It occurred to me that this year, I’ve added a new playlist to this blog to celebrate NaNoWriMo, but have also completely forgotten to actually, uhm, mention it. Considering the fact that I hadn’t changed the old playlist in more than one year, I suppose it was high time that I did so. Since I incidentally added a couple more songs between November 1st and now, here are the titles of what you can listen on it.

As a little game (and because I was asked in a comment on my ‘writing excerpts blog’, which has locked entries due to various reasons, and is mostly used during the NaNoing month anyway), I also added alternative titles. These are not to be all viewed as specific scenes in the novel, nor ar they in any particular order, but they’re the kind of titles I would give if I were to compose my own soundtrack—I cannot write without music, and I’m a sucker for soundtracks, really. If you wish, feel free to toy with these and imagine what kind of scenes they could correspond to. It’s a game I like playing as well.

I doubt that this year, I’ll ever write as fast as I did in 2005, but so far, I must admit that things are going quite well. I’m not late on my word count, I even have a 1k-2k words buffer, and I’m happy about my writing: sure, it’s not the best I’m able of, but I am writing and having fun and interest about it, something I’m always afraid of losing at some point due to too many constraints falling over my head. Maybe the saying is in part right. Maybe if you want something done, you really need to give it to a busy person—provided that this person isn’t feeling too worried and depressed in her mind, that is, because I’ve also realized, in retrospective, that 2006 was bad for a certain amount of personal reasons that had nothing to do with my desire to write.

In any case, I am (re)discovering characters I thought I knew too well, my chapters make sense, my plot is slowly unveiling in front of my bewildered eyes. Even if I were to stop working on this novel right now, it would still remain a victory in my eyes. Indeed, I have absolutely no regrets about attempting NaNoWriMo again. This year, and with my mindset and the fact that I’m now well-organized in terms of schedule, it can only be a positive experience.

Yes, writing is a wonderful experience. And I really need to remind myself that no matter the lack of time, no matter the hardships of life, it is an experience that I cannot let go of. Whether I want it or not, it will always be with me, in one form or in another.

Y Tags: nanowrimo | writing

If I have to apologize each time I don’t write in one of my blogs for three months, this is going to become tiresome, because I don’t see things change in the upcoming couple of years. So no apologies. Just know that I always come back to the Y Logs sooner or later, m’kay?

Somehow, it seemed like a good idea to do a short update now, because we’re slowly nearing November and, this year again, I have finally given in and signed up for NaNoWriMo.

I’m not going to ‘win’—I don’t think so, since I have so much school assignments and personal work to complete. I’m not going to work on a completely new idea. In fact, I’m going to start from scratch again with my one-shot project. I have no intention of letting it rot after NaNo, or of taking that as a pathetic excuse to not edit it thoroughly afterward. However, the fact is that currently, I’m not writing a lot in terms of creative works (assignment and crapping out technical manuals don’t count in that regard). I haven’t been writing much at all since I’ve moved to my new location, in fact, save for a short story aimed at a call for submission (and a second one that I didn’t send: silly me misplaced the date for the deadline). Therefore, I’m placing new hopes, so to say, in the whole NaNo hype to pump me up for a time at least, and allow me to resume a more regular rhythm of writing.

I must add that my imagination pool has not dried, nor am I growing disillusioned or uninterested in writing as a whole. It’s just that when I finally have time to write, I’m usually quite tired, or feeling guilty because I’m not using that time to do more school work or go exercise or whatnot—and then I don’t write. It sucks, and I know I have to choose my priorities, but seriously I can’t make everything a priority at this point in my life. There just aren’t enough hours in a day for that! Unfortunately, what gave was writing. In three months, though, it may be something else. Who knows.

Anyway, I’m not going to post daily NaNoWriMo updates here—I wouldn’t have the time. But I wanted to bring back some life here all the same (expect a new playlist soon, too). And I hope that with NaNo incoming, I will have a couple of things about ‘writing’ in general to say. That would be a nice change, wouldn’t it…

Y Tags: blog | nanowrimo | update | writing

For some time, I’ve been wanting to ditch the Joomla! installation on my writing website. The RSS feed wouldn’t work, the URL-rewrite mod was a horror, and I don’t know if it’s me who’re lacking in skills, or if it’s really the CMS that can be a serious pain at times, but all in all, I got tired of it. Moreover, there’s no way I want to find myself fixing stuff in emergency during the school year. So, I finally gathered my spirits, and took a couple of days to redo everything from scratch, save for the texts themselves. The CMS I replaced with WordPress, and the forum with Simple Machine Forums. I can only hope that these changes will be for the best in terms of security and efficiency.

Why am I mentioning this now? Simply because URLs have changed, so in case you had bookmarked a specific category or something, be aware that the link may not work any more.

I’ll of course welcome any remark about how I could improve it in the future (I’ll probably change the template, but I still need to work more on developing those skills).

Y Tags: update | website

I’m getting so great at writing updates after weeks or even months of silence, am I not?

Since there is no way I want to give up on this blog, here is one. There are just WAY too many things going on in my life at the moment for me to be able to write daily in all my blogs, and since the Y Logs are pretty much geared toward writing and writing did NOT go well in the past months, somehow it was kind of normal for me to not post here.

But don’t go running away yet! A few weeks of facing the dreaded blank page are far from enough to discourage me.

First, as I was announcing in March, one of my short stories was accepted. The three others finally weren’t, but, hey, one was! And the webzine is now out here at http://nuitsdalmor.over-blog.com/article-10920933.html (of course, the blog and ‘zine are all in French).

April was a big month of learning and revising, May was a half month of exams. Which I passed successfully. After all, it’s not every day that I can brag about getting a 18/20 at a syntax exam. I won’t even mention the ‘computer science’ exam, that was cake and a joke, and I gobbled the cake while laughing a lot.

The problems appeared after, when I found myself 1) exhausted, 2) unable to recover from those exams (and I’m still tired), 3) as a result, all the writing I had planned on doing pretty much stalled. As a result, I just said “screw it” and went to resume weight-lifting, because being so out of shape is never funny; mens sana in corpore sanao and all that.

And there is also the big move. I got very tired of living in my crappy student room, and went on the look-out for a 1-room apartment, where I could at least have a mini-kitchen AND a bathroom of my own. Talk about living la vie boheme here. Later on, the biography to be put on the back cover of my novels will probably look similar to that of a Stephen King. “This girl has lived every were and done everything save from selling a kidney to go through life”. Anyway, I will be moving in three days. Three days, and that hell hole will be behind me. Seriously, I cannot wait. It’s keeping me busy with packing and filling paperwork and running everywhere to get more paperwork to fill, but life’s good and happy.

About writing? Well, here’s a good thing as well: two weeks ago, I said “screw it again, and on top of it, I am NOT going to worry and blame myself any more”. Two days later, bam, it hit me like a brick, I got to work, and I got back into it big time. With a new short story under my belt that only needs proof- and beta-reading now. The story, not my belt. It won’t be the best short story ever, but I’m really glad to see that I still have ‘it’ in me, you see?

And this will be all for today’s update. I hope I will also have internet access soon enough after moving out, so that I can go on attempting at updating more often.

Y Tags: exams | school | studies | update | writing