Nanowrimo Update - Week 1

Now that we're a few days into the month, I figured I'd update readers with how my Nanowrimo progress was going so far.

Overall, it's going fairly well. I'm just a touch behind my modified pace (18 pages, when I should be at 20), but I'm fairly happy with what I've produced so far. For those of you keeping track of exact word counts vs a "page numbers multipled by average wpp", it's around 5000 words.

I've stuck fairly closely to my hastily-scratched-out outline I "prepared" on the back of a report for work the morning of November 1. My characters seem to be starting to develop, although they all seem to be slightly annoyed and in a rush; possibly this is an effect of where I've been writing, though.

Speaking of 'where', writing on the bus is going better than I'd thought it would. There's been a couple of mornings that I haven't been able to write, because the bus has been too busy, and I worry the end result isn't quite legible, but overall it's been better than I expected - the movement of the bus and the chatter of my fellow commuters are easily ignored.

On the off-chance it would be of interest to anyone, a writing sample!

Follow Friday: Why you should be following John Anealio

If you're on twitter, you're no doubt familiar with the hashtag/concept "Follow Friday"; as the name suggests, users recommend people they follow that they think others should too. It's something that I've always felt was a great concept, but often it just devolves into 140 character long lists of names, with no reason *why* that person should be followed.

So, what I'm going to start doing is focusing on one person per week, and explaining why I think following them would be worth your time. Up this week:

John Anealio.

Three reasons why you should consider following John:
1) He's a talented singer-songwriter who has written on a wealth of geeky topics, such as sexy robots, Chupacabra, dressing up like a stormtrooper, and George RR Martin. He's by no means a novelty act, though; he treats the subject matter as a good way to get at deeper emotional content.
2) He's also active in the podcasting sphere - John's created theme songs for podcasts such as I Should Be Writing and GeekDad, and also is the co-host of the Functional Nerds podcast, where he and co-host Patrick Hester discuss technology, new media, science fiction and fantasy, and the occasional video game.
3) He's the person that I got this format from. John spent the entire summer doing FF in this style, and I found it a very useful format. So thanks, John!

Interested in following John? He's on twitter and Google+, and has several albums' worth of songs on the web (some of them for free, even) at http://johnanealio.com/

Nanowrimo!

Happy Nanowrimo, writers! I realize I'm a few days late posting about it, but I wanted to tip my hat to everyone taking part in the challenge. (For those of you unaware of what Nanowrimo is, or what hyperlinks are, it's a friendly challenge to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November)

Which includes me. I've been an enthusiast of Nanowrimo for a long time - it's what got me writing fiction again after I finished university, and I've learned a lot from it over the years about writing and about organization and self-discipline. I've also met a bunch of cool people through Nano.

This year, though, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to do it. I'm working and going to school part-time (which is why I haven't been posting much fiction here for y'all lately), and figured that that left no time for writing. I wasn't happy about it, but with observations, assignments, and exams happening in November it was a decision I had to make.

This of course meant that I sat down on November 1st and started writing. I'm not planning on hitting a full 50,000 words, but I figure that if I can get at least 100 pages written I'll consider it a victory.

Anyone who's also doing Nanowrimo, feel free to add me as a writing buddy: http://nanowrimo.org/en/participants/mr-hill