Day One Total: 4,234 words

I forgot to blog my first wordcount yesterday. Isn't that strange? No, not really, but I think it's yet another sign that this year's NaNo is going to be different from every year that came before it.

I didn't quite hit my unofficial goal of 5k, but I got close enough in my opinion... since it was an unofficial goal and all.

You know what else is strange? Having the Melbourne Cup on the first day of NaNo. It makes the novelty of a cup race word sprint slightly less novel. One doesn't need odd tricks on the first day of the month... do they?

I have yet to crack open Write or Die, but did participate in a word sprint or two on Twitter. And in other news, this year I'm writing my novel in Yarny (which I consistently misspell with an E), which I kind of like so far because you can see your word counts. I think I like it better than Google Docs for writing stories, which I never actually thought I would do.

Day Five Total: 35,215 words

Cracked 35k today. I'm pretty pleased about that.

I'm less pleased that yesterday's sluggishness in writing seemed to continue on into the morning. It's only really been in the last half hour of the day that I got into the groove... no wait, that's not true. I did a couple of word sprints with @wordsprints, in the afternoon where I got a decent amount written.

The thing is I was kind of looking forward to Selene and her introduction which came today. It was kind of upsetting that I didn't end up writing another ridiculous amount of words.

Anyway, I've sort of decided that the shift in the story between Selene and Bob getting married and having a kid to the part where Bob's dad dies and he has to take over is sort of the part I/part II sort of deal... the problem is, I don't think it's quite right to end part I with a marriage or something. I need to figure that out before I get to part II.

Day Three Total: 22,424 words

Today was a good writing day. Wrote for about four hours instead of the three I'd done yesterday and the day before.

Got to a point where I wanted to skip over a scene and then ended up basically writing it anyway on my way to the next one. Life's weird like that.

At this pace I'll probably get to my 50k in the fastest time I've ever accomplished it, but I figure I'll slow down at some point. I'm sort of getting into the meat of the story, though. So it'll be interesting to see what sort of pace I'm setting as I start thinking more about what I'm writing.

I am half-hoping I'll finish the story and then be able to spend the last half of the month editing it. I quite like the idea. I already know there are some bits that are a little out of order and some scenes in between that need smoothing out.

P.S. If daily blogs aren't interesting enough you can still find me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/mandraco)

Day One Total: 6,988 words

So, in three, approximately one hour long sessions I've got almost seven thousand words. I'm pretty happy about that and how the story's going so far.

I've already gone the Write or Die route, and spent practically all day on Twitter watching as timezone after timezone of people got to start NaNoWriMo. I also spammed a fair few randoms, but that's the way I make all of my Twitter friends.

I did, however, end up skipping an entire scene in my story. I just had the last line in the first scene, leading to the first line of the third so well that I couldn't be bothered to take the detour. I wasn't entirely sure why I'd wanted that scene in the first place so I just left it out. It was pretty great.

I almost feel sad that I didn't actually reach 7000 words today, but I finished the 'fourth' (actually third since I missed one) block so neatly that I had to stop there. There was no way I was going to not do it.

I'm pretty tired now, as a result of too many nights up past midnight in the last week, so I'm going to count myself awesome and go to bed now.

Day Seventeen Total: 47,254 words so far

So I owe a massive difference in word count from yesterday mostly to a couple of word sprints with @NaNoWriMo (Chris Baty). At least I think it was Chris Baty, he said it was Chris and I can't think of another one. Lol. I missed the first sprint, and while I was bemoaning that, little did I know he was planning another two.

Something about semi-competitively writing against someone else is very conducive to writing a lot of words... not that I wrote more than I ever had before or anything. Really, the reason why I write so much more in November than in any other month is because of the community. I do it for the joy of saying that I did it, but writing fifty thousand or so words in any month is always worthwhile, and I will always be able to find people who will say to me, "That's great", so I don't need to do it in November. November is for writing with other people. Without them, it just wouldn't be the same.

The rest of my word count can be attributed to sewing together the bits that I wrote while sprinting, and to a post-11pm stint where I decided that I just wanted to write more.

Band Names

So, my story's about a band, and they don't have a name. Not because I can't think of one, but because they can't think of one.

The Band (names they've gone through and rejected in the novel)

• Mystik Spiral (is blatantly stolen from Daria and is what the lead singer's ex calls the band)
  
• Tyrano Society (Iwan's idea)
• Four-Letter Names (Alan's idea)
• MIKA (standing for Mike Iwan Kyle Alan, rejected for the obvious reason)
  

Other Bands (mentioned in the novel)

• Orient In Terest (a previous house band with a recording contract)
• Maneki Neko and the Cha'an Chu (suggested by @VOIDMunashii)
• Pinching the Nibble (suggested by @VOIDMunashii)

Names (not yet mentioned in the novel)

• Trailer Park Street (suggested by @VOIDMunashii)
• The Retail Therapists (suggested by @bazz_andreaus)
• Death Wind (not-quite-suggested by @theinfern0)
  

Day One Total: 5,459 words so far

Today was a pretty good day, I must say.

Of course, after writing enough to satisfy my day's quota before one a.m., there wasn't really much I could do to make it a bad day. I decided that I wanted to write at least five thousand words, and I succeeded with that, so I am pretty pleased with myself... how many times can I say that in one blog?

Despite not knowing where my afternoon went, I did manage to type out a couple thousand words, and another thousand or so after dinner.

My novel continues to surprise me. I keep using words I never thought I would, and within the first ten minutes I'd renamed all my main characters, and over the course of writing, named and renamed some supporting characters. I've ended today's writing with the end of a scene, and I suppose it would probably be the end of a chapter in the book itself. I'm wondering if ending the scene will make me more or less able to pick up where I left off tomorrow...

I'm operating on just under six hours of sleep, so I guess that's the one thing that hasn't increased today. I've definitely managed to overdo twittering. I've put a bunch of random strangers onto my NaNoWriMo list (@mandraco/wrimos) and spent a lot of time replying to (not necessarily the same) strangers while searching for tweets referencing NaNoWriMo. Sometimes I think that instead of making me less productive, NaNoWriMo actual increases my overall productivity for the month.

I guses that's enough about today. =)

Auto-Post your #screnzy wordcount to twitter

So I've done my one test, and figure that since it's exactly the same as NaNoWriMo's we're good to go.

The url to go to is: http://pipes.yahoo.com/mandraco/scriptfrenzy

Instructions are here: http://mylastwritingblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/auto-post-your-nanowrimo-wordcount-to.html

Just replace "NaNoWriMo" in your head with "Script Frenzy" or "scriptfrenzy" as appropriate.

Got distracted from work

And constructed the most awesome-est twitter search for Script Frenzy (because we can't just type nanowrimo in like with NaNoWriMo).

Behold: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%22scriptfrenzy%22+OR+%22script+frenzy%22+OR+%22screnzy%22

Does anyone have any other suggestions for phrases to add? Let's push Twitter search to the limit.

Preparing to prepare

March starts pretty soon, which means April's Script Frenzy prep starts soon. During March I like to read scripts and watch movies and write scripts too. I have no idea what I'm going to write in April but I can't start thinking about that.

I haven't really written anything in a while, which kind of sucks. I just can't bring myself to pick up a pen or tap something out on the keyboard. It's not that I don't have ideas or inspiration. I'm just lacking the fortitude required to sit down and write.

In other news: this blog has a new look, with the background from my twitter page and a photo I took while I was planning for the first Script Frenzy back in 2007. I did take a new pic specially for the header but my camera died so I had to look for an old one, which turned out to be not that great quality.

The worst thing is that I cannot, with good conscience, start thinking about thinking about planning for April while I still have work to do. Le sigh.

So I'm pretty much finished

I know I'm over 50,000 words, but well, I haven't actually checked. I'm worried that when I do I'll just decide (tomorrow) that it was enough to get to 50k and not actually finish the story, which would entirely defeat the purpose.

I will officially check it before I go to bed because well, I was very good about updating the NaNo site every day and I don't want to stop now.

I kind of feel the way I did after I finished my first Script Frenzy. Sort of like, well I knew I could do it, so I just did it. Excited, but not really. Hopefully I'll be really excited when I can download my winner's goodies and also when I see my green bar.

Although, I don't think I would have managed to go this well without the Twitterverse. Or at least, everyone who ever @replied to one of my messages on Twitter. Like seriously. I never would have been able to do it so quickly if I didn't have people achieving similar goals at the same time, or sharing their NaNo stories with me. I always thought that the NaNo forums were enough, but I think there's something strangely more intimate about Twitter (probably because it's a slightly smaller community so you can follow it better and not have to get bogged down in thinking about someone else's plot) despite the fact that they're still complete strangers.

THANK YOU! =)

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:

Auto-Post Your #NaNoWriMo Wordcount To Twitter

NaNoWriMo made me obsessed with Twitter.
Twitter made me obsessed with Yahoo! Pipes.
Behold the result.

Warnings: This is largely untested, but worked for me. If you have problems leave a comment. I'll get back to you in between noveling.

Step 1: Find your NaNoWriMo Numerical User ID.
The easiest way to do this is to log into NaNoWriMo and you should get redirected to your user profile page. If you're not redirected (or are already logged in), click on "My NaNoWriMo"

The last digits after /user/ in the url of that page form your UID.

(This is difficult to do in these server crashing times, I know. But if the site's down you won't get a wordcount anyway.)

Step 2: Plug that into the Yahoo! Pipe I created
Go here: http://pipes.yahoo.com/mandraco/nanowrimorss
Type in that UID you found in step one, decide whether you want to prefix your wordcount with anything (e.g. My nanowrimo wordcount is:), and whether or not you want to include a link to your user profile in the text.

Step 3: Run Pipe
Click the button that says Run Pipe. A preview of your post should appear with your most recent wordcount (or nothing if there was no previous wordcount). If you don't like it, repeat Steps 2-3.

Step 4: Save as RSS
Click "More options" then "Get as RSS". Copy the URL.

Note: You can skip the rest of the steps if you're not going to use TwitterFeed to post your wordcount to Twitter (i.e. if you already know what you're doing).

Step 5 (possibly optional): Burn the Feed with FeedBurner
TwitterFeed might not mind you using that URL you got in Step 4, but in my experience it doesn't like them so first you have to burn your feed or give your feed a different address.

• Go to http://www.feedburner.com.
• Paste the URL from Step 4 in the box, then click "Next".
• Call it whatever you like and choose a feed address.
• If you don't already have a FeedBurner account, create a new one. Otherwise sign into your existing account.
• The next page will have a link to your new FeedBurner feed. Copy this for the next step.

Step 6: Set Up TwitterFeed

• Go to http://www.twitterfeed.com and sign in with your Open ID.
• Click "Create new twitter feed".
• Type in your twitter details, and paste in your FeedBurner feed URL.
• Choose your update frequency. And post 1 new update each time.
• Choose to include "description only" and uncheck "include item link". There are no item links anyway.
• Post new items based on GUID. There is no date information so you have to use this option.
• Make sure it's active then click "Create" and you're done.

It might take a couple of hours for TwitterFeed to sort itself out and post the first wordcount. After that, depending on the NaNo site and everything it might take a bit longer than expected. But you don't want to spam your followers' twitter streams anyway. Right?

Hopefully the whole process was relatively painless. Leave comments if it wasn't and I'll try to help.