I’m pretty encouraged by how much of my daily word count I’m managing to maintain in the wake of Camp NaNoWriMo for June. Last December after November’s event I found that my word count had dropped pretty low, into the 50-200 words a day range. I’m doing a lot better than that this time around.
Hopefully with the August event coming up quickly, I’ll be able to maintain it all month and then reinforce it further. That ought to leave me in really good shape for September, with several months of high word counts behind me and two months “off” before NaNoWriMo 2012 begins.
Here’s another large chunk of chapter 27. I might have to write a little more to call it finished, but this is largely it. Tomorrow I go on to chapter 28!
The Ship of the Unforgotten, Chapter 27 Pt. 2
Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | in General, News 
I think tomorrow will be the first posting of new material from the book. I’ve started recutting sections and arranging them to where they make the most sense from a narrative point of view.
Unlike just about everything I’ve written and posted here before, this book is long enough to have a few different viewpoints represented, so keeping the chronology straight is more of a challenge than I’ve faced before. It’s a fun one though, and I learned a lot about my personal writing process in doing this book. I’m definitely doing another book next month. And I’m definitely pre-planning it this time.
Writing, Writing Process, editing | in Editing, News, Writing Observations You may have heard of Emma Coats from the 22 Rules of Storytelling According to Pixar piece that’s floating around lately. She’s the storyboard artist who posted the 22 rules to her twitter account. She also posted the two I’ve embedded above. This additional rule is incredibly important to all NaNoWriMo/Camp NaNoWriMo participants, so I thought I’d share it as companion to the ones that are getting all the attention. I’ve written about this previously; first drafts are what I consider to be the true writer’s block.
I love living in the future. I really do. One of my favorite things about this future we’re in is how huge geek culture has become and how it continues to explode with great content, like Felicia Day’s brand new Geek and Sundry channel over on YouTube.
Geek and Sundry first came to my attention by way of The Sword and Laser, a fantastic fantasy & sci-fi book club/audio podcast/GoodReads forum hosted by Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt. Some weeks ago, they announced that they were bringing S&L to video as part of Geek and Sundry, so of course I had to check it out.
Sadly, The Sword and Laser won’t be airing on the G&S channel for another couple of weeks, but G&S itself launched today and they’ve got a bunch of other shows that are well worth checking out.
Firstly, Geek and Sundry is Felicia Day’s channel, so you’d better bet The Guild is represented. They’ve gotten together and made another music video, this one about the injustices many geeks had to endure in their formative years at the hands of “cooler” peers, and the cultural reversal that has left geeks increasingly popular lately. It’s a fun song and video, though by far the most serious of the releases they’ve done to date, dealing as it does with issues of bullying and abuse.
Felicia has another show, this one a weekly solo effort. The Flog debuted today, where she talks about stuff she’s into, highlights cool things she’s found around the internet lately, and goes out and tries things she’s always been interested in, sometimes for the first time. In her debut episode she goes out to learn the basics of blacksmithing. Now I’m no stranger to blacksmithing and crafting in general—I wield a mean pick in Minecraft—but she was doing this in the real world for once, not in a video game. She forged a real iron fire poker, and has it up for auction to benefit the FDNY Foundation. Pretty awesome stuff.
Felicia got Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Eureka & The Big Bang Theory) to host a show all about table top gaming. Yes, they still make games you don’t play on computers or consoles! This one is the longest of the shows I sampled at half an hour plus individual one to two minute interviews with each guest player afterward. It’s well worth the investment.
For the first episode, Wheaton has guests Grant Imahara (Mythbusters), Jenna Busch (Girl Meets Lightsaber) and Sean Plott (Day[9]TV) on set to play Small World, a German-style fantasy board game that’s something like Civilization meets Settlers of Catan with some Dungeons & Dragons thrown into the mix. You watch them play, get a feel for the game and how much fun it can be, get some instruction on the rules and some tricks for good play. It looks like it’s going to shape up to be a really fun show. It’s supposed to air every two weeks, alternating on Fridays with The Sword and Laser.
The last show I checked out today was Dark Horse Motion Comics, where they take actual comics and give them just enough animation to kick them off the page and into the video realm, with voice acting, sound effects and ambient background music to present the stories in a whole new light. Whether this one is for you will depend a great deal on whether you’re into the comic being adapted; this first one, The Secret, is maybe not my cup of tea, but I could easily appreciate how the format would (and will) appeal on a series that I’d be more inclined to follow.
Geek and Sundry isn’t the only such channel to pop up. Chris Hardwick, aka the Nerdist, has something similar in the works. I’ll undoubtedly be checking that out shortly too.
