Other than this post I’ll not be thinking of NaNoWriMo.  Tomorrow is when all the fun begins and despite not having a proper coherent story I’m refusing to fret.

I discovered over the weekend that the ending I wanted doesn’t remotely fit the beginning I was planning.  I have a few scenes in mind for the start, an almost clear picture for the first two or three days and beyond that I’m in full “bluffing it” mode.

Oooh, this’ll be fun.

And if it all grinds to a halt too quickly I have another daft idea for a novel, something that Ruth and I were talking about at the weekend.  It’ll serve as a backup if the first crashes and burns!

And if NaNo goes so well then there’s no reason not to try to write both of them at once…    (this, of course, is madness talking…)

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I’ll not be writing anything completely new this year.  A few years ago I wrote a pulp sci-fi/horror called Planet of Snakes, the first and only time i finished a NaNoWriMo, which was a sequel to the story I attempted the previous year called Desert of Zin.  Thing is, i never finished Desert of Zin…

So, Planet of Snakes was the sequel to an unfinished novel?  Yep.  And it depended on the ending of Desert of Zin to work.

My thinking is that I’ll use Snakes and other works to write a space adventure.

It’s not strictly just an editing process.  The setting works, after a fashion, and I’ll only need to change the characters, the dialogue, most of the plot and anything else that springs to mind.

But that’s not all.  Oh, no.

It’s not about writing a 50k story this time.  It’s about writing something that actually works, that’s actually readable and is actually complete.  Planet of Snakes was a mess filled with quick fixes.  But my writing has come on in bounds.  I don’t fall into the same repetitious traps.  (Or not as much.)

Nothing quite like setting the sights high, eh?

Seriously though, I’ve brought the blog back to life.  I’ve been working hard on my writing – not having the distraction of a blog worked wonders for my output for a while – and…  Well, and.  Obviously it makes sense to have a further distraction to my writing, especially the very one I stopped before for that very reason…

Actually there are a few reasons why I dropped the blog.  It was getting cluttered.  It was becoming a hassle to maintain.  It wasn’t about writing fiction any more.

Bingo.  That’s why I set Desert Of Zin up in the first place, as a dedicated writing blog away from Jedimoose.org, a site I ran with Ben.  And I haven’t posted there in a long, long time.

So, plans for Zin?  I’m not sure it’ll be a personal blog space.  I’ll not have any gaming or prog rock posts.  And previous posts I’ll archive somewhere.  Writing, writing, writing.  And NaNoWriMo is coming soon.

More to come…

Had some cracking ideas on the bus home from my early shift, as my mind was a-wandering.  Listening to copious amounts of prog on the way didn’t hurt, I’m sure.  (Pure by Pendragon if you must know.)

The ideas came thick and fast and, once Ruth and Aurora left the flat for an hour or two to catch up with folks, I wrenched myself away from the interweb to review what I’ve written and make copious notes.  The thing is that with the SVQ I was battering work into it at some pace towards the end and there’s no reason why I can take up that pace with my fiction.

I know, I know I’ve said that before, procrastination gets easier the more I do it, but if I don’t keep saying that I can do it then I don’t think I ever will.

Distractions are the key or, more specifically, managing them.  But I can afford myself a bit of distraction time.  It worked with the SVQ, to work past a line in the sand then allow myself only, and strictly, 15 mins of fun time away from the screen.  Against all previous experience it actually worked.  So why can’t I apply the same to my fiction?

Part of that problem, I think at least, are deadlines.  The SVQ had a very strict one.  NaNoWriMo had a deadline (and I know I only managed it the once.)  But writing for some imagined ‘I might send this to X, Y and Z website/publisher/agent’ deadline just hasn’t worked, especially when you can shift that line in the sand whenever you like.

So what’s different now?

Time.  I have it and I don’t know how long for.  I’ll be applying for new jobs and depending on the eventual success of that process I’ll have a whole new shift pattern (and I wouldn’t call what I have now a ‘pattern’) to deal with and I don’t know yet how that’ll pan out.

- Alistair

And part of that having a game of Warhammer 40K, something I haven’t played in years but have wanted to if the opportunity presented itself.  It has, an army of wee metal and plastic space men have been painted (almost), and the game will be in the local Games Workshop store (Glasgow).

Problem is, I have the least competitive army choice: The Grey Knights.  They’re a similar flavour of genetically enhanced super-human (the ever popular and present Space Marines) but their codex (the published army book you draw their rules from) is currently one of the oldest still in current use.

While the majority of the game has seen significant updates, the Grey Knights have not.  (Although a new codex has been rumoured for some time.  I’ll believe it when I see it.)

Also, I have my writing.  The ever present joy of bashing words into place… 

The time off, bearing in mind that Aurora will be at the child-minder 4 days out of seven, will give me a chance to dig in to the NaNoWriMo attempt despite not officially doing the WriMo for the rest of the month.  This evening I’ve been digging out all the crap I’ve already written and already I’m feeling better about it.

- Alistair

Seeking some rational advice (thank you Terry and Ruth) I’ve decided that NaNoWriMo isn’t doing my work any good at all this year.  The story is still being written but at my own pace and not in the way of ‘quickly, pad it to get to 50 thousand words!’  It was killing the story and I like the way it was going before the padding started to get out of control.

So, there you have it.  No more NaNoWriMo for me this year.  And I’m not bothered.  Between shifts today I’ve spent time actually enjoying my writing work, writing some good stuff that doesn’t feel forced or padded.

Al is officially a happy bunny about this. 

- Alistair

For the life of me, I just can’t find the inspiration or the words.

Maybe It’ll be different tomorrow.

- Alistair