A Tale of Two Projects

Hello once again, people of the internets.  I bring a follow-up from my previous blog post regarding the two projects contained therein.

"Arianis lavi Moriquendi is under arrest.  We are to bring her home to face judgement.  And now we learn that the crime of shortening her name is to be added to the list of charges against her!  I fear that we may be too late to save her."

As mentioned previously, I was partaking in NaNoWriMo (continuing the project of about six years ago).  I decided from the start that I was not going to aim for the full 50 000 words due to not really having the time and instead aim at 25 000 words, a sort of mini (or chibi, if you will) NaNoWriMo.  My final total was a word count of about 25 400 words, so success (or Qapla', if you will) on that front.

I have also been continuing to work on the second draft of the outline for my FR project.  I am happy to say that that too has been successfully completed as of today.  So, yay!  It is now at a point where I feel I can (and should) start delving into the details, though I have to decide how to approach developing a detailed game script.  I'm considering the possibility of focusing on the first area and maybe trying to build some sort of demo for it.  Decisions, decisions!

Well, that is something for another day.  For now I bid thee farewell.

Until next time,
-Freak Out

Orthogonal Projections

Greetings interwebs.  Today I bring you an update on a couple of projects that aren't The Word Smith (with any luck it will hopefully resume early-ish in the new year).

First, that long running project - lets call it FR for short, if I haven't already - that I've commented on in my last couple of posts.  I'm currently about 3/5 of the way through the second draft of the outline.  The goal of this draft is to expand slightly on the details of the notewall draft, specifying some additional details without getting too deep into the nitty gritty.  This draft is being done the old fashioned way with paper and pencil.  A picture of a couple pages of my notebook is below, featuring my lovely handwriting.

Isn't it lovely?

The other project that I wanted to comment on today is a writing project, so no pictures for it.  I've decided to do some NaNoWriMo writing this year.  I'm not planning or expecting to hit the 50 000 word mark (which I did manage on my previous attempt - back in 2011) since I've got too many other things that a want (and in some cases need) to do that I'm unwilling to put on hiatus for a month.  Basically, I'm using this as motivation to do some writing and continue on with my previous NaNoWriMo project.  I've currently written about 8000 words and if I manage to keep up my current pace I'm hoping to make it to about 25 000 words by the end of the month.  We'll see how far I get and perhaps I'll write another update at the end of the month.

And that is all for today, interwebs.

Until Next Time,
-Freak Out

Babble, Babble, Babble

I'm working on my "comp II" (not right now, I mean in general) which I've mentioned before - it's one of those requirements for my PhD. Every now and then, I get stuck with a bit of writer's block. When that happens, I sometimes just start typing random babble, stream-of-conscious type of stuff, in an effort to try to get things started again, with varying degrees of success. If nothing else, it usually leaves me with something somewhat strange to look at for a bit.

Since there hasn't really been much blog-worthy stuff happening of late (though I should probably do a final write-up for the comic workshop), I figured I'd inflict a couple of the more recent stream-of-conscious eruptions on my one or two actual readers so that they can boggle at it. BOGGLE I SAY!

Here's one from a couple of weeks ago (or thereabouts - I don't timestamp them):

...while also being a contestant on Jeopardy!, but not Wheel of Fortune (which is for dumb people). There are two rules for every yard stick, most notably the inevitability of walls to be solid, at least when yellow. Foreasmuch as nine bricks forms a collection, there is a sparrow that drinks tea and sings ballads about walruses in tutus. There is nothing in so much as there is something, but when those notions become palatable, it is really for the best that they be shelved with the mustard. This I know for I have worn socks, but not because I have hands on my feet. That would just be silly. It is my esteemed thought that the whole of the part is nothing that cannot overcome the adversity which you now face, which is nautical.

And the most recent one, being the one from just before I made this post:

Content. Like a table. Flat and made of wood. Ergo: bording, dull, insipid -- you get the idea. Or do you? Idea's are, after all, rather ephemeral, you can't get them like you can get, say, a cold, or the bubonic plague. Not that you can actually get the bubonic plague these days either, but, well, that's really neither here nor there. It's over there. Maybe under. Like underground. Which is where you might be if you had the bubonic plague. Or after, I suppose. But I digress. Or perhaps regress. Or even depress. Although what I press, that's harder to say. I certainly don't work for a newspaper and there are no big red buttons around either. Not to imply the buttons are necessarily round. Or red. Or big. Big and red even, like a dog, except that I don't like dogs so I won't go there. But maybe over there. And there we are, again, back over there. What's so fascinating? Is it like a train wreck, or one of those trashy talk shows? Though how those work I couldn't say. I mean, you can't show talk to someone, after all, it's just sound -- it's ephemeral, like ideas. Unless your ideas are announced by a big glowing lightbulb appearing over your head out of nowhere. Maybe you've got word balloons floating over your head -- then you could show those to somebody. They might still think you're crazy, but it would be a start. It would be like you're at a race, or something, but what would you race? Stuff? Or things? And who would win? Well, I suppose that would depend on who had the fastest stuff -- zero to stuff in sixty seconds. That's a minute. Not minute which is to say, small. Well, I suppose your stuff could be small, but that's none of my business so I won't pry. I won't even try to pry, though it might be wry. Why? I won't lie... because I'm not really sure where I was going with that so I'll just let it fly. Like a house.

And that is that. I'll have to see about writing up a finale for the comic workshop in the next few days or so.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

NaNoWriMo Post-Mortem

It's been nearly a week since I completed my NaNoWriMo project and the thought of it no longer turns me into a mass of quiver goo which means it's time for a post-mortem of the whole experience. Isn't that what you were waiting for? Sure it was. So lets go!

This was my first time participating in NaNoWriMo, though I didn't sign up on the official website as I didn't feel it was necessary for me personally. I did see on a blog somewhere that previous NaNoWriMos have had about a 20% success rate, though I don't know what the results are for this year. Food for thought, I suppose, or some indication that writing 50 000 words in a month is no small feat. Anyway, on to my personal experiences.

As I said previously, this was my first writing project of any significance outside of FASS since... oh, well, I'm not sure, really. For my writing adventure, I picked an idea that had been rolling around in the back of my head since sometime in 2004. Overall, I enjoyed the writing process, though it definitely started to feel like a bit of a slog at the end. I think that succeeding in NaNoWriMo requires a certain amount of discipline and pacing; I was able to stick to my daily writing schedule and that certainly helps. Even though I never really wrote much more than the minimum each day, it was still enough to let me finish a day early - a nice reward for sticking with things, I guess.

A plan also helps. This is one area where I could have used a bit more work. I had done a little bit of background writing over the summer and made a short outline to get me started, though it turned out to be not quite enough. The outline got me through the first six chapters (about 38 000) words with the last two chapters being made up as I went along. Ordinarily, I'd have stopped, thought about things a bit more and then continued, but NaNoWriMo doesn't really accomodate that very well. Fortunately, by the end of chapter six, things had enough momentum to keep going. Though I'm not too sure how much a significantly more detailed outline would have helped as unexpected things kept happening, things happened in ways I didn't anticipate and characters developed in ways I hadn't originally thought of. But that's good! I like that about writing and I think it's part of how I do these things, so having an overall premise in mind (which I did) while coming up with an outline in chunks and then filling in the details as I go and changing the outline as necessary seems to suit me. Naturally, others' clickage will vary.

Of course, a lot of what I wrote was probably crap, but quality is not the point of NaNoWriMo. The point, for me, was just to force myself to write something, regardless of quality or anything else. I've been wanting to try to writing a novel for a long time; it's one of those things that I keep thinking that I should do but never get around to actually doing so NaNoWriMo was, for me, the metaphorical kick in the pants to do some writing. And I think that the ideas I came up with whilst writing are usable - it just needs a lot of polish.

So what's next? Well, I have to step back, look at what I wrote, and figure out where I want to take the story (I figure it's maybe a quarter or so complete, but we'll see). Assuming I decide to pursue this project further, I'll have to, obviously, do a lot more writing and a lot more polishing.

And I also need to make a map.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Qapla'!

It seems this post brings me up to one gross (ewww!) in total and with it, news of my successful completion of my first ever NaNoWriMo! One day early, even! Yay me!

Here's the breakdown of the "final" stats:
Words: 50 602
Paragraphs: 911
Characters: 281 012
Pages: 88
Chapters: 8

I put final in quotes because I might add one or two things tomorrow while it's still officially NaNoWriMo, but I am otherwise finished.

I'm probably going to take a day or two to decompress and then post some thoughts on the overall exerience.

Until then,

Freak Out
-TfitC

Fifty Percent Plus One

No, this post is not about referendums. Rather, it is an update on my NaNoWriMo progress, now on the 16th day, which is one day past the half-way mark.

So far, things continue apace. I am still on-track and currently sit at about 27 000 words (including what I've written so far today) spanning 48 pages, which is actually a little ahead of schedule. I'm still enjoying the process (though it is quite the commitment, forcing myself to write at least 1667 words each day!) and unexpected things keep happening in the story itself. So as long as things continue as they have been, I should have no trouble reaching the 50 000 word goal and may even hit it a day or two early.

The story itself won't be anywhere near finished at the end of the month as at the half-way point it feels like it's only just getting started. While I don't have a detailed outline or anything, I did do a very rough overview of the early parts of the story and I am nearly to the end of it, though so much has happened that is either different from how I had envisioned it or which I hadn't anticipated at all that I think the outline (such as it is) is kind of moot at this point anyway.

Overall I'm fairly happy with how the story seems to be progressing, though I don't think it's as humourous so far as I'd like it to be, though I am of course putting funny or silly things in where I can. At the moment, I'm just focused on pumping out my daily quota and don't really have the extra time to stop and make it as humourous as it could be. That's something I can go back and put in via editing, I guess! Because it's naturally going to need editing when all is said and done.

I think it also goes to show that humour is hard, especially continuous, consistently maintained humour (though there's also nothing saying that a basically humours story can't have its serious moments as well). It's one of the reasons why I admire Weird Al so much; having a 30-year plus long career based on being funny is no small feat and I often think he doesn't get the credit he deserves for it.

Anyway, that's enough ramblings for today. I'll do a wrap-up post at the end of the month (or early next month) to review my NaNoWriMo experience.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Ready, Set, Write!

This is going to be a picture-less post (gasp!)

I've decided to attempt NaNoWriMo this year (that's National Novel Writing Month for anyone who might not be familiar with the acronym). That means my free time for November will be taken up largely by comics and writing.

NaNoWriMo is something that I've been wanting to do for at least the past couple of years, but never felt I had the time due to one thing or another. While it's debatable whether or not I actually have enough time this year, I've decided that I don't really want to put it off yet another year. And while I could just pick a month and do my own personal NaNoWriMo, it just doesn't have the same degree of motivation.

And so, after about a week of writing, I am currently on track, up to about 11 700 total words. At this point, I'm fairly confident that I should have no problem meeting the 50 000 quota by the end of the month so long as I can continue setting aside sufficient time to write.

I'm enjoying the writing so far. This marks the first significant creative writing I've done in the past few years that is not FASS related. I have a basic premise in mind for the story and now more-or-less where I'm going, but there's no detailed outline. In a way, it's similar to how I was approaching the Kyoujo RPG. And so far, at about 20 pages in, several unexpected things have happened in the story - either things that I hadn't foreseen at the outset or things that have unfolded differently than I had original thought they might. But that's ok! I think that's part of the fun of writing.

The story itself is meant to be a humourous fantasy story which combines original elements with parody. The basic idea is one that's been rattling around at the back of my head for several years, since the year I spent working in Toronto, if I recall correctly.

Anyway! That's all I have to say about that at the moment. Still trying to decide if I want to post the actual story to this blog, or perhaps just some of the better snippets.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Some Random Blather

In an effort to get past some writer's block today, I spewed out the following:

Run to the border, because if you don't run, you'll have to walk, and if you have to walk, you'll wear the soles off the bottom of your shoes, and if that happens, you'll have to get new shoes. Or perhaps you'll wear off the bottom of your feet until you're reduced to walking on the stubs of your ankles and that would just be all sorts of awkward, not to mention likely causing balance issues. So, it's up to you, really. Will you run, or will you end up waddling along on the bloody stumps of your ankles, all because you were too lazy to go out and buy some new shoes? I know, I know, it doesn't seem fair - after all, why should you be forced to go out and buy new shoes if you're happy with the ones you have now? And why not sandals? Or slippers? Or maybe you feel like being all glamourous and wearing some high heels, even though that would mean you're cross dressing. Or at least your feet would be, even if the rest of you wouldn't be. But if you're going to do that, why not go all the way? I mean, what's stopping you? Oh, sure, society might still not entirely approve of that sort of thing, but who am I to judge? And lets be honest here, it's just not the sort of thing you can half-ass, nope, it's either all the way in, or not at all. Which brings us back to those shoes - don't you think they're looking a little ratty? Which isn't to say you have rats in them, or that you wear rats on your feet (goodness no, now that would be more than a little weird, wouldn't it?) but that they're - how can I put this kindly... well, I can't, really, they look like crap. Your shoes really do look like crap. Now, normally I wouldn't point this out, I don't habitually go around telling people their shoes are crap, after all (that would be weird too, not to mention a little neurotic), but when I see an eyesore like that, well, I just can't help pointing it out. I might laugh, too, but now, that would just be mean. So you come in here, wearing shoes that look like all it would take to make them disintegrate would be nothing more than a good sneeze and I have just one question to ask: would you like to super size your tacos? Because we can totally do that. You could even wear them on your feet, you know, if you wanted to.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Stuff I Want to Do

I guess I'm one of those people who never seems to have enough time to do everything that they want to do, though I'll freely admit that I don't always make as good use of my time as I should (or could). It also doesn't help that I'm constantly coming up with new things to work on and never actually finish many of my projects, so things end up kind of piling up. (I am referring to personal projects here, not school or work related things.)

With less than a week until FASS is over for another year, I expect to be having at least a bit of extra spare time to do stuff in, so in an attempt to focus my efforts on a small number of projects I thought I'd try blogging about them. Not that I really expect this to make me get stuff done, but at least it'll give me something to write about (and my small number of readers something to read about) other than the usually complaining about TAing and marking and stuff.

Anyway, on to the stuff! (In no particular order.)

QRT

My current programming project which I blogged about in my previous post. There's not really anything to say about it at this point beyond what I've already said about it so I'll just say that I plan to continue working on it.

Writing

I do like to write and I sometimes think that I'd like to try my hand at writing a novel - not that I really care if it were to get published or not, but I'd like to at least write one! I missed NaNoWriMo due to being embroiled in FASS edits, so I'm planning on picking a month (likely March) for my own personal NaNoWriMo. We'll see how that goes. Though I'm going to continue beyond just one month if necessary.

Comic

I'd also like to try my hand at making my own comic. This is something which will also be a useful experience for my research. I've got some ideas for a short 3-5 page test comic which I will probably get started on shortly after FASS finishes. I plan to document the process so there's bound to be more posts on this topic in particular on my blog. I also want to get back into the habit of drawing more so this will give me a nice focused outlet for that.


Those are the main projects I'm planning on focusing on, in addition to my PhD research, of course. Expect to see posts on these in the future, depending on progress.

Freak Out
-TFitC