NaNoWriMo 2010 Novel Cover

So I've been in the artsy sort of mood lately, and since it's October that means NaNo prep time. And artsy + NaNo = Novel Cover.

I ran into a few problems with this, though. Mostly that I've only got about one paragraph of plot, meaning I don't know much about what's going to happen yet. So I had no idea about what the rest of the plot was. Thus, I had to figure out characters.

I already had my MC figured out. I just had to name him. While I drew him I decided his name was Bob. Then because of his background, it's actually short for Roberto, and sometimes he goes by Bobby. And he's a cop, hence the shirt.

To the right is Bob's younger brother Donato. I think I've decided he's the villain of this piece. Hence why he's a little darker coloured and disappearing into some sort of vortex. No, I don't think this is sci-fi, so he won't be disappearing into any real vortexes in the story.

To the left is Bob's wife Selene. I'm not entirely sure what she has to do with the story yet, but she's his wife so I figure she'll play an important role of some kind. Note the glow between the married pair. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have them stay together during this story.

So now while I try to figure out what actually happens in the story, I'll have this lovely picture to look at... which will also help when I'm trying to physically describe them.

My Green Line Crossed My Orange One!

Check it out! I've been wanting to get this year's word count higher than the one from last year for a while now. For a while I thought I wouldn't be able to do it until next week, but look, my word count's already higher!

If I write well tomorrow, I may make this story the longest thing I've ever written! Hurrah!

This graph has been fascinating me for a while. 2007 stats are a little fudged since I didn't keep a daily log of my word counts, which kind of sucks, but I think it's fascinating how closely it resembles 2008's line, even though I remember having a lot more trouble in 2008 with my story.

This year I'm forging my own path. Hopefully my green line won't cross my orange line again this year.

So I made myself a photo journal

I saw this: http://photojojo.com/content/diy/make-your-own-photo-notebook-journal/ a while ago, and decided that I needed to make one.

And this is what it looks like:That's me and my sister with our first Cabbage Patch dolls. The back cover is me and my brother at one of those butterfly farm things. I, of course, just used pictures that I had lying around and those were basically the only two that weren't landscape.

I haven't used it yet, even though I made it over a week ago. I'm still writing in a journal that I got for my birthday last year that doesn't seem to be showing any signs of actually getting full, which says a lot about how much writing I've done over the past year.

Seriously, I've been working on the third book to my East Peaks series since... maybe this time last year, and it's still not finished (and it's not really meant to be any longer than a NaNovel). I'm maybe halfway there. But, well, it should be faster going now because I think I've gotten past that point where you hate your story so much, and start to love it again.

Distraction: Mobile Browsing in Firefox's Sidebar

This has absolutely nothing to do with NaNoWriMo, but I fear that if I don't write about it, I won't be able to write.

I can't remember what I was looking for, but I found some article (somewhere- aren't I awesome about references?) about using iphone versions of webpages in Firefox's sidebar. I actually think it's pretty cool even if I haven't yet actually discovered its full capabilities.

The funny thing is that in general I hate the sidebar. I don't like to leave it there while I'm browsing, and that's what it's for, is it not? But this has made me wish I could think of new ways to use the sidebar.

Anyhow, armed with this newfound knowledge I was able to solve a problem I've been having (which wouldn't be a problem if I wasn't so Twitter obsessed). Twitter loads slowly at work, and well, I don't want to install anything that isn't necessary. So I've started using mobile twitter (http://m.twitter.com/) instead of the usual. It's lighter, and loads faster even if it can't do a lot of things, and some things behave a tad strangely. But it's FASTER and that's what's important to my little brain.

I haven't yet worked out why none of the links actually open in the sidebar and always open in the browser window, though. And it was strangely difficult to get back to normal Twitter (I had to clear my cookies) from the mobile version. Or maybe it was difficult the other way around mobile to normal to mobile.

And I've just realised that these things are usually called "m" for "mobile", but Americans don't call their "mobile phones" that, like we do.

Yeah, I don't know if that made sense at all. But mobile versions of webpages might just be my new obsession...

Distraction: Find out what your character is doing on Twitter

Erm, so, I realised that while I have a beginning to my novel, I don't really have a middle or an end to it. Except for the basic stuff: the mother wins the election, and the bucket runs out of wishing liquid. That's my roundabout way of saying that I'm stuck.

So I was looking at plot twist generators and was finding that if you're trying to write a realistic sort of story, they aren't much help. They give you ridiculous scenarios and if you're really feeling uninspired it doesn't help. So I thought, Hey, Twitter is full of real people doing real things which are pretty random and could be quite inspiring. So of course I had to use their RSS feed to find out what Terry was doing... and then I piped it.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/mandraco/charactertwitter

Slightly dodgy, slightly doesn't work, slightly uninspiring. But certainly useful as a distraction for a moment of your time.

Example below: