portland. One of their gimmicks involved voting for the better of two songs via a phone-in tally. Since this one song’s two renditions came out within weeks of one another it probably seemed a brilliant idea to put them up against one another.
It’s possible that I still have my cassette tape recording of the event kicking around here somewhere but I wouldn’t put money on that bet.
Everyone who lived through the ’80s is familiar with and may even like the version that went on to become a one-hit wonder. Me? I still prefer this one, and I always will. So be it.
(For the love of your sanity, don’t seek out the actual promotional videos for either rendition. They’re very, very… ’80s. Hooboy.)
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It’s A Smalltown World
At the end of a moderately terrible day, I came home to find this link in my Inbox, courtesy of Wonderduck himself.
So we’ll end today on a high note, if you’ll pardon the expression…
