#nanoblog

[boyversusworldblog]

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[kimdeloria]

Attack of the Nanoblogs

Hi! I am now a denizen of the nanoblog world. I have been one for a few weeks now. If you Plurk, please add me up. http://www.plurk.com/user/kimdeloria. I Twitter too. Add me there at http://twitter.com/kimdeloria. See you in the nanoblog world.

[jessattemptstonano]

Day 1, 1 1/2 hours, 1856 words today, 1856/50,000

read under cut.

5/ You are in a room. There are four (4) walls, all white, 12ft/12ft. The ceiling is also 12ft by 12 ft, but it is grey. The ground used to be white, but it is bloodied and brownish now. There are no windows. There are now doors. Your hands are untied. You have dark skin, and dirt under your nails. You are wearing a loose white top and loose white pants. You are not wearing shoes. You are missing one of your toes. Your throat hurts, as though you were screaming. You were not screaming. There are no doors. There are no voices. Somewhere in the back of your mind you think you deserve this. There are four (4) walls, all white, but greying at the edges. The ceiling is white, 12ft by 12ft, and there are brown steins on the ceiling. It was your fault. You sleep. You wake up. There is a door in the floor. What do you do? click to continue. He opened the trapdoor, and starred down a deep, dark, dank shaft. There was a rusted ladder attached to a side of concrete, and the other four sides lead to blackness. It was not a decision. He stepped onto the first rung, and climbed downwards. It felt like climbing forever. Steps disappeared and rusted away suddenly beneath his feet, and coated his skin with a layer of blood and old metal. The air was dank and old, and the walls drew in closer, as if afraid of the dark. Finally, the soles of his feet touched the dark earth below-- real dirt, cold and crumbly, and covered in the kind of sharp stones that populate riverside beaches. He walked a mile in the darkness, guided only by the cold stone wall beneath his left hand. He walked although he had no idea where his steps would take him. The tunnels continued downwards and began to close in, until the walls collapsed under the weight of a massive airship that crashed through the piping and dirt, collapsing several sides of the tunnel and forcing him to duck and cover. He looked up at the vessel. A large zepplin, lined with heavy metals and coloured gold and red, like something out of the King of Europe's own fleet. The hatch to the vessel itself was half covered by the rubble, but was pushed open by a metalic hand. A tall man emerged, red headed, and with a metal hand that ran from his shoulder to his knee. He was followed by two women; one was squat, dark haired, and wore an angry expression far more easily than the feminine hat that was barely perched on her head. The other was tall and wispy, with a shaven head, and large, dopey eyes. A squirrel bounced out after them-- no, not a squirrel, a girl, or both, or neither. The image of her shimmered back and forther in the eyes of the man, and he had to turn away. Perhaps he was mad. The tall man held out his robotic arm, nodding. "We are here to recruit you. You know where the Judas artifact is, right?" -you nod, slightly, though you're not sure you should tell them. not sure you sould tell anyone.- "Yeah. But," his voice is hoarse compared to the tall man's (smooth as silver), "why do you want it?" "My name is Edwardo Venetio Valencia McIntire Abramovich. This is--" The squat, dark haired woman pushed past Edwardo, "I'm Rabbit McNeil, and that there," she gestured at the bald woman, "Is Exit Light. The crazy chick who thinks she's a squirell is a crazy chick who--" "My name is Hiro," the squirrel girl said, quietly. Rabbit laughed, "Aight, loon. And what's your name, since we took the trouble to break you out of the home." -you frown. you don't know what to tell them- "I don't know." "It doesn't matter, you're Asylum now any way, as good a name as any. Now, you don't look any older than I am, so why the white hair? And don't you need shoes? How do you know what the Judas Artifact is-?" She's pushy, and frowns, and has a green bit in the gap between her two front teeth. She laughs at her own jokes, whenever they come up, and keeps her eyes too wide open. Exit stares a little bit too long at everyone, her long hands gently caressing anything within reach. Hiro looks anywhere but where she needs to look. Edwardo seems bored by everything. He hides his eyes behind dark glasses. You don't know why you care about this. They want the Judas Artifact. "Why do you want it?" "We're going to reset the world," Edwardo grins. - 4 Faces are blurring together. She weaves through the forest of eyes, all of them too close. The dirt here was turned to glass. There will be no refuge for the people who are trying to outrun the disasters. A teenager jostles her. He's carrying an empty bucket, and glares at her. His face drops back to a neutral expressing and he hums a few bars from a familiar tune as he joins the crowd scrabbling at a hole for water. He can't be more than 17-- certainly too young to remember any other time before the war. Most can't remember. She's in her forties, though long since lost count, and she can barely remember a time before the psychic wars began, before Canada was lost to a mass of jungle, and the sky disappeared. She's at least old enough to remember when the teeth were in the sky. Society didn't crumble until it did. Before the psychic wars, the world was managing to end slowly and suffocatingly, like an addict choking to death on their own vomit. Then people decided to speed it  up a bit. Society didn't crumble until the first round of bombs went off, obliterating the west coast and a couple of islands by Japan, and then North Korea got flattened by accident, and soon the whole world was at war. That's as best as most people can remember the timeline of the psychic wars. She doesn't remember a time when the sky was clear and blue. Her name is Marlene, and she's been travelling alone for a long time. The refugee city is bustling in the worst way, a putrid pit of desperate people. She doesn't need water, her canteen is as full as it can get in a place like this. She pushes outwards, past the dying old men and the sickly children, through families sobbing over their dead as watchers stare with beady eyes, vultures at a picnic. Marlene trades an old bracelet for a packet of cigarettes, and lights one up, leaning against the corner. She watches people barter away their lives, and snoops on the latest disasters. "Where're you from? All of you?" She asks a likely looking man, one with a drained expression and a bottle of rubbing alcohol in one hand. "Austin, ma'am." Marlene curses to herself. Austin had been safe, the last of the free cities in North America. A few cities were still functional in Latin America, and further south than that, and Columbia was toted as the most blessed place, but not anywhere in Canada, Mexico, or the United States. With Austin gone, there's no place to go. No stability. No roots. "No wonder there are all these people," she says. "So many dead. God almighty, there's got to be an answer." "What hit you? A bomb?" There's no need to specify further than that, the psychic bombs are the only weapon worth anything any more. He sighs, and takes a swig from the rubbing alcohol. "I know it'll make me go blind, but I don't care. The things we saw..." he trails off, staring at a child who sobs for their mother. The child has a blob growing off its face, a flabby purple thing, not thick and puffed up, but the shape of a deflated balloon. "It was a disease. It was the disease. The jungles in the north, the bombs, the glass sea, all of it's bullshit compared to this. The disease is gonna end humanity, man. We're dead." He stairs at the child, "That's the end of that, then." The man with the rubbing alcohol tips his hat to Marlene, and steps towards the child. He pulls out a gun, shoots the child, and then shoots himself, amid the screams of the refugees. Marlene finishes her cigarette quickly, and leaves the city just as it erupts into a wave of panic. 3 "Report?" Doctor Aileen Highnote pushed her glasses up her nose, and nodded at the papers before her. "It's not impossible. The tests we've done on mice are fairly conclusive. A high burst of this energy would have a similar effect on humans, if concentrated very deeply. I'm not sure we can develop it on a larger level." She smiled at her coworker Rob Ray, who grins back. They both nodded at the Captain, the Head of the Project, the CEO. He smiled at them fondly, or so she hoped. The Captain could be a little hard to read. Aileen and Rob left the meeting almost bouncing, and almost but not quite touching hands. They decided to celebrate at a local bar, the Hole. The Hole's owner had capitalized on the infamy of the most Scientific Town in America by naming it after the event that "caused the end of the world as we knew it." You could see the holes from the front window, almost, it's lights burning through the lead walls that surrounded it. Aileen ordered a punkin beer, and Rob asked for the double hole-- tequila and blue curacao in one glass, frozen vodka in the other. They cheered, and drank. Rob grinned at her from over the top of his shotglass, "You understand-- we might be able to cure my dad, your brother... We might have the solution to all mental illnesses? For Alzheimer's, for--" His sentence was interrupted by a crash from the jukebox, as someone enraged at the retro music tried to tip the thing over. Rob rolled his eyes, and Aileen laughed. "The implications, though. We could apply it down, fix cancer cells with it..." "There's really no limit. I wonder if we could de-bruise fruit, de-brown vegetables…" She laughed, and he grinned at her. He was handsome in the most beautifully stereotypical way it made her feel like she was on reality television. He had dark eyes and hair, and olive skin, and a handsome face with strong bone structure. Aileen had once spent hours picking him apart, looking for a flaw, but she had yet to find one. He was perfect. They couldn't sleep together, they were coworkers, coworkers who spent hours upon hours together. But he was so perfect. Aileen wondered if he thought the same of her. She guessed not, but there was no way to know that. 2/ I hate you all. You, the sickening bastard who decided to wear a metallic belt when clearly he was going to get on an airplane.

[shimmeringcontradictions-blog]

NaNoWriMo Tips and Tricks

I've participated in NaNoWriMo since 2009 and I thought I'd share some of my personal tips and tricks as to how to get to 50,000 words and have fun.

Word Wars. There is no more important part of my NaNo experience than word wars. When you're really stuck, they force you to write, even if you don't feel like you have anything to say. Also, I really like the competitive nature of it.

The forums. The forums are such a helpful and supportive resource at every point of the process. When you're doing well, you can talk to others who are doing well and encourage those who are struggling, and when you're struggling, the people who are doing well can (and do) support you.

Don't stress about your word count. In other words, don't stop using contractions just to get the extra words if it feels unnatural. It'll take more thinking to avoid using them and will probably get in the way of your creativity.

Start with an outline. I know some people can just write and still succeed, but I need an outline to accomplish writing a novel in a month. You can always add more to your story later, but at least you'll have some idea of where you meant to go.

Know what you want your story to mean. Make sure you have some grasp of a theme or idea your want your novel to convey. Not only will it give you ideas when you're off track, but it'll give the novel a purpose so it's not 50,000 words of rambling.

Let your characters take you where they want to go. I'm a firm believer in making sure you have strongly developed characters and letting them run free in November. It makes writing easier, and can add things to your novel you didn't have planned in the beginning.

Don't edit. This goes without saying, but don't edit your novel as you go. It'll only slow you down and make 50,000 words harder to reach. Edit in December.

Write or Die. Write or Die is a program that gives you a blank canvas and punishes you for pausing when you write. It's really helpful when you don't have much time and you need to get your words on paper. 

So these are my tips for getting your novel finished and having fun this November. While they may not work for everybody, this is what works for me.

[shimmeringcontradictions-blog]

Reasons To Do NaNoWriMo

It seems like every time I tell someone about NanoWriMo, they like the idea but don't think they can do it. Why? Here are the most common reasons I've found people don't do NaNoWriMo and the reasons I think they should do it anyway.

I don't have time.  I find this very hard to believe, because in 2009 for my first NaNo, I wrote 40,000 words in four days. Therefore, saying you don't have time to write 50,000 words in 31 days seems kind of unbelievable to me. But if you really can't find a way to fit the time to write into your schedule, shoot for less than 50,000 words. At least you'll have gotten something done in November and it'll still be a good use of the time you do have.

I have AP classes.  So do I, but I'm doing NaNo anyway. It's going to be a struggle, but even with 2 hours of reading and an hour of math homework every night, I believe NaNoWriMo is doable.

Who can produce quality writing in a month? Almost nobody, but that's all part of the fun. The whole premise of the month is that you're giving yourself permission to just sit down and get your novel down on paper no matter how bad it is. The best parts of novels come about in the revision process anyway, so just sit down and get your novel onto Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or paper. Even though it'll be far from your best writing, it'll be a workable start.

I have to edit as I go. You'll have to learn not to if you decide to participate, because it'll be very difficult and maybe impossible, to edit as you go and succeed in writing 50,000 words in a month. I've found that learning how to stop editing as I go was an important skill, though, so I still think you should give it a shot. You have December to edit; don't worry about it in November.

Shouldn't you write all the time if you want to be a writer/can't I do this some other month? Ideally, yes, and many participants in NaNoWriMo do write all year. The great thing about NaNoWriMo is that it forces you to discipline yourself and creates a habit of writing daily. Also, the forums are most active during November and they foster a helpful and supportive environment that you likely won't get any other month of the year. While this isn't a necessary part of writing a novel in a month, there gets to be a point where you get really stuck and the NaNo community is really helpful at helping you get back on track.

I'm really excited to be participating in NaNoWriMo this year and I hope you'll consider it too. It's an incredible experience and is a great way to make writing your priority. Let me know if you'll be participating as well; it's going to be a great year.