Hole in the Family
Introduction
30 Nov. 2007
It occurred to me I hadn't described very much my last few thousand words. See, I wanted to stop at 49,999 words because that would be cool. I was really drawing it out with those last few words. I remember I had like 800 words. And I thought there's no way I could longer. But I kept writing. Then I had 300 words. And I thought 'I'm almost done, but to do now?'. Then I had less then a hundred words. Like 67 words or so. So I stopped and went into the IRC chat room and said "oh look, 67 words left". And talked and whatever. Than I wrote a few more and had 20 words left. Then it was back to the IRC room. Then I kind of gave up and wrote the last few words. I ended a sentence with exactly 49,999 words just to be cool. Of course that excludes the title.
Anyway I finished it, finally. It's now 11:15pm and I want to go to a LAN party tomorrow. So I'll probably leave the write-in.
29 Nov. 2007
As you can tell from the image I have finished the novel for 2007 (you might notice this is a REALLY long page). I have to say I am rather glad to have this over, really. I can start doing other things now. It was certainly fun while it lasted! I even got done a day early!
26 Nov. 2007
Below is my latest NaNoWriMo novel for 2007. To your right is a link to my WriMo Novel from 2005 as well as a table of contents and a list of fellow participants.
First the purpose of this post: I went through with a find/replace and got rid of most all of the contractions I could find (I left one or two on purpose). This increased my word count significantly. Or a few anyway. So if someone were to past the contents below into a word processor and do a word count it would be different from what is reported at your right. Why anyone would that I have no idea.
As I thought would happen I did very little writing over the holiday. I did go to a Borders books and write out 2000 words. Took me a long time though (two hours or so). I am getting to the point I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's like this whole thing is do-able or something. At least I would think that if I wasn't in a slump currently. To make things worse my XBox 360 just got back from red-ring-of-death repairs...must..not..play.....
22 Nov. 2007
Well I decided I on Sunday I wanted to be at 40k by the Wednesday before Thanks Giving so I didn't feel so pressured to write over the holiday. Which I successfully made at 11:00pm Wednesday night. So I'm now all caught up through Saturday. I don't even have to worry about it.
Of course, I could keep writing when I find the time. In fact I could be done by this Sunday if I wanted to. That would be awesome. I mean not only reaching 50k but reaching it a week ahead of schedule? It's very tempting...
18 Nov. 2007
This wasn't actually intended to be a mini-blog about the NaNo but that's what it's turning into. The post below is what some random visitor commented on. I just wanted to thank that person for doing so. Any and comments welcome! Well not spammers. Boo spamers. boo...
I'll also say I had a lot of fun at the "Write in" the other night. I got to meet some people I had talked to only through the forums at the WriMo site. They seem a lot smarter than me. That's ok though, I write because I like it not to show how smart (or not) I am.
(below is before 11-15-07)
I am actually some what proud of how I set this page up this year: I renamed the file of this same page from 2005 and then just over-wrote all those entries with this year's story, generating a new page via blogger. That would make sense if you'd ever made a page on a web server and tried to use blogger (really). I wish I had thought of that last year. So now I have an archive of 2005's novel as well as a perfectly formatted version of the blog for this year.
One thing I've discovered this year: the chat room is way too distracting for me. I have started using a new editor I found through the WriMo forums called Q10. When you bring it up it covers the entire screen including the task bar so you're not distracted. Along the bottom is kind of status bar with things like the time, how many pages you've written and if you want the percentage complete you are of some word number goal (like 50,000 or the current day's word goal). It also makes fun type writer sound effects as you type. The whole background defaults to black which you can adjust along with the font color (I changed mine to green to give it kind of a monochrome look).
Also, if anyone notices, I'm purposefully avoid hyphens and contractions to make the word count that much better. Hey, it works...
Lastly I know this isn't a very engaging story. No "sub-plots" or "character development" or whatever. It's still about as close to a real story as I've ever done. And way better than the last two years attempts. I hope next year will be even better. ¶ 5:49 PM
30 Nov. 2007
It occurred to me I hadn't described very much my last few thousand words. See, I wanted to stop at 49,999 words because that would be cool. I was really drawing it out with those last few words. I remember I had like 800 words. And I thought there's no way I could longer. But I kept writing. Then I had 300 words. And I thought 'I'm almost done, but to do now?'. Then I had less then a hundred words. Like 67 words or so. So I stopped and went into the IRC chat room and said "oh look, 67 words left". And talked and whatever. Than I wrote a few more and had 20 words left. Then it was back to the IRC room. Then I kind of gave up and wrote the last few words. I ended a sentence with exactly 49,999 words just to be cool. Of course that excludes the title.
Anyway I finished it, finally. It's now 11:15pm and I want to go to a LAN party tomorrow. So I'll probably leave the write-in.
29 Nov. 2007
As you can tell from the image I have finished the novel for 2007 (you might notice this is a REALLY long page). I have to say I am rather glad to have this over, really. I can start doing other things now. It was certainly fun while it lasted! I even got done a day early!
26 Nov. 2007
Below is my latest NaNoWriMo novel for 2007. To your right is a link to my WriMo Novel from 2005 as well as a table of contents and a list of fellow participants.
First the purpose of this post: I went through with a find/replace and got rid of most all of the contractions I could find (I left one or two on purpose). This increased my word count significantly. Or a few anyway. So if someone were to past the contents below into a word processor and do a word count it would be different from what is reported at your right. Why anyone would that I have no idea.
As I thought would happen I did very little writing over the holiday. I did go to a Borders books and write out 2000 words. Took me a long time though (two hours or so). I am getting to the point I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's like this whole thing is do-able or something. At least I would think that if I wasn't in a slump currently. To make things worse my XBox 360 just got back from red-ring-of-death repairs...must..not..play.....
22 Nov. 2007
Well I decided I on Sunday I wanted to be at 40k by the Wednesday before Thanks Giving so I didn't feel so pressured to write over the holiday. Which I successfully made at 11:00pm Wednesday night. So I'm now all caught up through Saturday. I don't even have to worry about it.
Of course, I could keep writing when I find the time. In fact I could be done by this Sunday if I wanted to. That would be awesome. I mean not only reaching 50k but reaching it a week ahead of schedule? It's very tempting...
18 Nov. 2007
This wasn't actually intended to be a mini-blog about the NaNo but that's what it's turning into. The post below is what some random visitor commented on. I just wanted to thank that person for doing so. Any and comments welcome! Well not spammers. Boo spamers. boo...
I'll also say I had a lot of fun at the "Write in" the other night. I got to meet some people I had talked to only through the forums at the WriMo site. They seem a lot smarter than me. That's ok though, I write because I like it not to show how smart (or not) I am.
(below is before 11-15-07)
I am actually some what proud of how I set this page up this year: I renamed the file of this same page from 2005 and then just over-wrote all those entries with this year's story, generating a new page via blogger. That would make sense if you'd ever made a page on a web server and tried to use blogger (really). I wish I had thought of that last year. So now I have an archive of 2005's novel as well as a perfectly formatted version of the blog for this year.
One thing I've discovered this year: the chat room is way too distracting for me. I have started using a new editor I found through the WriMo forums called Q10. When you bring it up it covers the entire screen including the task bar so you're not distracted. Along the bottom is kind of status bar with things like the time, how many pages you've written and if you want the percentage complete you are of some word number goal (like 50,000 or the current day's word goal). It also makes fun type writer sound effects as you type. The whole background defaults to black which you can adjust along with the font color (I changed mine to green to give it kind of a monochrome look).
Also, if anyone notices, I'm purposefully avoid hyphens and contractions to make the word count that much better. Hey, it works...
Lastly I know this isn't a very engaging story. No "sub-plots" or "character development" or whatever. It's still about as close to a real story as I've ever done. And way better than the last two years attempts. I hope next year will be even better. ¶ 5:49 PM
1 Comments:
Dude, another good one (editor) to try out is called Notepad++...it doesn't cover the screen or nothin, but it has some nice addon functionality, and can even help writing code if you're into that.
Anyway, I use it for just about everthing that don't need somethin like microcrap word to do formatin. If I try at Wrimo next year, Ill prolly use it.
By , at 1:54 PM
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