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Morning Train
I've been getting to bed earlier this week, before 11 at any rate, and the up side has been better creativity during the day, and also getting up early enough to get the train to work (and giving me time to be creative on the train). The downside, probably unrelated, is that I seem to have been hit pretty hard by a cold this morning. Totally bunged up, sore head, and actually felt quite dizzy on my way to the station. I took the train anyway (as one does) and I'll see how I feel as the day goes on. I may knock off early.
I'm enough out of it that I don't want to write anything on the book I'm working on, but I also don't want to waste the writing time, so herewith my thoughts on NaNoWriMo, at roughly the half way point.
Headline is that I'm on about 27k words. Which would be impressively on target, if I hadn't started with about 14k. Still, that means I've written 13k or so in two weeks, which is good for me. And it seems to be pretty good stuff. I'm using Scrivener, and I've found a new wee trick in the options - it lets you display a progress bar not only for your manuscript target word count but for a session target. By setting that to a small number, I get the encouragement of a red progress bar turning green on a regular basis. My id seems to like progress bars.
I've changed a couple of writing habits, too. Much to my surprise morning seems to be a more productive time to write than evening, much to my surprise. So I'm doing more of my writing then. Instrumental music seems to work better than vocal (again a surprise - I thought I was all about the words) and I downloaded a collection of Bruckner's 9 symphonies played by the Berliner Philharmonic and conducted by Barenboim for £13. That's also working pretty well as walking around music, though I found myself thinking last night that Bruckner does get a bit shouty.
Lastly, for now, I've been taking note of what I read when I'm not writing, and how that helps or hinders the process. By lucky accident, I picked up Iain Rankin's first "Complaints" novel last week, and that really encourages me. Not because I can write as well as Rankin, but because his characters are doing the same thing mine are - walking around and asking questions, with occasional stops for food and attempts at romance and being with their families. Even if my book is crap, it will have recognisable furniture. Having finished that book, I started on a re-read of Cryptonomicon, and this isn't working out as well. Stephenson's characters do walk around and have conversations, but they also have internal monologues on cryptography, data networking, sociology and economics. Amongst other things. My characters don't do that, and I'm not about to try to make them!
So looks like I'll download another couple of Rankin's. Good job there are two new ones for me to read.
I'm enough out of it that I don't want to write anything on the book I'm working on, but I also don't want to waste the writing time, so herewith my thoughts on NaNoWriMo, at roughly the half way point.
Headline is that I'm on about 27k words. Which would be impressively on target, if I hadn't started with about 14k. Still, that means I've written 13k or so in two weeks, which is good for me. And it seems to be pretty good stuff. I'm using Scrivener, and I've found a new wee trick in the options - it lets you display a progress bar not only for your manuscript target word count but for a session target. By setting that to a small number, I get the encouragement of a red progress bar turning green on a regular basis. My id seems to like progress bars.
I've changed a couple of writing habits, too. Much to my surprise morning seems to be a more productive time to write than evening, much to my surprise. So I'm doing more of my writing then. Instrumental music seems to work better than vocal (again a surprise - I thought I was all about the words) and I downloaded a collection of Bruckner's 9 symphonies played by the Berliner Philharmonic and conducted by Barenboim for £13. That's also working pretty well as walking around music, though I found myself thinking last night that Bruckner does get a bit shouty.
Lastly, for now, I've been taking note of what I read when I'm not writing, and how that helps or hinders the process. By lucky accident, I picked up Iain Rankin's first "Complaints" novel last week, and that really encourages me. Not because I can write as well as Rankin, but because his characters are doing the same thing mine are - walking around and asking questions, with occasional stops for food and attempts at romance and being with their families. Even if my book is crap, it will have recognisable furniture. Having finished that book, I started on a re-read of Cryptonomicon, and this isn't working out as well. Stephenson's characters do walk around and have conversations, but they also have internal monologues on cryptography, data networking, sociology and economics. Amongst other things. My characters don't do that, and I'm not about to try to make them!
So looks like I'll download another couple of Rankin's. Good job there are two new ones for me to read.