Geeky Noveling
So, NaNoWriMo has not been going at all well for me. I haven't reached my target word count for the past three days. I had a paper due this morning and watching CNN took up all my evening last night. May I just say, in as subdued a manner as I can manage, WHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I know this isn't a magic cure all but I'm still particularly excited.
Anyway, my point in posting was that while I have not gotten very far on my novel, I am totally geeking out about LaTeX. Holy eff, how have I never worked with this before? A friend's boyfriend who geeks out over similar things and is a Comp Sci person too was talking about it sometime last year and I just kinda blew it off. Then I saw a lot of talk about it from people who were writing their novels on Linux computers (my laptop runs Ubuntu) and I couldn't find anything comparable to Q10 (which I love, but does not play nice with things besides Windows) that worked on my laptop so I decided to take the plunge and try something completely different. I am in love. I have so far been making each chapter a text file and then setting it into my novel latex file and compiling it to check the overall format and I heart it. I'm using Kile on Ubuntu and the sffms class to layout my file. Also I've been typing the story mainly on Writer, which allows me to add to it from my laptop and my desktop.
Procrastination, Or Justifying Writing A Novel
I have a paper due Wednesday and I'm not done with the spreadsheet for my professor, but I've written some of my NaNoWriMo novel. I haven't gotten as far with it as I want to, but ideas are buzzing around my head and I'm feeling pretty good about this novel, even if I don't make the November deadline.
My story Jack, Or Things I Know About the World is kind of a weird fantasy/alternate universe/finding yourself drama. The main guy's personality is based off my cat... Yeah, I promise I'm not a crazy cat lady yet, it just really worked out. He's slightly quirked but loyal. The main girl is a bit of a ditz, but really she just wants a daddy-figure. And then there's a guy named Richard, who may actually be two or three different guys, but is probably just one and a half.
Anyway, the preface (or Chapter Zero) is up at a blog I've made for the challenge. I'm probably going to post more, but not until I've worked and reworked each section. The preface has been looked over about five times already. There's also a pre-preface but it was written before the challenge and is basically plotness that may/may not actually be given away early on so I think I'm going to keep it to myself until I decided how the story will actually play out.
Oh, where's this blog you say, it's here(Blogspot).
Cheating A Little
So my roommate has been talking about doing NaNoWriMo and I have been thinking about doing it as well. I'm currently not exceptionally busy and most of my busy work is on the computer - I'm currently organizing data for my current prof's research into dental caries and mostly that just involves marking up a bunch of bio/dental journals articles on tooth disease. So what is a girl to write about? I've had a story idea in my head for a long time and all the characters kinda lept into place recently. Just yesterday I sat down and actually wrote up an entire summary/outline which I never actually got to with all of my other incomplete tales.
Of course now that the summary is written I've found room for a prequel, which I haven't fleshed out as much, but at least the characters are almost fully formed. Then I was looking for something else and found a random txt file and inside was this weird snippet of dialogue:
What A Cat Knows About War 1671
The only difference between me and the cat outside my window is that I am slightly warmer. Past the calico, snow takes the color away from the landscape. In a few minutes the men's vehicles will take the color away from even the snow, turning the fields into a muddy plain. The cat is still staring at me, mouthing a silent meow.
"Do you realize your breakfast is getting cold?"
"Sorry," I mumble, broken from my thoughts.
"That cat is staring at me again."
"It's probably hungry."
"I've seen enough mice around here to feed an army."
"Maybe they are."
"What?"
"Feeding the army," I said with a piece of toast in my mouth.
I don't know why it's in first person but it really reminds me of what I want for the main character in the prequel and if I don't actually count this dialogue in my word count it's not entirely cheating right?
Also the year in the title was, I think, completely random, but I looked it up and it's the year the Ottoman Empire declared war on Poland, who knew (or cared probably)? The story takes place in alt!Earth so it doesn't really matter what year there was a war, but there is indeed a war.