Diary of a Network Geek

That’s it! National Novel Writing Month is over! Hopefully, you reached your goal for the month and wrote a 50k word novel. Now, set it aside, get some rest and forget about it for at least a month, before you start to revise.

So, it’s the day after Thanksgiving and you should be at least three-quarters done with your NaNoWriMo novel.

But, instead of writing you’re here. That means one of two things; either you’re so far ahead that you can take a break, or you’re so far behind that you’ve decided to cut yourself some slack. Either way, just as I promised last week, I have more short films to entertain you. And, hey, no judgment if you’ve given up on NaNoWriMo this year. I didn’t even start and I’ve tried before and given up, too, so, I’ve been there. And regardless of why you’re here, I’m glad you stopped by my humble little site.

This time, I’ve got four films for you. I figured it’s a holiday for most of us, so you’d have the extra time.

The first short film comes to us by way of Gizmodo. It’s a mildly scary short about some nasty things that happen on a night shift in a hospital by Alexander Babaev titled Hospice. It’s ghoulish and definitely reminds me of the uncomfortable feelings I’ve had working at night. But, it’s well done and free, so enjoy!
The second one is the longest of the four and a bleak look at the apocalypse. It’s titled Lunatique and it’s by Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Kalim Mucci. Yes, it’s a bit grim, but it’s also a very well-done film featuring a female protagonist in remnants of the world, which makes it notable for me. And, it’s quite enjoyable, even if it’s about the aftermath of the end of civilization.
The third film is another post-apocalyptic short. It’s a beautiful animated film that was part of the Sploid Short Film Festival in 2015. It’s called Strange Alloy by filmmaker Loïc Bramoullé. It’s beautiful, but also a warning that we, too, may pass into history.
The fourth is a bit more uplifting. Though it does take a turn at the end.
Again, this one comes to us via Gizmodo, but this time it’s I Am Here by Eoin Duffy. It’s a slightly surreal piece about the nature of being. It’s kind of cool, though, and I liked it, which is why I’m sharing it with you.

So, now you’ve had your break. If you’re still writing toward the NaNoWriMo deadline, get back to it! If not, enjoy the rest of your weekend and I hope to see you next week!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words.

I’ve got even more sci-fi short-film goodness for you this week.

As I did the first two Fridays of the month, I’m sharing some distractions from National Novel Writing Month, even though I’m not actually participating. Writing, especially at the pace required for NaNoWriMo can be mentally fatiguing, so I decided that sharing something visual and purely entertaining would help give NaNoWriMo-ers a much needed break. Toward that end, I’ve got two trippy, fractal animations to share with you this week.
First, there’s the very well named Fraktaal, coming to us via Sploid, which is a journey through a procedurally generated world created via 3D software by animator Julius Horsthuis. It’s quite brilliant and only about 3 minutes long, so watch it twice.
The second film is called Recurrence, and is also by Julius Horsthuis and ALSO brought to us by Sploid! Here, though, the fractal landscapes are an infinitely recursive phantasmagoric city. It’s about four minutes long, and worth every second.

And, yes, if you come back next week, I’ll have another film, or two, to amuse you and distract from your writing project for a few minutes.

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words.

Last week I shared a short sci-fi film, and I’ve got another one for you this week.

This is National Novel Writing Month and, while I’ve elected to not participate again this year, I thought it’s be nice if I gave those of you who are trying to crank out a novel a little break from writing. So, just like last week, I’m bringing you a short, science-fiction film to enjoy and, hopefully, distract you briefly from your writing grind. Worrying too much about those daily word-counts can really get you down, but a creative movie short seems like a great, if brief, change of pace.
This week, it’s a short film called PROXiMITY, an updated, sci-fi spin on an old story idea, brought to us via SlashFilm. It’s really pretty good, too, which is why I’m sharing it.
Besides, as I recall, the second week is where I really hit the wall, so to speak, writing my last attempt at a NaNoWriMo novel.
But, once you’ve had your break, get right back to it! Don’t give up!

And, come back next week for yet another distraction from your great writing experiment!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words.

So, if you’re participating in National Novel Writing Month, you might need a break.

That’s what I’m going to give you all month long, on Friday, during NaNoWriMo; something you can just enjoy for a few minutes without thinking about your novel. A break from word-counts and deadlines and how your characters aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do or your plot isn’t quite as clear as you thought last month. Something to soothe your brain.
This week, it’s a short science-fiction movie called Azarkant, brought to us by Sploid, a sub-section of Gizmodo.
It’s definitely eye-candy and gorgeous, if a little dark. But, it’s also free and definitely a distraction from trying to write at novel.
So, good luck with the writing and enjoy the break.
And come back next week for more!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words.

If you’re going to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year, you can officially start NOW!

Trying to get all your ideas and characters organized for National Novel Writing Month? I can help!

It may not always be obvious, especially to those closest to me, but I love being organized. What’s probably more obvious is that I played a lot of role-playing games growing up. I think it’s safe to say almost every hopeful writer or professional geek my age or younger played Dungeons and Dragons, or something similar. But, for me, the best part of that was always before the game started when we were making characters and filling out their character record sheets. I absolutely loved thinking about all the things they might buy at the market for use in surviving their adventures. And, along with that, describing their looks, their clothes, their family relationships and other background details. Not everyone did all of that, but, like I mentioned, it was just about my most favorite part. And, now, it’s one of my favorite parts of writing. Unfortunately, it can also become one of my favorite distractions from actually writing. Don’t let that happen to you! But, also, as you’re planning your novel, it’s good to try and think about who’s going to be in it, what they’re going to do and where they’re going to do it. So, toward that end, I’ve got some, hopefully, fun novel planning worksheets, or “printables” as the fancy kids call them these days, for you.
First, from the All Freelance Writing website, I’ve got an article by Jennifer Mattern which collects her favorite Novel Planning Tools and Worksheets. It’s a short list, but it’s also a great place to start if you’re just looking for the bare minimums to get you started.
Much more complete is the list of links gathered by Eva Deverell in her Creative Writing Worksheets post. Frankly, it’s a pretty complete list and you could stop there without worrying about missing out on anything, even if you do have to chase them to all their respective sites.
If you’re a more visual guy, like me, then maybe you should try this collection of “pins” at Pinterest titled “Novel Writing Worksheets”. It’s got a lot of “printables” besides the planning worksheets that might help, especially if you find yourself needing a little help creatively in a crunch.
My personal favorite, however, is the group of Evernote templates for planning your novel (or story) at the Evernote blog. I’m 99% sure I’ve mentioned these before, but they’ve updated them and added a few. If you use Evernote to plan and organize any other aspect of your life, I highly recommend that you take a look at these templates. They’re really well done and should cover any creative writing need. Seriously.

The next question is, of course, what are you going to use to actually write your novel?
If you go with Word, William Shunn has some free, downloadable templates that will let you get started with a pretty standard manuscript format. If you like Word, but don’t want to pay Microsoft for it, check out Libre Office instead. It’s a free, open source alternative to Microsoft Office and it includes a very good replacement for Word called Writer. And, I even have a basic manuscript template you can download and use for Libre Office Writer, also free.
If you want to get fancier, there are a lot of alternatives, but Scrivener is specifically written for fiction writers and is often offered at a discount to people attempting NaNoWriMo. And, while I have absolutely nothing against the creator of Scrivener, there is a free, open source alternative called Plume Creator. I don’t have any real experience with either of these, but I always favor the free, open source alternatives whenever possible.

For myself, while I used to mostly work in whatever word processing package I was currently using, I’ve gone to pretty much only using straight text. I made that change for a number of reasons, but I was heavily influenced by an email exchange I had with Steven Brust about his writing tools. I was surprised to find out that he wrote exclusively in emacs. I found out after a bit of digging around that he’s not the only one. Vernor Vinge, a brilliant science fiction author, also uses emacs to write his fiction, though it’s less surprising to me since he also teaches computer science at the collegiate level. So, now, while I’m still working on the actual text, I just use my favorite text editor, which in my case is the same tool I use to write Perl code and edit server scripts and web pages, UEStudio, which is an extension of UltraEdit, a tool familiar to serious programmers. Incidentally, keeping everything in straight text with out any formatting not only limits distractions, but makes for the most compatibility between systems, which, ultimately, is why I decided to make that change.

This post originally appeared at the Fantasist’s Scroll.

Next month is National Novel Writing Month. Are you ready?

I suppose a better first question is actually “Are you going to participate?” I, for example, am not. I tried it once, several years ago, but ever since then I’ve just been too busy, and too out of practice writing fiction, to try it again. But, I do think about it every year when it rolls around. This year, rather than post things like story starters during NaNoWriMo, I thought I’d post them before, giving the brave souls who are up for the attempt a running start. So, here we go!

First, of course, I’m going to suggest the Fantasist.net Writer’s Resources, because if I can’t promote my own site, what good is having one? On that page you’ll find links to my Story Starter, my World Building Resources and my sad, old Conlang page. Though for conlang resources, I’d suggest going to the Language Construction Kit at Zompist.com or VÜlgÅr, a language generator, which is everything I wanted mine to be and more. In fact, I actually paid the roughly $10 to get the bigger, better version and upgrades!
Those resources sure ought to be enough to get you started on most of the crunchy stuff you might need to get an idea and prepared for writing a novel, if you aren’t already.

Second, though, I’d like to suggest the Bookbaby NaNoWriMo Survival Guide, which has several links to helpful resources, mostly on their site, including some information about publishing your book if you’re a NaNoWriMo “winner” at the end of the month!
Also, while you’re getting ready, you can read through Medium’s coverage of NaNoWriMo, which I’m assuming they’ll do again.

Thirdly, if you haven’t read it, No Plot, No Problem!, which is the original guide to National Novel Writing Month by the founder, and a great way to get your thirty day novel writing experiment launched.

And, finally, there’s the NaNoWriMo website itself. It is quite literally the place to get all the information about the event. Also, it’s a great place to get support while you’re working on your novel!

Come back next week to see if I manage to find even more NaNoWriMo prep tools for you, or have something totally different!

This post originally appeared on the Fantasist’s Scroll, one of my other blogs.

It’s an illusion!

At least, that’s what Doug Henning would say.
Hey, look, it’s been a rough month.  What with the elections, the holiday and NaNoWriMo, you’ve had a lot going on.  I mean, a lot.
No matter who you wanted to win the Presidential Elections this year, the campaign has been brutal.  And, frankly, I think the next four years are going to be chaotic, challenging and a little frightening for a lot of us.  Then, there’s the stress of the Thanksgiving holiday.  I mean, c’mon, dinner with the family is never easy, is it?  And, finally, if you’re participating in National Novel Writing Month, you’ve been churning out words as fast as you can, racing to that deadline.
And, by the way, if you are doing NaNoWriMo then you should be getting near the end of your novel.  I don’t mean to panic you, but there’s really only a couple of days left.  Less than a week, actually.

So, no matter what’s been going on, you deserve a little break.  A chance to just veg out a little and sit like a stupid lump and stare at something cool.  Good news!  I’ve got just the thing!  Ten optical illusions that will blow your mind over at the Huffington Post.  Seriously, these are pretty cool and a great way to let your brain slip into neutral for a little bit so you can recharge before getting back to that big project of yours, NaNoWriMo manuscript or whatever you might be working on.

Go ahead and take a break.  It’s a holiday and you deserve it!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words.

If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this month, you should be about two thirds done with your novel.

If you’re not, don’t worry about it! And, either way, it seems like a good week to talk about writer’s block.
Now, assuming that you’ve been writing this whole time, the most common forms of writer’s block, namely not having an idea and not using the habit of writing to actually put words on the page, are not your problem. Maybe, you’ve gotten somewhere in the middle and your genius story seems to have stalled. Or, maybe you got to a blind alley and realized that your story took a wrong turn 1,500 words ago. It happens.
Either way, try to remember this is all about getting the words out and on paper. And, if that’s not enough to get you going again, head over to Gizmodo and check out their advice on The 10 Types of Writer’s Block and How To Overcome Them. Not all of it will apply, obviously, but I’d lay odds that at least one of those ten types of writer’s block will at least come close to applying to you. Naturally, I think the advice will help, too. And, in fact, I encourage you to read all the advice, because something that doesn’t seem like it applies to your frustration may end up being what knocks you loose and starts you writing again.

Another helpful resource that can help you get through a block is your fellow NaNoWriMo writers. You can connect with hundreds of people who are also participating in NaNoWriMo in the NaNoWriMo Forums. The people there can be incredibly supportive and helpful and they may need a break from their writing at this point, too.

Again, the most important thing is to get your rough draft out this month. After you get the thing written, you can take a break and come back to edit it into shape. Don’t worry about that now. Just worry about getting your first draft written.
So, go, read as much as you need to to get past your block, then get back to writing!

This post originally appeared at Use Your Words.