NaPoWriMo 2014: Now That Script Frenzy's Dead... Poems!

Two years ago, NaNoWriMo discontinued their April scriptwriting spinoff Script Frenzy and replaced it with an April CampNaNo. As I'm not writing another new novel until next NaNo in November or I finish editing Chaos Angel Spanner book 1, whichever comes first, I've decided to do the next best thing until it became the best thing: NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month. Basically, you write a poem a day for 30 days, or just 30 poems this month. Considering my typical FAWM song output (28 songs this year, 14 of them in just the last two days), that should be easy. And my NaPoWriMo will be happening right here in this blog! Brace yourselves!

February Album Writing Month 2014 Now in Progress: or, 14 in '14!

Actually, I should have posted this on January 31. Well, it's FAWM again, and I'm going to write at least another 14 songs. Unlike the last 2 FAWMs, I'm going to record as many as I can, like I did during my first 2 (2009 and 2010), when I wasn't possessed by a monomania for editing three drafts of Chaos Angel Spanner nonstop. And unlike the past 2 years, I didn't wait until the last day or two to start posting songs. So far I have the lyrics posted for:

1. Too Close
2. Electric Boy (a song that's been haunting me for at least 2 years)

In addition to those, at this writing I'm also working on the music to these songs:

• Bet He's Dead (another song on my inner playlist, originally "Eddie's Dead" then "Freddy's Dead" until I realized those names would be troublesome)
• It's All Wrong (a song I originally planned for last FAWM)
• Pure (new for 2014)
• Tails You Lose, Heads I Win (also new)

I also have these songs planned:

• Mokey Done Been Smoked (the sequel to 2009's "Smoke the Mokey", the original "mokey rock song, a genre that grew out of a type on FAWM's "add a song" form page)
• Dream Becomes Real (a straight synthpop song; I need to do at least one, after all)
• Soundtrack to an Imaginary Film (a dreamy instrumental)
• False Flag (a song I originally planned for 50/90 2012)
• Final Burn (new)
• Pretty Kill in Glorious HD (new)

Whenever I get a full recording posted, I'll post it here on the main blog. I'm also seriously thinking of signing up for Soundcloud so my demos will be accessible to all, especially now that its embedded music player now works with the FAWM site.

So I've started at last. For the next month, or at least until NaNoEdMo comes around in March, I'll be agonizing over songs instead of Spanner rewrites...

Good Riddance 2013, Hello 2014; or, Resolution Time Again

I didn't post here most of last year, not even songs for FAWM (because I never recorded any). Reason is, I spent most of my time on the epic final edit of Spanner. And this is supposed to be my main blog.

2014 will be different. Naturally, I have my resolutions. The obvious ones:

1. Finish the final edit of Spanner Book 1.
2. Practice my singing and my instruments for FAWM, not just this year's but next year's too.
3. Pick a non-Spanner NaNoWriMo novel to edit and get published.

The ones I've been seriously procrastinating regardless of year:

4. Start drawing again so I can finally learn how to draw comics;
5. Start taking photographs again (conveniently, digital cameras better than mine are cheaper than ever);
6. Keep at my workout program (just resuming it's not enough);
7. Improve my French, German, and Japanese;
8. Learn Python, Perl, and even C;
9. Clean house (and stop using the epic Spanner edit to avoid it); and
10. Resume regular posting to what's supposed to be my main blog, starting now.

2013 was a tough year: my mother's long recovery from surgery, the death of a cousin who was almost a brother to me when we were kids, the birth of my nephew and my brother's near-withdrawal from the family, my unhealthy obsession with a certain epic edit that even nearly ruined my health and prevented my 8th consecutive NaNo win (which I pulled off despite myself). 2014, on the other hand, will be the year I become a published professional author at last. I'll get back to posting about novels, comics, TV series, and the like as well. And of course I'll post drawings.

I've had my drink to the new year. The next step is to plunge into it. Here goes...

Goals for December 2010

After winning NaNoWriMo for the fifth straight time, the question is: what should I do after that? That's where the Big, Fun, Scary Goals (link coming soon) come in. I don't have my complete 2011 list drawn up yet. However, I do know what I want to do in December.

My list of December goals:

1. Win NaNoFiMo and finish Spanner book 1 (my JulNoWriMo winner, not the NaNo-winning Book 2).
2. Draw at least one thing a day, whatever that thing may be.
3. Get back to learning French: review one lesson and do one new lesson a day.
4. Start practicing my guitar again, because FAWM is only three months away.

Even though my word goal is 50,000 words once again, I'm going to give myself time to achieve my other goals. And I actually believe that I'll be winning my first FiMo this year despite the fact that my goal is 20K more. The reason: deadlines.

Anyway, to begin...

My Fifth NaNoWriMo Victory!

It's official: I've just won my fifth consecutive NaNoWriMo! You can see my word count in the NaNo word count widget to the left. Come to think of it, I should have inserted the widget into the sidebars of this blog and my project blog. I realized this when I put another counter widget in that place. Next year, I'll know better.

Next comes NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month). My goal: finish Spanner book 1 or write 50,000 words, whichever is more. I haven't written much since I won NaNo about a week ago (I reached 50,000 words on the 22nd and the word count validator bot made it official on the 25th), so this counts as another good excuse to get writing again. This will be my fourth FiMo, but I'll be going for my first win — significantly, writing a novel other than my '07 NaNo novel, Bad Company. I'll post my progress toward completion on the project blog.

A NaNo winner who wants his novel published can't rest on his laurels. I'll get back to writing soon.

Blog Maintenance: November 26, 2010

What better way to procrastinate NaNoWriMo than to redo all your blog templates and then edit the posts accordingly? Now this blog, my project blog, my opinion blog, and my Posterous blog now look different than they used to. I'd even say the three Blogger blogs look a hell of a lot better than they did, now that I've updated their templates.

The reason I did it is because my Blogger templates were simply broken. I'd customized them for expandable posts and Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz share buttons long before Google gave Blogger its own. As directed, I'd copied the code off the customization blogs and pasted it into my own blog templates. It worked for a while. No longer. Upgrading was necessary.

Sometimes you just have to give up the old ways and join the modern world. I felt that way when upgrading my blogs. The old templates no longer worked. Now I find my Blogger blogs load faster than they did. Now it's the Posterous blog that takes a long time loading — but that may just be because I posted so many videos from YouTube and Archive.org.

One thing I noticed is that I made posts expandable that most people would consider too short. Early on, I was all but infatuated with the expandable post, to the extreme of making even two-paragraph posts expandable. I've grown out of that little neophyte vice. I've edited all the short posts on the Blogger blogs so that they're no longer expandable. I reserve that now strictly for the long posts.

In short, an attempt to fix my project blog quickly turned into a major blog overhaul. I guess I knew a serious change was in order...

In Which I Break My Media Silence, Post-AugNoWriMo

After I failed to win AugNoWriMo earlier this year, I spent nearly a month almost completely offline. Or at least avoiding my social media accounts except maybe an occasional visit to Twitter, and not blogging at all about anything. And now NaNoWriMo approaches, and I find myself in a sort of non-WriMo Panic Time. So here I am.

I have an explanation for my absence. Occasionally I find something that really obsesses me. This time around, it was something called the TV Tropes Wiki. I was always the kind of kid who got lost in encyclopedias, and I've gotten lost in Wikipedia numerous times. I got lost in TV Tropes for two full months, not writing any actually story words but merely listing (in a now massive Microsoft Word document) all the tropes (read: memes) that fit Spanner. I've got enough of an understanding of both the tropes and TV Tropes that it'll no longer distract me from writing my book.

Which reminds me: I need to update my NaNo profile now...

JulNoWriMo Starts At Midnight...

...and Ms. Plotbunny and Mr. Pac are ready for me.

I usually have trouble starting these WriMo things. That was not true last November for my best NaNoWriMo ever. After a few months' rest following this year's FAWM, I'm just as ready for JulNoWriMo. And it starts at midnight tonight.

I'll have to keep my muse restrained till then. She simply won't shut up...

Preoccupations (Script Frenzy Panic Time, etc.)

I don't seem to be able to do two WriMos at the same time. Case in point: last month (March). I tried to finish recording some songs for FAWM and edit my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel for NaNoEdMo, and the result was that I was completely unable to do either. This month, I found I was only able to start adapting that novel into a movie script for Script Frenzy when I abandoned all FAWM follow-up. There must be some kind of short circuit in my brain...

That short circuit may be hard-wired in. I have problems teaching myself two different subjects on the same day.

There's another problem I've got that keeps me from doing the things I want. I wrote an entry about that, in fact. It's called Social Media Is My Crack. With the sequel What Keeps Me on the Internet Way Too Late at Night. Either I spend way too much time on Twitter and FriendFeed, or I spend way too much time reading articles on the Web. Or, to word it differently, I procrastinate on Twitter and the Web.

Anyway, I've procrastinated enough. It's Panic Time now. I need to write 58 pages of movie script (adapting guess which '07 NaNoWriMo novel) if I want to win this year's Script Frenzy. And that means back to writing...

I'll add a blog-related postscript here. A couple days ago as of this writing, Facebook announced that you can put one of their "Like" buttons on any site of yours that you want. Posterous added it automatically; earlier, they added a "retweet" button to all their blogs so that you can "retweet" an entry onto Twitter. So I decided to add a "Like" button onto a couple of my Blogger blogs, including this one. Turns out I couldn't load my blogs after that. So I removed the "Like" buttons. You can still "retweet" my Blogger blogs, of course, at least when Tweetmeme isn't down. My suggestion to Google: Add the option to "Share" single blog posts, not just the entire blog. If the competition can swipe from Google, why can't Google swipe from the competition?

Writer's Block Strikes Again...

I posted a few comments on the forums at JanNoWriMo — and then I proceeded to not even touch my computer at all until January was over. Why? Writer's block does that to me. Whenever I get blocked, my mind goes into the equivalent of fetal position. I sit in my living room recliner and think random thoughts that have nothing to do with whatever I'm supposed to be doing — or sometimes, like last month, I obsess over what I can't do. Which, in my case, was write enough notes for my '07 NaNoWriMo novel Bad Company that it actually (and finally) developed a coherent plot. Maybe I might even write some of it before NaNoEdMo...

What does it mean when I get writer's block? I don't touch the computer at all. Or any of my video games (Atari, Sega, PlayStation, etc.). I don't do any actual work on what I'm blocked on, even though I'm sometimes completely obsessed with it and even write notes on it in longhand, for whatever good that does me.

Anyway, my latest bout of writer's block is over and done with. Good thing I wasn't blocked for 4 straight months, like when I burned out on the first day of AugNoWriMo '08 and nearly lost NaNoWriMo that year (and even though I did win NaNo '08, the novel was completely unusable)...