Brightweavings Denizens - Welcome!

Limps in and lands heavily on one of the comfy couches, signalling the barkeep for a scotch.

This year I'm returning to my sci-fi roots in the form of a ghost story. At least I'm pretty sure that I am. If I can't resist beginning to write this one until November, I may try my hand at something related to the LotRverse. I was also thinking how interesting it might be to create genre mash-ups, like a sci-fi-ish haunting in a hobbit village. Or (and I just made this up on the spot) a world of Elves, Men, Hobbits, Dwarves, Wizards, etc... but based on Aztec mythology (my own heritage) instead of Celtic mythology the way the Fionavar tapestry is. Hmmm. A "Good" God who desires human bloodm sacrif-- oh yeah, I just remembered Liadan. Durr. Okay, well a "Good" God who demands human sacrifice followed by cannibalism!

Goodness. My protagonist would have issues.

Mayhap I'll just stick with my ghost story for now. *Sips my scotch.*

Pullman, WA Municipal Liason
Pullman, WA Forum co-Mod

Greetings all,

I have a tradition of thinking that NaNo is a really cool concept and so wanting to join in, but also feel that I don't have a future as as a writer as I tend to have trouble devoting a whole month of my life to a project without getting distracted by the pressures of life. So anyway, true to form I'm intending to join in, and defy the expectation of lowering the BW agerage success rate.

Thus far I havn't yet decided on a story that I want to write but have a couple of concepts that I'd like to play with. Depending on which I choose that will determine things like settings and characters. One possibility is the sequel to last years unfinished prequel, involving the offspring of accidental pregnancy in a scientific research station on the moon, who while exploring discover prohibited experimenting into cloning on the dark side (though this was intended to be a comic rather than a novellette). Another could be set in a middle ages analogue and would involve a woman who fakes her own death to escape a messed up marriage and explores the life might follow such an event.

We shall see. Much thinkning to be done in the next month or so.

Natae

Wow. I haven;'t hung out at Bright Weavings in years. But I left my mark. I wrote the Hitchhiker's Guide to Fionavar.

I'm writing a modern retelling Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a romance novel.

Wow! The Hitchiker's Guide is still going strong!

Come on in, Natae, the water's fine! I find that with a little bit of discipline and a strong work ethic early in the month when you (hopefully) have more time and maybe more inspiration, November can actually go by pretty smoothly. It's all relative, though, and I invariably end up finishing very late on the second last day of the month, scrambling to reach 50,000 words.

So, that's three, or four if you count our prodigal son/daughter here.

Jayson Merryfield

Check out my blog.
Or find me on the Flickr.

Greetings, all! Liliana here, saying hello :-) I have been lurking on BW this last year or so, instead of commenting, but I'm now in the midst of a reread of Lions, so I may have to remedy that.

My idea for this year is very vague right now. All I know is that it's going to be urban fantasy murder mystery, set in a Southeast Asia-esque city-state. My main character is left for dead, but survives, only to discover he's got a few new abilities and that his almost-murder was one of a string of killings, and he's got to figure out who's responsible before they finish the job. Of course, I don't even know who the murderer is yet, which is a minor wrinkle and all.

I sympathize with Natae, though. Last year was the first year I won, but I was neither working nor in school last November, so now I'm not sure how I'm going to manage this year, what with two jobs and all. For me, my local write-ins were most helpful (word wars + coffee - internet access = many thousands of words) so I hope that doing that again will get me over the hump. Either that or I'll get fired for shirking my work in order to write!

Oh, and Evening Scribe, I would read an Aztec, cannibalistic Fionavar Tapestry in a second :-) I'm going to add you as a buddy, if that's ok, so I can read your excerpts if you decide to go with that idea.

Liliana

Hello :)

Good ideas, everyone - I'm looking forward to November!

I'm not joining in this year (trying to finish off the novel I'm on and, from previous experience, know that switching to nano mode messes with my progress), but I can't stand to not chime in here and follow along with all of you. Better to come here myself, than to distract Natae from writing with constant requests for updates on what you're all doing ;)

Wishing you all lots of luck and inspiration!

Miko

p.s. - Jay, didn't know that you're into photography. We are as well. My website address is listed on my profile if you want to check it out. Really like your stuff, especially the portraits of LIndsay. You have a very photogenic wife :)

Thanks Miko - she's not crazy about me taking her picture, but once in a while I can con her into it.

Yours are terrific as well. You've got a eye for powerful images. I'll need to spend some more time sifting through your website this evening.

Jayson Merryfield

Check out my blog.
Or find me on the Flickr.

Thanks, Jay! ...and, have to say, I can identify with both you and Lindsay - I like being behind the camera and I quite like trying to capture portraits of people I love, but I never want to stay still for them to capture portraits of me ;)

To bring it around back to topic (so that I feel less guilty for temporarily hi-jacking the thread), do any of you find photos help with your writing or your research? I'm using a piece of writing software called Writer's Cafe which has a 'pinboard' function you can use to attach notes and photos on a planning screen and I quite like the idea. I'm thinking of going to a few locations in my story to take reference shots so that I can upload them and use them as inspiration during both planning and writing... and (this just occurred to me) maybe doing some street photography to lend something to character creation (it would be like take-away people watching! ;)

Anyway, I know the idea probably wouldn't work in the same way for everyone - it works for me because my story is sci-fi but takes place here, in and around London, only about fifty years from now, but I'd imagine even if you couldn't find a hobbit village in Aztec style or live too far from Southeast Asia, that photos could be taken or found that would provide inspiration. ...Or am I thinking too much like a photographer and not enough like a normal person? ;)

...I'm afraid all of this has just created a parallel project.

Anyway, a bit of a tangent to start my day. Sorry about that (if only there was a sheepish-grin smiley ;)

M

Everyone has their own writing style Miko! I've seen Writer's Cafe, and used a Mac-based program that similar called Scrivener. For me, though, there's just too much planning involved in those writing programs.

I use two programs, one on my Mac and one on my PC laptop - Writeroom and Dark Room. They both completely block every thing else out, and the screen looks like something out of the DOS 5.0 days. It keeps the rest of the world at bay and lets me just write as my mind wanders through the story I'm writing.

Maybe I'm weird like that, but I really don't plan at all. I have a few signposts I hope to pas along the way, and then I just let my story wander between them. Sometimes we never meet all of the signposts, or we meet them in a different order than I originally imagined. We get to the end all the same.

Anyone else care to share their methods?

Jayson Merryfield

Check out my blog.
Or find me on the Flickr.

Yup, Jay, definitely agree that everyone has their own writing styles - was just curious as to what tools they used with them and, specifically, if photos were involved. Mostly mentioned Writer's Cafe because one of its features provided the catalyst in my thought process that led to me combining my writing and photography.

I've never heard of Writeroom and Dark Room, but, checking out the links, they look quite interesting and I find what they say about your writing style quite interesting. Always good to know what others are doing and what software/methods they're using.

I'd second Jay's question - anyone else's methods?

M

Hi all Brightweaving Nanoers!

This year, the election being very much on my mind, I'm thinking political black comedy. Noted public Senatorial scold is forced to resign his Senate seat in disgrace because of a sex scandal. Enter Jeff Parker, a no-hoper with a wife in the hospital after her heart attack, urged into politics by his smooth talking brother in law so that he can get the health benefits he cannot get in any other way: "It'll be easy, no one will expect anything of you and with Congresses approval ratings in the crapper, who will expect a Freshman Senator to actually accomplish anything?" Jeff agrees, reluctantly, but feeling overwhelmed, soon realizes a career in politics is a ridiculous idea for him.

His Senatorial opponent, Clarice Smythe-Burkstead backed by her wealthy second husband, wants that Senate seat so badly she can almost taste it. Although she does everything right, and Jeff is trying his hardest to lose by saying the most crazy and reckless things he can think of on the stump, he appears to endear himself to his would-be constituents at every turn while Clarice, to her fury and frustration, can get no traction at all....

Working title is "Disorganized Crime" but I'm thinking of changing it to "You Can't Lose."'

Melissa

You can have a sound mind in a healthy body.... Or you can be a Nanonovelist!

Nanowrimo--Eavesdrop on the Voices In Your Head

I wish I could make plot outlines. Or, to be more accurate, I wish I could make outlines and then actually write the story that goes with it, instead of getting bored out my mind :-)

On the other hand, my usual technique of writing frantically and hoping a plot will organically develop doesn't really work all that well either, at least not for NaNo. Last year I spent way too much time figuring out how what would happen next, or realizing that my last 3 days' work was completely extraneous to the plot, and even though I made it past 50K, the story itself wasn't anywhere close to being finished.

So this year I'm trying to find a happy medium. Right now I have about 10 major plot points that I know are going to happen, from various points of the story, so I've listed them in order. Now I'm trying to brainstorm possible intermediary scenes to get me from one major point to another. My goal is to have a lot of options already on paper, so that when I get stuck I can pick and choose based on what I've actually written (or do something totally different, if inspiration strikes), thus saving myself from the horrible mid-November panic phase. And, ideally, it will help avoid feeling that I've locked myself into a rigid outline that will bore me to tears.

Regarding specific software for writing, I played around with a demo of Scrivener last year and liked the idea of it, but not so much that I wanted to use it long-term. I've also experimented with Freemind, for notes/plot development/etc., but it was more work than the eventual results were worth. The one piece of software I would LOVE to use would be a simple map-making program that works on a Mac, but sadly, that doesn't seem to exist.

Interesting idea, Melissa! I wasn't really that interested in US politics until I watched West Wing, now I find them quite intriguing. I'll have to keep an eye out for your excerpt.

Liliana, I completely understand the whole getting bored if you have it too planned out thing. I'm the same. I was victim of it the first nano I did. These days I use a strategy that's a lot like what you described. I like having a lot of background detail, but leaving the 'future' (for lack of a better term) more open only giving myself guide-posts to give me some sort of order.

M

Ah! Mid october arrives and I'm no nearer to deciding what to write a story about. Is is possible to be too busy for inspiration, or should I just be worried that my thoughts are failing me at the age of 31? Perhaps this is a good thing - if I can't decided what I want to Nano, then perhaps I'll be forced into an impulse decision on the 31st and will therefore have to write with no prior planning? I feel sometimes that the plan makes it harder - if you already know the whole story in your head does that give you less incentive when it comes to writing it down, especially when my writing never feels quite as cool as the dialogue sounds in my head. Perhaps the whole make-it-up-as-you-go-along style of writing is one that will work better for me.

I think that all I've decided to date is that characterisation (writing charactars that readers love and/or hate) is a vital part of all my favourite novels, as is the plot. Also I'd like to get some form of mystery into the story (because that's always good fun), but that doesn't mean it has to be a crime novel type drama thing.

Natae

My current problem is that I've got an idea that I'm not married to and haven't fully fleshed out that will end up being all hard-boiled and bleak, and I just finished reading Girlfriend in a Coma and now I want to write like Douglas Coupland and have drama and sentiment and romance and poignancy and relevance. Nothing like a shift in writing style to throw you for a loop. Currently on my nightstand and being consumed - George R. R. Martin's collections of short stories, including his Hugo & Nebula award winners.

Hopefully I can draw on some GGK stylistic references and pull it all together into some kind of Frankenovel.

Jayson Merryfield

Check out my blog.
Or find me on the Flickr.

Hi all! I don't actually post at brightweavings, just lurk there all too frequently!

I haven't decided what my novel's going to be yet, in any way, shape, or form. I'm loving reading y'all's ideas, though. (And any mention of The West Wing makes me happy!)

I'm game.

I don't expect to produce anything of quality, but investing time every day into writing is something I want in my life, and NaNoWriMo seems like a interesting way to bootstrap that.

This will be my first year participating.

Geez, ya'll are quiet.

We are, aren't we? Well, let's fix that!

On day five of NaNo, I woke up with a totally different idea, so I spent the last few days trying to force myself not to work on it and do my chosen story instead. And then today I decided that I would just dragoon the new idea into the plot, logic be damned, and I wrote 6500 words and, to my utter astonishment, it actually seems to be making sense. And if I didn't have to be up in 6 and a half hours, I would do some more, but somehow falling asleep at work does not strike me as a good option.

What about the rest of you-- what's going well (or not so well) in your novels?