Day 5 Expected target : 8335 (rounded up)

Day 5 Actual wordcount : 12141

Day 6 Expected target : 10002 (rounded up)

Day 6 Actual wordcount : 12770

Ooh, it’s a struggle.  Last night was good, I made 2k easily but tonight was another story entirely.

It was a struggle to get what I had written done.  And that’s me.  There’s no point banging the words in and getting depressed about it.   Better quit while I’m still feeling up about everything and pick it up later.

I’m away this weekend so there may not be any kind of update until the end of Sunday, and I’m not sure what is going to get done words wise.  Still, I have breathing room, hopefully I won’t fall behind too badly.

Didn’t get the Deathwing Terminators finished. 

Did get housework done, some work on The Fracture and a few key upgrades to the site. 

So an overall success.

Got a meeting with fellow NaNoers tonight.  A pre-NaNo meet.  I’m quite excited.

And I bought the wife flowers today because of a top class image she’s done for the site (which isn’t up yet).

Six days left until NaNoWriMo.

I’ll share a bit of info on what this years NaNo will be.

Title: Planet of Snakes

Plot: Searching for info about his lost loved ones our intrepid crew visit a planet off the beaten track and find more then they bargain for:  Treachery, Loss and Giant Snakes!

Heh.  Giant snakes.  What the hell is going on here… 

So today I’ll not be working on NaNoWriMo plotting much at all.  There are a number of things I was to get cleared away before next Saturday arrives, as I may have mentioned in yesterday’s post.

I’ll be painting my two remaining Deathwing Terminators and once they’re out the way I can clear my desk of painting and miniatures, and hopefully keep it clear until December arrives.

After that, housework beckons and I’ll be working on the Fracture story I started ages ago.  There’s some work on the website required before the 1st, I don’t want to be thinking about any of it during November.

So a busy day ahead of me.  I’ll check in later to say how wisely I’ve spent my time.

Yesterday got another 1000 odd words done but today barely 500 words.

But it’s more words in total, and that’s what’s important.

Hopefully I’ll get more written before I get to bed, but I have two laptops to tinker with before tomorrow and I’m hoping they won’t take too long…

Bear with me on this one. Got a new plugin for Firefox called ScribeFire that allows me to blog directly without having to jump through the usual hoops…

So, pending a sucessful test, this should be on the site within seconds…

Apparently he died after a cardio-respiratory attack.

BBC News have an obituary here.

A bit scunnered on hearing this but, truth be told, 90 is a fair age to reach.

It’s an odd one when an icon, someone whose work you grow up reading, dies.

Of course, I never met the man but I still feel the loss.  Strange.

Anyways, wherever you are in the cosmos Arthur, I hope you’re having one hell of a time…

As I mentioned previously, I no longer do any work with an after-school care. This frees up under half my week. Work-wise, I only have one part time job and that’s the one with the Church. And that’s only 21 hours a week.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, there was a particular reason why I left the after-school group. A particular reason other than it being crap. That’s a whole other reason, and not one that’s good enough for giving up a paying job.

No, the reason why I’ve cut my hours down is so that I can dedicate working hours to writing and other creative pursuits. And I reckon that the only way for me to get the time and focus my enthusiasm to getting a substantial amount of work done is by treating it like a job.

I’m not expecting wonders here (and maybe I should) but Ruth and I have discussed this at length and we’re both of the opinion that I have to try and make it happen and stop just talking about it.

It’s a bold move, and one that cuts down our income for a good while. But we can survive on an income and a half for the time being. And I’ll get more time to produce work as long as I’m actually producing something.

Initially this crazy plan is for the rest of the month of January and at the end of the month we will see if it’s worth continuing with.

The project is “The Desert Of Zin”, the story that prompted the name of this website. There’s an existing prologue and old notes for the rest of a story that I’ve been working over for the past few weeks. I’ve put in a lot of the groundwork to make the proposed story as strong as possible and I’m confident that come Tuesday morning, the first “official” day of the new writing regime, I’ll be hitting the ground running.

My “working” days will be Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I’ll be posting an update where possible.  And to cut down on the distractions, which are an ever-present problem at home, I’ll be working in the local library.

Hopefully that should do it. 

There are some other creative objects on the horizon but I’m wanting to get this under my belt before entertaining anything else.

I’ll share these other ideas at a later date.

Take it easy,

Al

(And I’m not talking about me here…  Well, only a wee bit.)

So, did the Festive Fat Man bring you anything nice this year?  Coupled with braving the sales it has been a very booky Christmas.

Children Of The Mind by Orson Scott Card, Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman, Pavane by Keith Roberts and Gateway by Frederik Pohl.

Should keep me busy for a while…

While on holiday I decided (and with much encouragement from my wife) to try something new in the writing stakes. After all, it was a holiday and time to unwind and relax. And something new would be good for me, we thought, as I could write something that wasn’t encumbered by previous notes and story attempts.

So I came up with the bare bones of the Osiris Rising story.

It’s a Samuel Mandrake tale, a younger version of the old guy from The Bandstand excerpt I’ve already posted. The story is first person, which took some getting used to. I spent a while finding Sam’s voice and the first few pages don’t seem to match the tone of the rest as a result.

Oh well, that’s what editing is for.

Also, I’m doing this off the computer. Having started it on holiday, far away from daily and convenient computer access, I had to fall back on the old faithful of pen and paper. Good thing about doing it this way is that I don’t get caught in the trap of getting a few thousand words into it and grinding to a halt spending all my time ceaselessly revising it..

It’s about setting an old wrong to right. And about forgiving yourself.

And it may be full of creeping evil. I haven’t got that far, so if when it’s finished and there’s not a great deal of creeping evil to be found, I’m warning you here and now that this all might change.

I really can’t be held responsible for what is said long before the damn thing gets finished.

I’m forever puttering about with this bloomin’ site.

I’ve been using Wordpress for DesertOfZin for a goodly while now and although I’ve been though a few self built themes, it’s still not exactly as I would like it.

So the usual warnings apply.  If the page looks shonky in anyway then there’s a good chance it’s just me messing about with the theme again.  If the shonkiness (is that even a word?) continues then there’s a good chance I’ve made huge mistakes that I’m too blind to notice.

Just bear with me.