Tag: writing

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Rymor writing

Rymor Week 1

First week of Rymor. Like Lesamy my blog update has been delayed by the after-effects of handing the latest SlingInk story. Which I did almost exactly on time. i.e. very little time to spare.

It was an interesting week. I managed to do my 45 mins every day apart from Sunday, but then on Saturday I counted time reviewing others’ work. But I came out of the weekend swinging, mostly because I had to with task 6 deadline looming.

So what are the stats?

Well during week 1 proper (thu 4th-wed 10th Dec) I spent 470mins writing and wrote 4,935words. Almost 5 hours (293mins) of which was in the last two days.  Overall (I started recording how much I was writing on 1st Dec) I’ve written for 605 mins and put down 7179 words. Of that roughly 3/4 has been on my Slingink story (458mins, 5760words)

Week 2 is looking less impressive so far. I’ve not written anything, aside these two blog posts, since Wed night.

Categories
Rymor writing

Introducing Rymor – a YAMUW

as in Yet-Another-Made-Up-Word.

What is Rymor?

Rymor is my new project in the spirit of Lesamy. It’s paul-speak for “Write More”. I know I’ve tried in the past to come up with a consistent writing regime. I’ve had some success with it actually. Even with things being more sporadic the discipline of needing a story delivered every two weeks (for Slingink‘s Eurofiction competition) has kept me honest, more importantly it has kept me finishing things. (I’m beginning to think 90% of writing is holding your nerve long enough to finish the first draft.)

But even with all that I wanted to bring some of the rigour and consistency, some of the discipline and frankly, the results of Lesamy to my writing. Now I know there’s only so far I can take it. With Lesamy if you burn more calories than you eat you will lose weight. All you have to do is find a diet and exercise regimen that achieves that and stick to it. The process is simple the hard part is in keeping going. I’ve proved I can do that. With writing there’s something else. You not only have to keep going, be consistent, work hard, you also have to find and express good ideas, you have to be smart and, depending on subject matter, it helps to be funny. There’s no simple formula to learn to be smarter and funnier.

So I know that there’s only so far hard work will get you. But on the other hand, the work is an enabler. If you have any talent (and I’m beginning to believe maybe I have a modest amount) then it takes work to make the most of it. In a pep talk email for NaNoWriMo Philip Pullman said:

The question authors get asked more than any other is “Where do you get your ideas from?” … What I usually say is “I don’t know where they come from, but I know where they come to: they come to my desk, and if I’m not there, they go away again.”

Seriously, What is Rymor?

So to the specifics. Rymor is simple. I will write for at least 45mins or 750words a day, every day. No varying it according to what day of the week it is. No days off. Every day is regular and consistent and habit-forming and that’s what I need.

Now when I say “no days off” I mean days when I’m at home. If I’m visiting friends or out all night straight from work then that’s ok. The main point is to not have a complicated weekly schedule.

Of course there will be days when I will work more than that – immediately before a deadline I imagine. That’s ok too – but Rymor defines the minimum.

The other part of Rymor, like Lesamy, is regular measurement. So every Wednesday from now on I’ll be posting a weekly word-count. I’ve worked out ways to count when I do a revision of an existing draft rather than writing from scratch. I’ve even done a basic spreadsheet. The idea is to see how much I’ve done and what I’ve done it on. I’ll probably have at least two or three things on the go at any one time. Lots of what I write, even now, is sort of brain-storming, mental clearing the throat stuff that never makes it directly into my stories but which seems to be necessary. Keeping track of all this I hope will be not only encouraging but will allow me to see where I’m spending my time and alternate so I don’t get bored or disillusioned with any one thing.

Anyway that’s the theory. I’ll let you know how I get on next Wednesday.

Categories
writing

Hold That Thought

I’m a bit backed up with blog posts, which is odd considering I’m off work right now and (theoretically) have oodles of free time. I should be reviewing either Merlin ep 2 (more of the same as ep 1 really), the Chuck season 2 opener (spent too long re-establishing the premise) or The Man in the High Castle (what the hell was that about?). Also I watched The Island on TV the other night and felt like blogging (i.e. whinging) about how if they hadn’t tried to make a big dumb action movie they’d have made an only slightly dumb, if derivative, Sci Fi flick. Oh and there’s always Buffy Re-watch to get back to.

But instead of all that I’m going to talk about writing and my on-going love/hate relationship with it.

I’ve just signed up for two big writing commitments. The first is Slingink’s “Eurofiction” competition, which is a short story is due every two weeks for twenty weeks. Points are awarded and whoever has the highest total score at the end wins a prize (and much glory and bragging rights obviously). I actually entered a similar competition that’s just finishing – The Write Idea’s “Whitaker Prize” – however after I failed to enter in round 3 and 4 I just bailed on that.

Second commitment is NaNoWriMo. As you may have noticed I’ve changed my blog theme again, apologies for that I’ll try to stick with this one for a while. This is partly because I wanted one where I could add tabs across the top and have NaNoWriMo with links to my profile and progress etc.

So I am officially getting back on the writing horse and shouting “giddyup” in a nervous and slightly excited way.

Which brings me to my main topic. A new twist on the perennial “do I really hate writing and does that mean I’m destined not to be a writer?” question. As I sat at the keyboard last night, not typing, remembering how much I truly hate this part, the beginning part, the part where you think that every shred of imagination or trickle of inspiration has fled far far away – as I thought on this I was reminded of something I wrote in a forum at the beginning of this year:

What actually happened was that I started 10 minutes late, stared at the
challenge requirement for 10 minutes before coming up with the germ of
an idea. I then wrote for about an hour, producing 850 words of pure
drivel. That idea, that cute little, perfectly formed concept of my
imagination had become this crap on the page because I lack the skill to
put it into words, apparently.

I received some comforting words about turning a deaf ear to my inner critic, who to be fair is pretty fierce, but I think I’m developing a theory about the way I write. When I look at the most successful, and by that I mean the most well-received, pieces that I’ve written, they are either flashes or stories where I took the time to re-work them significantly after the initial draft. I recall I had to write a story-within-a-story piece for a challenge and I went through 3 versions of the inner story before I finally committed. I found it painful and difficult. Real work in fact.

Secondly almost always the first draft is complete crap. Not only that but my inner critic will scream at me that it’s not even worth finishing and I should just ditch it and start on something new. Sometimes I listen to this. I have a limited amount of time to give to writing and I’m not a fast writer. I wish I could sit down with an idea, toss off 1,000 words quickly and treat it as an experiment. I can do that but the 1,000 words may take a couple of days.

You see there are ways to overcome that initial block, that blankness of mind and page. I find simply writing what I’m thinking (complete with negative commentary) works for me. Each time I start anew I have the fresh fear that this time nothing really will come but it usually does. An idea, a bright shining little spark, lighting the way to the story as a whole. And for a brief moment I’m excited and engaged, if it’s a good idea, or at least charmed with the possibility enough to want to give it a try.

But I find that spark is usually a single flash. A moment’s illumination during which I need to memorize as much details as possible because once it’s gone I’ll be groping along in the dark relying solely on my recall of the features around me. And it’s at this point that the fear and doubt kick in. I wish I could simply get that first draft down on the computer whilst the light is still fading and the after images burned clearly on my retinas. If I could only do that then I would have something, a draft, something I can tweak, edit, re-write, even rip the guts out of and re-work structurally – but a place to start. But often I can’t get that far because the light of inspiration has long since died and I’ve allowed all the criticisms of the idea to come in. “It’s not that original/plausible/interesting/clever.”

So I think, for me, a major skill I need to learn is to holding on to the initial thought, that idea that got me started, for the duration of the task of writing, at least the first draft. Since my attention span seems to have a radioactive half-life that’s not particularly easy but it’s something I want to develop. Half the battle is turning off, drowning out, the inner critic but that is only half the battle. The other half is holding on to the idea. I think that’s why I’ve had more success with 250-word flashes where I can write the thing in an evening. I’ve also had some success with longer stories but where I was prepared to really work at maintaining the vision. I had to keep reminding myself what the story was about, even if I secretly doubted that that “what” was worth doing. I haven’t written a novel (yet) but I imagine that holding the thought for weeks and months will be one of the biggest challenges involved.

So anyway that’s what I’ve been thinking about. And it’s why I think NaNoWriMo will be very very good for me.

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Uncategorized

Flubbage

Sorry about the title. It’s not a reference to Flubber honest. It’s sort of inspired by “phlebotinum” mixed with a desperate desire not to entitle this “Random Musings #23916753″[1]

It’s also an attempt to not let a week go by without posting. A week would be tomorrow, but well there’s a rare event – Paul leaves the house for other than work or shopping – happening tomorrow and so I probably won’t be blogging then.

Actually I almost blogged at the weekend, until I realised that I was about to unload a load of personal angst on you all. Which is fine and everything (it IS my blog) but I sort of decided I was going to keep the ratio of personal to interesting low didn’t I? Then I thought I’d review something, but the only ‘something’ I could really review would have been Doctor Who and that was exactly the wrong kind of terrible to write about (bad but not enough to inspire me to be rude or funny). Still, recalling Dr Kermode’s wise words (3rd para) maybe I should make the effort anyway. Here goes:

It was crap. Brain in hand, looked a little too much like other small pink moist organ in hand. It was vaguely sexual in a not very pleasant way. Plot had enough holes to upset even me. Moral dilemma really forced. Nice music. Nice scenery (snowy bits). Nice, though pointless, chase scene.

That’s all I can force myself to say, Kermode or no Kermode.

Anyhow. The remaining 23% of this flubbage is that I have at least re-visited my neglected LoveFilm DVD rental queue and added a few new releases and upcoming movies. Also added The Nines as suggested by friend of the blog lethebashar. Hopefully there’s something in that little lot that I can get my reviewing teeth into.

Oh and I got a package in the post today. I haven’t opened it yet, but it’s from my sister and is probably related to going-out-event (see above). It looks suspiciously like a book/books, which makes me think

a) I really ought to finish at least one of the three books she gave me for Christmas.[2]

b) Maybe the occasional book review wouldn’t hurt.

Anywhat, [3] I haven’t done any actual writing since last week’s moment of clarity, but then I have been working on something else. A rather ambitious project to do with resisting the passage of time. Seems not to be working, the final proof will come in a few hours I suspect.

Sorry if this seems a bit fillery but flubbage can be like that. Flubb, flubb, flubb.

See you next time.

[1]Even though, now that I look at it, that sort of looks like a better title. Oh well.

[2]At my suggestion, I asked for books because this crazy idea that I was going to write and reading’s important and…

[3]Makes a change from ‘anyhow’ don’t you think?

Categories
writing

I’m only happy when I’m writing

Which is blatantly untrue but it’s a riff on a song and it’s a title and I have a hard time coming up with titles. And it’s sorta, kinda true.

So this will be shorter than it could’ve been because I’ve already told you half of it and I’ve certainly already told you I shouldn’t be focussing on personal stuff.

I’ve discovered, slightly to my own surprise, that I like to write. My new year’s resolution of the new writing regime lasted until nearly the end of Feb. This may not sound great but given I’m usually chomping down on whatever tasty treat I’ve officially given up by lunchtime Jan 2 it was huge. Also, as I said, I am lazy. So I exceeded my own expectations and that’s always nice.

And I did so in both the amount of time I lasted, and in the fact that I actually finished stuff. Three, or was it four short stories, actually got to the point of ‘the end’. True they mostly sucked beyond belief, even after editting, but they were complete. Not outlines, not opening and closing paragraphs with a bit of dialogue, but actual ideas carried through to execution.

So when I realised, about a month ago, that I hadn’t really written for about a month, I didn’t panic. I didn’t castigate myself for having given up and tell myself that this proves I am not a real writer. No, I just thought, well obviously I should get back to it, and I probably will, and based on recent evidence, will probably have another, longer, more productive period. After all over the past five years, I’ve gone from barely acknowledging the dream, to fitful attempts, classes and groups to this latest five month stretch of pretty consistent writing (my NYR was committing to a specific timetable, but I’d re-started writing back in October).

Unfortunately this lack of panic allowed my natural laziness to take over and I slipped back into bad old ways. Until I realised this last weekend the following, that during the earlier part of this year I was

* writing regularly

* finishing stuff

* watching less TV, but looking forward to and possibly enjoying more what I was watching

* eating better and actually cooking

* not drinking too heavily

Some of that (cooking?) may seem unrelated, but discipline breeds discipline, so someone once told me, and it seems to be true.

Anyway since stopping, and particularly since feeling relaxed about stopping, I’d

* hardly written anything, not even this blog

* gone back to watching any old crap, sometimes spending an evening surfing channels, recordings and never settling on any one thing, leaving me feeling unsatisfied

* eating junk food

* drinking too much a bit too often

So overall, despite the fact that it was hard work, I was actually happier when I was writing regularly.

Why did I stop again?

Categories
flubbage

Yeah, I had a blog once…

So last night, I came home from work inspired (sort of) to write in my blog. I was going to talk about how long it’s been since I’ve written[1] and probably I still will, but what happened was that I started reading my blog. I went back to last summer’s Harry Potter read-a-thon and read all the posts through to present from there. And you know what? it’s really inspired me.

To blog.

What I was going to (and still am intending to) blog about was how much I enjoyed writing writing. But what I realised is I really like blogging. I just like giving my opinion on stuff and you know what, on a good day, with a fair wind, I think I’m halfway decent at making it entertaining.

So if nothing else I want to re-re-re-re-RE-launch this blog. Which is to say I want to do a bunch of simple stuff to promote it (like actually having it in my sig for online stuff) and I want to try to update it more often.

Random thoughts so far on the new new new NEW Cheese Never Sleeps[2] –

* actually put it in my sig for the two places I post most online – AFO and SoF.

* post on other blogs – not in a blatant, pseudo-spam, hey-please-please-read-my-blog kind of way but I already read certain blogs on topics I’m interested in. Since I’m interested in reading about them I may well blog about them. So it’s not horribly impossible that these other bloggers might want to discuss the same types of stuff on my blog too.

* post mainly about non-personal stuff. Ruminating on my inner feelings about the lint I found in my sock this morning isn’t, it appears that fascinating to others. I’ve had over 5 years (5 YEARS!) of blogging behind me to build up a loyal following of, er, one regular reader. There is a fighting chance that people will read about stuff they’re already into – films, TV programs, books – see previous point. Maybe, once I’ve snared them, they may just become interested in what makes me tick. But until I do, I think it’s safe to say I’m just talking to M.

*so I’ll write reviews. I’ve discovered that whilst I hate some things about it, I actually do love to write. And of course I love fiction and I think/hope/dream that I’ve got some readable fiction in me. But what I really really love is writing reviews for stuff. I mean going on and on about my opinions – what’s not to love?[3]

* what’ll I review? Well anything I feel like. Probably not the Buffy re-watch thing. Not right now anyway. It’s just too huge a commitment and it’s still too close to the time that I discussed every single episode from every angle imaginable. There are always movies, books (if I ever finish any! lately that’s an issue) and other TV shows. Joss Whedon’s new one, Dollhouse, will arrive in the autumn and I’m sure I’ll want to comment. Last year, when I was pondering the last re-re-re-launch of the blog, I considered a gimmick: review everything I watch/read/view for a week or a month. I may do that for a laugh some time.

So anyway, that’s all on that for now. This is probably ridiculously long given that it basically just says the blog is back. And I’ve probably got another couple of posts in me tonight.

Now where’s the post button again…

[1]written written not written in my blog written.

[2]I think I’m keeping the name. Can’t think of a better one right now.

[3]OK, for me nothing, for the reader, lots, but I promise I’ll try to rein it in a little

Categories
Buffy Rewatch Season 1 writing

Monday Night is Blogging Night

…which is just my attempt at a title that captures a few topics, not a statement of intent.

Although it could be and it might not be such a bad idea. See, the thing I have feared has happened, as I think one of Job’s comforters said. That is, (re-)watching Buffy has become a bit of a chore because I feel like I can’t proceed until I’ve blogged about it. So we have…

 1. Watching Buffy with M.

I went over to see M. the other week and took my Buffy S1 DVDs with me. We watched the first 4 episodes together. I was nervous about this for a couple of reasons.

First, four is a lot when I needed to remember what I wanted to say about them in my blog. However that’s not too much of a problem. I know the episodes well enough.

Second, I was nervous that M. wouldn’t like them. I was very aware of the problems with the episodes. Not that there are many but I’ve been in this situation before – the ‘fan’ wanting to share my love for something only to get a ‘mmm that’s nice’ polite response.

I needn’t have worried. I’d forgotten that long before she’d met me M. had been a regular Buffy watcher. Not a fan the way I was, but certainly a fan the way I began. Someone who basically liked the show and wanted to fill in the gaps in eps she hadn’t seen.

So what did I think?

Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest – this is where it really all started, for me. It was still cool, and I enjoyed as ever such favourite moments as Jesse’s line “I’m not ok on an epic scale” and Buffy’s ‘dawn’ gag on Luke. But what I really noticed was how trad horror-movie-esque the Master is. I mean I knew that he was and was so deliberately, he’s the scary organ music to Buffy’s energetic rock tune, but I guess I’d forgotten how much that’s true in the first couple of episodes. Even as soon as the next two it settles down a bit with the Master making jokes and such. 8/10

Witch – this was the episode I saw the promo for and decided not to continue watching Buffy (only to pick it up again much later). To this day I’m not really sure why except that for some reason I didn’t like the idea that the show was about things other than vampires! Of course now I love this ep because it’s got juicy Xander-Buffy-Willow triangularity in it. Aww so sweet. 8/10

Teacher’s Pet – I watched this with one eye on M. to see her groan at the monster (I mean giant praying mantis?) but she didn’t, she enjoyed it as I did. I like the opening dream sequence with Xander playing the hero. I like the teacher who dies and how he believes in Buffy. I like the fact the way that even though we are dealing with a giant praying mantis the actors sell the fear as real. That’s the thing about Buffy, it may make jokes, even self-referential ones, but it always attempts to play the emotional situation as real. 7/10

 2. Time and Writing

So, at the start of the year I came up with this timetable for myself re: writing. How ‘m I doing? Well so far since I started (barely 3 weeks). I’ve missed one evening (an hour) and one full weekend (five hours). I’m certainly not planning to try to do the catching up thing since that way lies madness and sweaty palms. I was thinking that I might incorporate my failure into my plan – to my already generous time-off quotient. What I could do is have one weekend a month where I plan not to do my usual writing. Two hours on saturday and three on sunday is not a lot really and let it seems to take up most of my weekend by the time you factor in some procrastination and faffing around.

Plus my usual habit of not setting my alarm and getting up when I feel like it shortens my day. My day still ‘ends’ pretty much at midnight because that’s when I tend to call M. for an end-of-day chat. So one thing I’m considering is setting my alarm for something suitably late but not midday for the weekends.

Actually it was pretty predictable that I’d not be writing this weekend as I re-built (from a software point of view) my Mythtv box. Leading to

3. MythTV Multirec

There was probably no real need to wipe my system and re-install except well, I kind of enjoyed it. I also fondly imagine it gives me a ‘cleaner’ system somehow. Anyway I’ve installed a new version of Mythtv that supports multiple recordings from the same multiplex.

What’s that mean? Well the Freeview signal is split into different frequencies that carry a multiplex – a collection of channels. When you ‘tune in’ to a channel you actually tune in the multiplex and just record/display the channel you’re interested in. What the clever MythTV developers have done is make it possible to record one, some or all of the channels in a multiplex using a single tuner. In other words using my dual-tuner tv-card I can now record several channels at once (providing they’re on no more than two multiplexes). Earlier tonight I successfully recorded 6 programs at once.

Actually I rarely need this, at least in that way. I’ve been running a MythTV box with 2 tuners for over 9 months now and I very rarely need more than 2 tuners. The reason I like it, and the reason – other than the enjoyment of doing it – to install multirec is that I can record back to back programs on the same channel and have an overlap (finish recording prog1 5 mins late and start prog2 5 mins early) and only use one tuner. Sounds trivial but it’s not. I record Mastermind and University Challenge which are back to back on BBC2. Since occasionally there’s something on another channel I want to record, I set it so Mastermind finishes at 8:30 and U.C. starts at 8:30. But if the timing’s not exact then I end up with the end of Mastermind chopped off early and a little bit of it at the start of the U.C. recording. Which is annoying. It would be even more so if I intended to archive them to DVD.

Anyway I installed it, re-installed the complete machine in fact, with a new version of Linux and everything. A weekend suitably ‘wasted’.

That’s probably way more than you wanted to read, so until next Monday…

Categories
Uncategorized

Time

M. got me a couple of books on writing for Christmas. In the introduction to “A Novel in a Year” Louise Doughty asks

Think what you are prepared to sacrifice. Writing a novel takes many, many hours, and those are hours you could spend planting roses, raising children, earning money — or even just having a nice life. What, in your life, is going to disappear, to allow you the time to write a book?

Well, I’vc got no roses to plant or children to raise, but nevertheless that hit home. Mostly because I think, I’m aware a) how much time I seem to waste doing nothing, and b) how long it seems to take me to write things[1]. And then, even within the general category of ‘writing’ there’s a lot of activities I might undertake:

  • AFO reviews and critiques
  • AFO challenge stories
  • both of M.’s books are work-books, books with exercises I can work through
  • blogging – which itself is many categories (more later perhaps)
  • reading – everything I read on writing says to read more, and I read a lot less than I once did. And a lot of what I read is other amateur writers – which is fine but I’d like to start exposing myself to really good writing.
  • Big Serious Writing Projects – not even sure what these will be yet. Maybe they’ll be short stories I want to get published, or a novel, or even a screenplay

So what is going to disappear from my life to enable some or all of this? Well first let me clarify that it may only be ‘some’. I’m going to keep an eye on it but I may scale down my involvement in AFO. At the moment I’ve been reviewing virtually every new story, which has been taking hours. I can’t blame anyone else for that, it’s partly an ego thing that I want to be seen as a good citizen and partly a procrastination thing – 90 mins reading and reviewing a 3,000 story is “writing time” without me having to do the really hard work of my own writing. But I’m still pondering. I need to give it more time, see how things develop.

Anyway back to what will disappear? Here’s what I’m thinking so far

  • time not really doing one thing or another. I spend a lot of time half doing things. I’m watching TV but also surfing the web. I’m supposed to be writing but I’m fiddling with computer settings. If I can reclaim even a little of this ‘noodling around’ time I’ll be doing well[2]
  • Watching TV – much as I hate to say it, having spent a good part of the last year establishing what is now a really nice MythTV system, I spend too much time watching TV. So on stats alone, since it’s a large proportion of what I do, it’ll need to be a large portion of what I need to give up. Fortunately that’s not too hard (I think). A lot of what I record on Myth is might-be-good-let’s-record-on-the-offchance crap which I then watch just so I can delete it and keep the disk from filling up. I think I’m going to stop doing that. Or at least I’ll set it to auto-expire and if I don’t get around to it before it does, oh well.
  • Surfing the web – same rationale as the above. It’s what I spend a lot of time doing so there’s a lot of scope to cut back. This will actually be helped by the fact that I’ve gone a little cold on SoF (which used to account for many many hours online), now I mostly check it through habit. A lot of what I read I’ve seen before in some other form now. Interestingly, M., who I met on SoF, feels the same.
  • some late night chats with M. – ok, a slightly delicate one, since I haven’t actually mentioned this to her yet. It’s not the chats per se I want to cut back on, just some of the lateness. M. and I have the ability to just talk and talk, which is wonderful and the sign I think of a close friendship, but sometimes we try to live up to that even when we’ve not got a lot to say – so somehow there’s a feeling that all’s not well if we only chat for half an hour. And the lateness causes tiredness which makes things like sitting down to spend an hour writing a challenge. I know it affects M. too. What I want to do is to actually do stuff which we’ve talked about in the past such as having a limit to how late we talk on week-nights and not trying to force it when we’ve neither got much to say.

How much time that will realistically net me I’m not sure. However I’ve put together a vague plan of how I might spend my “writing time”:

  • Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays – an hour of “writing” time and half an hour of reading. The writing time will usually be AFO related. I’m going to try to make sure I alternate between reviews and my own writing.
  • Saturdays – two hours writing time spent working through “A Novel in a Year”. It’s got a weekly structure and I don’t want to get ahead so any “spare” time can be spent on AFO/other projects. At least half an hour reading.
  • Sundays – three hours writing time (probably in 2 90min sessions) working through “Creative Writing – A Workbook with Readings” with is a pretty serious textbook (also a present from M.) Half an hour (or more) reading – although Creative Writing has readings in it.
  • Mondays and Fridays – these are “writing optional” days. I deliberately worked in some flexibility into the system. I can write if I want to, feel inspired. Or just have the night off, start/end the weekend if I’m tired. I’d probably write my blog on a Monday or a Friday. BTW I want to start blogging at least once a week. What I’m going to blog about is best left to another post I think (this must be pretty long by now[3])

Anyone who’s noticed that this looks suspiciously like New Year’s Resolutions is right but I’m not going to get too hung up if I don’t stick to it. If I miss it one day, I’ll get back to it the next. If I only half-keep to it I’ll be doing a heck of a lot better than I have done.

2008 is the year of me taking writing seriously!

[1]On monday I wrote a 2,000 word story for AFO. It took me two hours to write, another two to re-write/polish and it still felt like a rough draft when I was done.

[2]I think some noodling time is essential otherwise I’ll feel like I’m too regimented.

[3]Eek! Just check preview and it’s very long. Oh well. You read to here didn’t you?

Categories
Uncategorized

Gvim and vigour

I had the urge to blog tonight. I haven’t for a while and I feel like I’ve lots to say. However it’s getting late and I don’t want to be too long.

So I’ll try to be quick on the subject of gvim.

gvim

Gvim is “graphical vim” and of course vim is “Vi IMproved” and vi is an editor on Unix/Linux. So what I’ve done is set up gvim. I’m going to use it to write with. At this point anyone who knows what vi is like is probably thinking I’m crazy. For those who don’t, vi is not a word processor, it’s a text editor. It’s an editor with an obscure, esoteric and out of date way of doing things.

But I’m used to it. It’s been on every Unix/Linux computer I’ve ever used going back nearly 20 years. I already use vim to make posts to AFO. You may recall I use tin

tin

as my newsreader, but tin allows you to configure your own editor. So I went with vi, or rather vim. The difference between vi and vim are subtle but important. Vim has many more features. I’ve only scratched the surface but it’s the ability to customise and configure shortcuts that I like. So I’m basically using those well-worn vi commands, but I have an auto-wrap at 78 columns. I can re-align a paragraph with a single keystroke. I get colour-coding of my headers and quoted text.

Since at the moment, I’m mainly writing for AFO, and AFO is usenet which is a ‘bare text’ medium, I don’t need fancy word processor features (by which I really mean simple stuff like bold, italic, font sizes). And as much as I like OpenOffice, especially the not-having-to-buy-MS-Office part, it’s slow to start and feels like overkill to type what is essentially text, maybe with the occasional underline.

Actually OO has downsides for text as I’ve discovered. It converts double-quote characters into left- and right- curved quote characters. Which look cool – in OO – but are in some extended, probably unicode, character set. When I Save As text and then copy and paste into tin, which is configured for plain ol’ ASCII, I get ? instead. Now I could figure out how to get OO to stop converting them, or figure out how to get it to convert them back when I save, or configure tin for full character set support – but in the end it’s easier just to write ASCII.

Usenet has conventions for most simple formatting. Behold bold: *bold text is between asterisks*. Observe italics: _underscores mark italics_. So I am mostly ok. If at some point I want to start writing for other outlets and want a .DOC, .RTF or .PDF file, OO will still be there and I can adapt any text docs easily enough. I may even figure out a little script to convert usenet formatted text to something OO could import. That’s the sort of thing I’d enjoy.

The only remaining question is why the g? Why gvim? No real reason. It has a few buttons to do common tasks. All of which are merely doing the equivalent of various keystrokes. It stands alone and can run from the desktop. But then I could run regular vim in a terminal, even create a shortcut for it. No, the only real reason was that the simply excitement of installing gvim, configuring it the way I like it and setting it up with a desktop shortcut,

shortcut

is a motivation for me to actually use it. In other words, it helps getting me writing again. Which is important. I’m enjoying writing at the moment but getting myself down to it is still a bit of a challenge and the inner child in me can go “ooh shiny new toy” at gvim to get me over that initial hurdle.

(Those of you who are laughing at the idea that a) gvim is a shiny toy or b) that installing and configuring a text editor is in any way exciting can just go… Well my bet is you stopped reading after the pictures. 😛 as we say in usenet land)

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Desks and Dreams

I had a lovely dream last night. I’ll tell you more about it in a moment. But first, some words justifying a picture.

I haven’t been blogging a lot lately but I have been busy. I’ve been doing stuff on the house. I’m trying to get all my furniture sorted and my spare room transformed into a room a guest could stay in rather than just a room full of boxes. In a few weeks I’ll have lived here for a year and it’ll be nice to feel like I’ve actually moved in!

Another thing I’ve been doing is I bought and assembled a desk. I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately and it’s nice to have a proper desk rather than the little folding table I was using. It was the desk in particular that caused me to re-arrange lots of furniture. I’ve turned my bedroom (the biggest room in the house) from bedroom/lounge to bedroom/office and am going to use the lounge as a lounge (what a concept! as my old boss used to say). I’ve also moved the mythtv box downstairs. So anyway I’m rather pleased with all this and here’s a picture of my desk:

My new desk

The other reason it deserves a pic is the inordinate amount of time it took to assemble. I don’t mind putting together flat-pack stuff but I do seem to be slow.

Back to dreams. I had a lovely dream last night. But before I get to it (!) something more general on dreams.

I was thinking about how we use the word “dream” in two different and distinct ways. Different and distinct to me anyway. There’s 1) the screen-in-your-head that plays random nonsense whilst you’re asleep and then there’s 2) the stuff we aspire to and hope for. I guess these are related. My dreams are always pretty random. I know that other people’s aren’t necessarily. M’s dreams are very coherent compared to mine. She’s told me she’s been dreaming lately of an event she’s worried about in real life. From what I understand it’s pretty much just playing out the scenario with a conclusion she’s nervous about.

When I dream it tends to be less straightforward. People morph into other people, strange context-switches occur, unusual things happen and seem normal. But having said that maybe that’s just the detail, the underlying dream can still be an expression of what’s on my mind.

So did I mention I had this lovely dream last night? Actually it was this morning. I’ve had a week of late nights and last night was a late one too, so I had a long lie-in. This dream was so nice that when I woke needing the loo, I got up, pee-ed, then got straight back into bed and continued the dream. Usually I can’t do that but this time I did.

The dream was basically this: I decided that I would just stop being worried about what people thought, that I would be less passive and I would just be more “fun”. So the dream sort of followed me going out for a day/evening doing various things. I was deliberately trying to be more extrovert. Not in a hey-look-at-me way, but in an attempt to get away from my usual hey-don’t-look-at -me way. I was aware that I might come across as wacky and weird and some people wouldn’t like it but I decided not to care and do it anyway.

And what happened is that I had a good time and that people liked it, liked me, liked being with me. And when I say people I of course mean women. There was one in particular who I was having a lot of fun with, who really liked me, and I liked her and I was really happy around. And when I woke up, it was her I wanted to get back to, spend more time with.

The thing I wondered about when I woke up properly was, was this just a dream in the 1) sense or is it also a 2) dream? Is my unconscious mind telling me something? It was lovely but in the real world I’ve been thinking a lot lately that I’m happy and that a relationship, whilst nice, would be a lot of work – both to find someone and the daily compromise to share your life with someone. But maybe that was all denial?

You may think this has nothing to do with desks. But being a writer is a 2) dream. Building a desk (and using it) is a real concrete expression of that. It’s a practical step I took to make my dream happen. It’s also a sign that I am prepared to come out and say this is what I want rather than cherish it as a secret desire but not do anything in case others tell me it’s stupid or wrong to think I could ever attain it, in case I tried and failed to get it. Interesting that in the dream I had to stop worrying what others thought in order to make myself more out-going and attractive.

But then it’s my unconscious so I would think that wouldn’t I?