in between nanos..

Just thinking that I never managed to write a blog during the last nano in November 2010, mainly because it was a pretty hectic month, a month that I spent mostly with studying, repeating and preparing for the written exams at the end of the month (which I passed, and even if I didn't get great results in accounting, I passed!), there are now only 10 months before the next nano, and I guess I am going to be prepared for this year's a lot better.
And I am going to have more time for writing.
No studying this November. Hopefully. Or at least no studying of things not related to writing this November.
A good plan, as it made it quite difficult to get to the 50K mark, but I managed somehow, just about, at the very last minute.

Not finished with the story, nothing edited yet.
But then again, I have started editing the 2009 nano novel, so that is what I am concentrating on these days.

And then, after having a few weeks off, I am going to start another round of studying next Monday, to be able to work with a computer program that seems to be used by a lot of companies, and it should enable me to find a better job, well at least a job in the first place.
Not sure if I want just any job at the moment, but it seems that I certainly need to find one soon.

In the meantime, I will keep myself busy with what I have kept myself with during the past couple of months - too little reading, too little writing, meeting with new friends, visiting the facebook inn on Friday evenings, the usual... :o)

Hope to have better news soon.

Reading: trying to finish "Eat Pray Love"
Listening to: nothing playing at the moment, would probably be something by dredg, though.

catalysts

Just one word, read somewhere, resulted in a few sentences, and probably a very strange short short story, might turn out kind of Kafkaesque...
So to be sure not to give up on it just yet, I am going to write about it here, and I guess it is a good preparation for the next nano, which I am looking forward to.
Although I need to prepare myself a lot better for this year's sessions, as I won't have that much time for it, I am determined to go ahead again.
As in real life, things get in the way that might seem like obstacles but could prove stepping stones, or so they say...
And sometimes, changing your view can alter the perspective on life, the universe and all the rest, I guess...
Trying to do so at the moment... :o)

Listening to: won't even start to mention all those names
Reading: should have started "The whisperers" by John Connolly a long time ago, but I'm still keeping it for a rainy day, I guess, expectations are high enough as it is the latest Charlie Parker novel...(and who would've thought that "the lovers" were such a bad couple of... what?... ghosts? )

... blogging

Gee, I've done this before, and yet it's still exciting to see the results.
After this blogsite was recommended, I thought about starting to blog again for a few days.
It's not like I don't know what to write about, with nanowrimo starting in just a few days, I should be busy plotting and creating characters for my third nano novel, but somehow, I only have managed to do a tiny bit of that.
But if I start this year's nano the way I started my first nano, all should go well - I only had a sentence just before midnight that led me to write it down just after midnight on November 1, and then I wrote a few more sentences before doing a first count of the words I had written.
About twohundredsomething, only, but I knew how to continue.
Without any plotting before November, with only a few well known characters which I have written about pre-nanowrimo, I managed to get along well, and I'm still amazed how I managed to write about 2K of words every day, most of them after a rough enough day at the office.
This year, though, I thought I could do some plotting, and since a lot of fellow nano participants are talking about how they have created their characters, how they described scenes already, I began to wonder whether they still have any fun when writing next week?
For me, a big part of the fun (and yes, one is allowed to have fun while writing!) of the writing process is to find out where the characters are led by the plot, only part of which I might know in advance. While I have an idea of the plot, of the beginning and the end, and maybe even of parts in the middle, when writing, another scene might come up, change completely, and the characters might even change their minds about something.
Oh well, just the usual, eh? Something that a lot of people have mentioned before, and that is something that I have always enjoyed reading about.
I am soon going to post one of my short stories here, one which I have decided to translate to see whether it works in other countries as well...

Best,
Barbara

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Now playing: Snow Patrol - The Planets Bend Between Us
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