Mucking around trying to get more bonuses for my better half. :)
About to head back to the old town, which seems like a good opportunity to A) increase my count of unique pokestops visited (there's a tad few more in that CBD than in our local one!) and B) pick up a mess of interstate low-level mons to do transfers with and add on to that distance transfer medal.
Re-activated an old account, going to be trying to pick up a mess of mons down there while I'm in town, then transfer them to my main when I get back here. Not too sure if it still counts for a third stage transfer, if I was to pass one on to another account, if it'd still count towards the long distance transfer counts or not.
May have to do some experimenting.
In other non-news, this keyboard (or more likely, this keyboard position) is not very comfortable and I'm feeling stress in my wrists just from writing this short entry. If I want to give NaNoWriMo another go this year, I'm definitely going to need to try and improve my ergonomics or I'll stop by the end of the third day.
Managed to punch out the 50k, whoo!
Feeling pretty good right now. The down side for me is that I didn't actually write a full novel, not the one I started at any rate. I did a rough outline at the end of October, and I got about a third of the way through the story.
But the goal was to crank out 50k words in November, more to get into the habit of writing than to write an award winning novel. Now comes the tricky part - to keep writing stories.
I like doing NaNoWriMo. Pretty sure I won't be able to do it next year due to anticipated work comitments, but we'll see how it goes.
As expected, so far nobody has asked about my progress on FB, so pretty sure I don't have too many FB friends that are into writing. No biggie, I wasn't expecting anybody to bite.
Progress report - today I'm at 32,000 words, which puts me about two days ahead of schedule. Brilliant! It's Saturday morning, so should be able to make good progress... BUT we have mud racing tonight (which means I should try and get some sleep during the day) and I'm working all day Sunday. #SadPanda
Looking at my spreadsheet, at one stage I was 4,300 words ahead of schedule, but then I had a run of bad days. On the plus side, despite the days I didn't write much, the lowest I got was 548 words ahead and never fell behind. That's with two days where I wrote zero words!
So far, looking good! :)
Making okay progress, ahead of the goal so far. I find it really helps to have spreadsheet planned, with my characters, outlines, ideas and today I added a timeline (so I can track how far away events are, my story covers about a month and a half).
The anmoying thing is that I had an issue with the computer and I may have lost about a thousand words. *groan*
I'm going to see if I can recover them tomorrow, if not... guess I'll have to try and re-write that section. Very glad I keep multiple versions of my stories, so that if a file gets damaged or corrupted, I've only lost part of my work, not all of it.
Numbering days is easy when the first of the month is day one. #CheesyGrin
Okay, so the goal count is about 1,670 words per day (or better). So for day six, I should be at or around 10,000 words.
My actual total is ... 12,823. Wooo! Ahead of schedule (so far)! Now admitedly, I am padding my story, and throwing in extra words that are superfluous. If I was editing this an actual "going to submit to publisher" story, I could easily edit out about 3,000 words (then do a proper edit and ditch another 2,000 or more).
Is this good story writing? Probably not... but it is more writing than I've done in the last ... ten years? Been a while. So hopefully I can maintain the momentum. You can always edit down and tighten up the prose, you can't fix what hasn't been written at all.
Side note about social media; I made a few posts about NaNo and got a few likes but no comments. So now I've stopped posting about it and I'll see if anybody is interested enough to ask how I am going.
Well, November is here again! I think I've set myself up for success as best I can this year. I had been hoping to crank out about 5,000 words today but I didn't get as much spare time as I'd thought.
Still, managed to get 2,186 words down - which is about 500 words over the daily target. So I'm still counting that as a win.
Story is starting out a bit slow, there's a fair bit of exposition I'm data dumping onto the poor reader. But NaNo is primarily about getting words down - trimming fat, tightening the prose and improving the story are all re-write and editing steps, not first draft steps.
That's my version and I'm sticking to it!
>.<
Some good news, some bad news. First up, the hard numbers:
22 Oct - 1,142 - pretty happy with that
23 Oct - 531 - not as good, better than nothing
24 Oct - 1,144 - on target
25 Oct - 579 - another drop
26 Oct - 1,440 - best day yet, on fire!
27 Oct - zero
28 Oct - zero
29 Oct - 250 or so
The 27 and 28 was a weekend. The Sunday, I was out all morning then we had friends over all afternoon so was quite busy until late. Frustrating, but it would have been rude to be sitting writing and ignoring everybody.
Saturday I had plenty of time to do lots of writing... but I didn't. Rather slack of me there, no excuses. Shoulda, coulda, woulda... but didn't. Shame mate, shame.
The Monday I didn't do any narrative writing, but I did get a bunch of notes down in preparation for NaNo. I have a rough story idea, some notes on chapter outlines and a decent roadplan to follow which should make writing easier.
Fingers crossed!
Doing good so far!
Well, recently. I started my spreadsheet on the 8th, and had five days of zero words. But since I wrote down my goal and published it, I've had three continuous days of hitting targets.
For October, my goals are 1,000 words per day (but building up towards 2,000 per day in November). My stats are:
19th 1,115
20th 2,080
21st 1,489
Not bad numbers, but those were over a weekend. This week will be pretty much make or break I'm guessing. It's fairly easy to write when there is time available and not exhausted.
We'll see how much I can write at the end of the day after work...
"A goal that isn't written down is just a wish."
With my writing, I need to write down a goal. And I keep telling others to use the SMART method, so I suppose I should practice what I preach. ;) It doesn't help that by about 7pm, I feel like it's midnight. Just throw that one on the 'lame excuses' pile.
So, here is my goal, written down:
Specific - to write 1,000 words each day, for the rest of October
Measurable - yes, using a word processing program, it is easy to count how many words have been written (or added).
Achievable - yes, assuming I'm not exhausted, mentally drained or off on different tasks that take up time. I can write a thousand words in about 45 minutes (faster if I'm on a roll), but it gets frustrating when I get constantly pulled away from the laptop or interrupted every 5 minutes.
Relevant - yes, this is building towards 2,000 a day during November.
Timely - yes, there's 13 days left in October, then the big one of 30 days in November. December I can coast.
I've already got a spreadsheet going to keep track of my progress (or lack thereof). I started tracking on the 8th of October but so far already have five "zero" days... so, not off to a good start. My best day so far was 1,118 words. Though admittedly, what I've written so far has all been unrelated exercises or just free rambling. November needs to be a cohesive story.
Trying to get into the habit of writing.
At the moment, my main goal is just to write *something* preferably every day (where possible). Some days are going to be harder than others. I set up a little spreadsgeet to keep track of stuff.
I could make it a bit more accurate by also tracking stuff like posts on this blog, Facebook and so on. But getting a word count for these is more steps than I care to take. I don't think in the grand scheme of things that I'll be writing enough on social media for it to count for much anyway.
Pretty sure that my previous efforts kept falling flat because I was trying to be too ambitious. The proverbial "biting off more than I could chew" deal.
Fingers crossed!
First week of the eight week writing challenge down. The first week's exercise was to have at least three ten-minute free writing blocks done.
That might seem like a fairly low target but we had the boys here for a large part of that week and I considered one thirty minute session a cheat. I can do a lot more in a week, but managed to hit that target.
Next challenge: find a block of sample text online and edit it.
As previously mentioned, I don't do new years resolutions. The running joke is that severel years ago I made a new years resolution not to make new years resolutions... which is kind of circular.
However, I do like to set and achieve goals. And an unwritten goal is just a wish. The five parts of a proper, well thought-out goal are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. Hence the title of this post (see, I smarts. :P)
So here is my goal: I will complete a writing exercise every week for the first eight weeks of 2018.
It is specific - I have a spreadsheet I wrote out with 8 writing exercises, one to achieve each week.
It is measurable - each Sunday I can evaluate the week and see if I hit that target (or not).
It is attainable - each of the exercises could (theoretically) be knocked out in under an hour; could do all of them in one day. If I wanted to really challenge myself, I'd be aiming at a writing exercise every day (I can do more, one a week is the initial goal).
It is relevant - in order to get better at writing, I need to practice.
It is time-bound - I will have a seven day window to complete each exercise and if I miss one for some reason I have to move on to the next one.
Why only the first eight weeks? I could set myself a longer goal, such as an exercise each week for the whole year, but that is just setting myself up for failure. With work, I know there will be times when I will be away and I don't know when, for how long or what I will be doing. It would be too easy to have some work commitment come up, miss a few weeks and then get depressed that I missed my goal for the whole year.
I'm reasonably confident that I won't have any time away from home in the first two months. After that... not so sure. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
It's been over a month since the first two videos for #BadlyDrawnCinema went up. Not that I'm worried about viewers or followers, but I don't like not being creative. :(
The main holdup at the moment is trying to get my old Wacom graphics tablet to work. I can draw on bits of paper and scan them, then go over it with the mouse and get a halfway decent result (hah!) but I would prefer to do full digital.
I think the pen isn't working properly, it's always in draw mode. I really don't want to have to buy a new tablet (new pens are hard to find for old tablets and cost more than a whole new tablet).
On the plus side, I have got a second computer up and running (big thanks to my awesome wife), just needs a bit more software loaded on. I can write on there, and have been. Might look at upgrading the keyboard next year. Or the year after...
I'd done a post earlier this week but hadn't posted it. Here it is:
So, the latest (rehashed) creative idea is to write out short stories, then create storyboard videos to upload.
Since I'll be recording all the dialogue in house (or on my phone) then there shouldn't be any copyright issues there. Music will be a bit harder, I don't really have a way of generating decent music. Might need to re-find that old site I found before for background music that is royalty free. Good old classical music should be a good source too.
Images shouldn't be an issue as I'll be (badly) drawing everything myself. And I won't be advertising it, this project is primarily for the fun of it.
I foresee the drawing part taking the longest, that would be the most time intensive part of the creation process. Short story ideas are easy enough to generate. So initially I'll stick to making them all stand alone stories that don't tie in together, but the long goal is to make a series of stories that interconnect in some way.
At least, that's the plan.
Again.
Most of the time, when I remember dreams, I only dimly recall them in the first few minutes after waking up.
Sometimes, I remember them longer, long enough to share them with my Wife.
I might get into the habit of writing them down in the morning. I've read somewhere that it helps to develop memory and increase your chances of lucid dreaming.
Plus it might give me some ideas for creative writing!
I love being creative.
I definitly prefer to be a creator rather than a consumer. If I could have my dream job, that would be movie producer. But each movie is a multi million dollar gamble, with no guarantee of profit (or even any income at all!) It is truly a rich mans game.
At the moment I have three creative projects running. The first is guitar; I'm trying to learn how to play. Not very hard though, I spend very little time practicing. My main excuse is that I can't afford new strings, but that's a pretty lame excuse at best.
My second is writing. I've been doing creative writing on and off for a number of years now. And I'd be so much better at it if I wrote regularly. Or had people read and provide feedback on what I've written.
I just found a writing community who specialise in old stule CYOA type stories. I might give that a go, get some feedback.
My third project is making unfinished storyboard type videos for youtube. It can combine my desire to create movies and write stories into a one-man-show type of studio. It'd be like storyboards with audio. A few challenges on that front, but it gives me an excuse to draw more.
I'd been thinking back to the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books I used to read as a child. I had a go at writing my own a few years ago but didn't complete it since I couldn't hold all the plot elements in my head at once (among other things).
This morning I was looking at better ways to organise it to keep a better idea in my head.
At the moment I'm looking at doing the rough outline on paper, then laying it out in page numbers in a spreadsheet, then coding it in html to chuck it up on my website.
Now all I need is time...
