Sharp Words

Because I didn’t go out for Halloween this year, I thought I’d start writing at midnight. And I certainly wasn’t the only one. Six or seven us sat in the WriMo Ireland chat room and started off NaNoWriMo 2009 with a 10-minute word sprint. I managed 820 words in two sprints, about beating my usual first-day-writing record (I don’t typically do that well on day 1), though others managed a couple of thousand words before going to bed.

I’ve spent the day at my friend’s house though (where I was last night too), waiting to see if the flood in the road was going to get any worse, and then later, if it was going to go down again so I could go home. With not much else to do except check sandbags, take photos, and drink coffee, I got quite a lot of words done and haven’t finished yet.

So all in all, I’m feeling pretty damn good about my writing this year. And the flood’s thankfully receding.

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Thud!, Terry Pratchett. Own copy.
Comfort reading while I was feeling lousy with a heavy cold.

Feersum Endjin, Iain M Banks. Borrowed(?) copy, first read.
Another delivery from my Dad. Not sure I liked this one – it exposed to me how much I skim when I read, because of all the passages written phonetically. Plus I was ill, so found it hard to concentrate on. I actually found a post-it on the last page which read “Blah Blah Blah. The butler did it. The End.” – so clearly whoever had the copy before me wasn’t too fussed on it either!

The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley. Own copy.
More comfort reading. I had no idea how many times I’ve read this novel since I first got it out of the library when I was about 12, but I’d imagine that the answer is ‘quite a lot’.

Brasyl, Ian McDonald. Library book, first read.
Really excellent sci-fi, very imaginative and beautifully set in (of course) Brazil. And I’m meeting the author during November.

Excession, Iain M Banks. Borrowed(?) copy, first read.
Another of the deliveries from Dad. I liked this one a lot more than Feersum Endjin, mostly because it’s one of the Culture novels, and I find those fascinating.

Living with the Dead, Kelley Armstrong. Library book, first read and re-read.
A good addition to the Women of the Otherworld series – her first written in the third person and from multiple points of view. I found that an interesting change, and the story wouldn’t have worked in the usual first-person.

Sovereign, C J Sansom. Library book, first read.
The third in the Shardlake series; excellent historical mystery.

To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis. Own copy.
My favourite of the novels of hers that I’ve read, for its sense of humour and ridiculous.

Nation, Terry Pratchett. Own copy, first read and re-read.
I can’t believe it I’ve left it this long to buy this novel – not like me at all; I usually pounce on Pratchett novels as soon as they come out in paperback. (Too stingy for hardback.) Finally though… this is a fantastic book. Just the right touch of seriousness and comedy, with intriguing parallels and morals that aren’t shoved down the reader’s throat.

Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett. Own copy, first read.
Hopefully this won’t be his last novel… It’s more mature and thoughtful than the earlier Discworld novels, with less reliance on puns and silly situations (much like the last couple have been). And it’s excellent. (Plus it has plenty of the Librarian.)

Total for October 2009: 10 + 2 re-reads

Ongoing total for 2009: 160 + 7 re-reads

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As mentioned several times already in the past month or so, November is National Novel Writing Month.

This will be my seventh year taking part, and hopefully, my fifth time reaching 50,000 words in 30 days. Actually, this year I’m aiming for 75-80 thousand, since I managed 70,000 last year.

I’m extremely excited about it this year. I have a fun story idea to work on; I need to reach 50k on that, and then I can write some of my long-standing in-need-of-rewrite fantasy saga. Or rather, I’ve promised myself for every thousand words of fantasy saga that I write, I can write two thousand of my silly sci-fi. I need to reach 50,000 on a single project to properly fulfill the rules of NaNoWriMo, so that will be on my fun project. But this way, the other one gets a word count boost too.

One of the reasons I’m so excited is that for yet another year, I’m the Municipal Liaison (aka regional co-ordinator) for Northern Ireland. I’ve run a series of “Introduction to NaNoWriMo” sessions this year, both online in our chat room and face-to-face, and so far I’ve talked to 17 other WriMos – which is almost as many as I met during the whole of November last year.

Plus, we have a kick-ass kick-off party lined up for Friday, with a happy number of RSVPs – and even if they don’t all show, we’ll still have plenty of people and a good time. (And lo! the Pumpkin of Sugary Doom shall inflict destruction on all…)

And I can’t wait to get started actually writing on Sunday…

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One of my local pound shops (which no longer sells everything at a pound, but has things priced at £1.50 and £2 as well) has lately renamed itself.

I can’t actually remember the old name, but I think it might have had ‘pound’ in it. I could be wrong.

The new name, however, is SOME CHOICE.

And I smile every time I see it. I also get the urge to ask to talk to management and explain that they have quite a lot of choice, actually, and there really isn’t any need to be so self-deprecating.

I’m not sure if it makes it worse that the slogan on some of the stuff inside is ‘Some Choice, Some Value’….

And just because I don’t want to miss another one, here’s my Friday Flash 55, inspired loosely by a recent visit to a local fried chicken takeaway chain, as well as by the above.

“Chicken fillet burger please.”

“What do you want on it?”

“Coleslaw.”

“Sorry, no coleslaw.”

“Tomato and mayonnaise then?”

“We’re out of tomatoes.”

“OK, just mayo.”

“No problem! Oh. The tub’s empty. Let me check the fridge… No, none there.”

“What can I have then?”

“Ketchup.”

“Or?”

“Just ketchup.”

“Some choice! I’ll just have it plain.”

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I love buying notebooks. I buy them even when I don’t need them.

The photo shows the notebooks I found in my study. (Which admittedly is a large room, and I don’t think there are too many other notebooks lying around the house; maybe just 3 or 4.) As you can see, I like my notebooks to be hardbacked, or spiral-bound, or preferably both…

Out of the 12 there, 3 have never been used, and another 3 are currently blank because I ripped out the old unwanted scribbles that they had. (I didn’t lose anything meaningful – just Italian vocabulary lists, a few pages of holiday spending, and some old work notes.)

All the ones that have been used have some sort of history. Even the ones that haven’t have something about them. That grey, blue and red striped one in the middle? Bought in Asda for £1 the other week just because I liked the look of it. No idea what I’ll use it for.

The little black one with the inset picture on the cover was a present from a friend 10 years ago, and never used because I couldn’t think of anything worthy enough to put in it.

That little blue plastic-covered one at the front was lost for a long time. When I found it in a box earlier this year, I was delighted to find some ‘lost’ poems in it, written about 7 or 8 years ago.

The brown striped one at the back has brown paper pages which look beautiful but don’t soak up fountain pen ink very well. I persevere though, because that’s my ‘official’ poetry notebook, and I like writing in proper ink with a proper nib.

The purple one with the elastic band and the NaNoWriMo stickers? Well, you can probably guess what that one’s been used for. It’s been my writing and note-taking notebook for a couple of years of NaNoWriMo, but since it’s mostly full, it’s been retired this year in favour of the mostly-white-and-flowery book over on the left.

The little blue one with a dandelion is my log of stuff (food, weight, to-do lists). It’s a journal of sorts, and I think that’s actually where my obsession comes from – the 8 years that I kept a journal, always in a hardback notebook of varying size (I think I got through about 6).

I like notebooks much too much. (And if anyone is ever stuck for an idea for a present for me…)

Anyone else have more notebooks (or pens or other writing paraphenalia) than they really need?

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