It isn't even October yet, but my mind is already drifting to November, also known as National Novel Writing Month. (I am really early this year, usually I write this in the middle of October, as I found out last year.) Of course, I will be participating once again. I've just created my new 'project', which was a bit more of a fuss than usual, because the entire nanowrimo.org website has had a major do-over. I'm not sure if I like this new design better, some things are pretty fancy, but especially the forums seem to have become a lot more difficult. Will have to spend some time figuring that out.
Anyhow, NaNo is not about the website, it's about the writing. And the community. And rewarding yourself with sugary treats every 1,000 words you write. And... Let's stick with the writing first.
After my brief departure into 'romance' last year, I'm firmly back onto 'realism' territory. Who was I kidding? I, who love the basic prose of Sally Rooney, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift. I shouldn't wander off the path of down-to-earth conversations and everyday occurrences that gain hidden depths through unified themes. Or at least I shouldn't stray from attempting to write such a story, as those are the novels I love to read, so those are the stories I love to write.
So, I will be stealing some characters and perhaps plot lines from an earlier NaNo and putting those in a new story that I've been thinking about for a while. I've given myself a very contained time span and location, to avoid going off on various tangents and never finishing. I've even got a basic 'book' structure laid out, all 22 chapters. The chapters will be alternating 'group' chapters and more personal chapters focusing on one of the characters each time around. If that sounds like NaNo 2019 will be a breeze, think again. My characters will probably revolt and break down the entire plot house I've built for them in the first 5,000 words. But that's okay. That's what NaNo is about; just writing and see where it will get you.
As always, I'll be keeping you up to date on my progress here, but since November is still 32 days away, it will be some time. Somehow, being this early doesn't make me feel any more prepared...
Sunday 29 September 2019
Monday 16 September 2019
How to
I've been a fan of xkcd for as long as I can remember. Apparently Randall Munroe started the website in September 2005, when I must have been on the Internet for a couple of years already, but I simply can't remember being online and not checking the website for new comics every so often (the publishing schedule has varied throughout time).
So what is xkcd, you may wonder. It's a webcomic. A nerdy, scientific, but also very funny webcomic, written by a very nerdy (ex-NASA) guy. I've seen one of Randall's TED talks, and it is almost impossible to believe that someone that dry and nerdy can write such funny comics. For one, the name of the website isn't an acronym, it's simply 'a word with no phonetic pronunciation'. I can't really get all of the jokes, to be honest, but thankfully there is even a website explaining the jokes (and science) in the comics.
Randall has created a couple of side projects, one of which is What if? in which he answers scientific questions (usually of the ridiculous kind). This has sparked a book, which contains even more questions about what would happen if you'd do something pretty crazy. He's also written a Thing Explainer, in which complicated things such as rockets are explained using only the thousand most common words.
His latest book is How To, which tells you how to do a couple of things: how to dig a hole, how to decorate a tree, or how to see if you're a nineties kid. The answers are never as straightforward as you may think. I love these kinds of books. You learn about something pretty complicated, like quantum physics or crowd psychology, while reading absurd stories of how Serena Williams takes down a drone by hitting it with a tennis ball. Randall tries to explain things in the easiest ways possible, sometimes showing how off the cuff estimations can get you pretty close to the real answer without having to do a lot of difficult calculations. If you understand the logic behind something, the way things work and affect each other, you can get pretty far without crunching the numbers.
The trademark comics are interspersed with the text, so you don't feel like you're reading a physics book. Rather, it feels like reading a comic book with some chunks of text in the middle. It feels like learning without studying, and that physics isn't as scary as you might think.
So what is xkcd, you may wonder. It's a webcomic. A nerdy, scientific, but also very funny webcomic, written by a very nerdy (ex-NASA) guy. I've seen one of Randall's TED talks, and it is almost impossible to believe that someone that dry and nerdy can write such funny comics. For one, the name of the website isn't an acronym, it's simply 'a word with no phonetic pronunciation'. I can't really get all of the jokes, to be honest, but thankfully there is even a website explaining the jokes (and science) in the comics.
Randall has created a couple of side projects, one of which is What if? in which he answers scientific questions (usually of the ridiculous kind). This has sparked a book, which contains even more questions about what would happen if you'd do something pretty crazy. He's also written a Thing Explainer, in which complicated things such as rockets are explained using only the thousand most common words.
His latest book is How To, which tells you how to do a couple of things: how to dig a hole, how to decorate a tree, or how to see if you're a nineties kid. The answers are never as straightforward as you may think. I love these kinds of books. You learn about something pretty complicated, like quantum physics or crowd psychology, while reading absurd stories of how Serena Williams takes down a drone by hitting it with a tennis ball. Randall tries to explain things in the easiest ways possible, sometimes showing how off the cuff estimations can get you pretty close to the real answer without having to do a lot of difficult calculations. If you understand the logic behind something, the way things work and affect each other, you can get pretty far without crunching the numbers.
The trademark comics are interspersed with the text, so you don't feel like you're reading a physics book. Rather, it feels like reading a comic book with some chunks of text in the middle. It feels like learning without studying, and that physics isn't as scary as you might think.
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