Hiatus

I’m gonna take some time off Twitter, Facebook, and blogging so I can do some reading and writing. I’ll probably be going to U of T when I come back (not enrolling in class again), but so I can just go up to Robarts and plop down with a book and read. I just feel like I need to get away for a bit. Superman charges up by soaking up the sun, Redford, the troll that he is, retreats under the bridge for a period.

I’ve decided that I’m going to give the NaNoWriMo another shot. I abandoned the challenge the last time I tried it and I feel as if I need to vindicate myself this year. I don’t think I get Internet access at U of T anymore, because I’m no longer a student there, but that’s just better for me. I want to soak up as much as I can and get in the habit of writing some more so I can take that challenge on HEAD ON and fuck shit up come November.

Be back soon.

- Red

NaNoWriMo 2

I’ve stopped with NaNoWriMo.

It got a bit hard to write. The idea was to write for quantity, not quality, but it’s not as simple as it sounds, since it’s instinct to go back and change things as you write them. Considering how I was given a month to write, I didn’t bother with research and decided to write based on my own experiences, and lots of stuff I figured I’d make up in between. The end result was something similar to my life, but, with zombies and lots of killing. Deciding who lived, who died, and how others reacted to the situation could be construed as a crude list of people I thought deserved to die, along with those who I thought deserved to live etc.

It wasn’t what I wanted.

Maybe I’ll revisit the idea of a novel in a month, but not right now. I thank you all for the support though!

PS: The Blonde guidance counselor was attacked by zombies, but escaped relatively unscathed. She locks herself inside a room, and blasts the music inside to drown out the students outside begging and pleading to be sheltered with her. She survives until the very end, when the doors are barricaded and the school is burned down to contain the spread. The floor above her collapses under the intense heat and she becomes trapped under some rubble. She weeps and she prays. “I’ll be a better person. I’ll stop belittling students. I’ll treat people with respect.” Looking up she sees the broken ceiling tiles and realizes that there is no God, only death. Flames engulf the room as Mozart’s Requiem blares from the speakers. She begins to feel shortness of breath and is soon inhaling more smoke than air. Peace was close, but peace never came. Flames rushed over her body and sucked the last breath from her mouth. She died trying to scream in agony.

The 4 Stages of Writing [for Slackers]

1.) Planning

An outline of what you want to write is set. You spend a nice couple of hours creating a framework that you’re supposed to follow for whatever you’re going to write. Life is pretty good.

2.) Writing

While planning, you get a few ideas and write them down as quickly as possible. You get on a roll and if you continued at this feverish pace, you’ll finish in no time!

3.) Procrastination

Fuck it! That paper basically writes itself, I’m gonna go take a break and catch the Raptors game and get some beers!

4.) Panic!

When you begin writing it again, you realize that the wealth of ideas you had before didn’t exactly fill out the breadth requirements you needed. Now you’re completely fucked because you wasted the last two weeks dicking around since the rest of the paper was “only gonna take two hours.” Now you panic and write whatever is on your mind down, sounding repetitive, being redundant, and adjusting the margins to look like you wrote a lot more than you did.

Guess where I’m at right now?

NaNoWriMo

Or National Novel Writing Month is an event that Krishna just told me about (like 15 minutes ago). The goal is to write a 50 000 word novel in one month, with quantity, not quality in mind. There is no real prize, just a computer that counts how many words you have written and a certificate verifying that you’ve actually written 50 000 words.

Me, being the king of owning deadlines, will attempt to tackle this monstrous goal and write a 50 000 word novel by November 30th 2009. I don’t know what it will be about, there is speculation that I’ll turn that comment-story thread into a story on its own, but, I’m not sure I can squeeze 50k out of that one. We’ll see! I will definitely be keeping you guys updated from time to time, but, needless to say, my life/blog will be put on hold as Redford makes the jump into novels. Maybe I’ll post chapter updates from time to time to show you what I’m up to, hopefully this all goes well.

I’ll know when I start this…tomorrow. =)

Thanks Krishna!