The Guts to Try

Using NaNoWriMo as an experimenters tool

thegutstotry — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 04:21:46 +0000

I’m a seat-of-the-pants type of writer. Or at least, I used to be. At the end of September, with NaNoWriMo coming up, I decided to try something new for November and use NaNo as a platform of experimentation. My reasoning for using NaNo in this way was that it created a fixed, limited period of time in which I could try out what I wanted to do and then step back when it was over and examine the result to see if my experiment was a success or not. I knew that if I had just picked an arbitrary 30 days, not tied to anything else, I would procrastinate or blow off working on the experiment and the result would not be a true test. Of course, as things worked out, the month of November was a nightmare in terms of continuous days in which I could write. Numerous things in my life reared their ugly heads and kept me from writing, and thus I didn’t finish my 50K words.

But that was okay. Why?

Because it wasn’t about the 50K words. Getting there would have been great, but I was much more interested in whether the PROCESS would work for me moving forward. That would be much more valuable than getting 1667 words per day written down.

What I wanted to accomplish during NaNoWriMo was:

1) Write a Fantasy Novel

2) Utilize an outline as a framework for the novel

3) See how far into a novel I could get in a typical month with pushing

Writing a Fantasy Novel – The vast majority of my writing is short stories or small snippets of stories in response to writing challenges in the forum where I belong. I’ve written shorts that were really long scenes that were sword and magic based, but nothing longer than, say, 800 words. I have 2 WIPs that are not Fantasy, so I decided that for NaNo 2011, I would write a fantasy novel.

Utilize an outline as a framework for the novel – Usually I just write seat of the pants as I said earlier, but I’ve heard writers swear by their outlines, so I thought I would take the month of October and spend some time outlining my novel. Flesh out the details so I knew where the story should be going and what details needed to find their way in the text. Turns out it was absolutely great for my work and I’m going to go back and outline my current WIPs so I can see where they’re going and what twists and turns I can introduce before I actually introduce them.

See how far into a novel I could get in a typical month with pushing – The longest WIPs that I have up to this point have been about 15K and 21K words long. I wanted to see just how far I could get AND see what i could reasonably accomplish in a months time KNOWING that it was going to be a ragtag type of month. Knowing that, if I can set aside time during a calm month, I should be able to put some big dents in any new WIPs or complete the pieces I have already started.

Now, let me tell you about outlining….

Bad Luck Redux

thegutstotry — Sun, 29 May 2011 14:51:43 +0000

In case anyone is interested, I decided to just eat the cost of the new hard drive. I wasn’t going to send my personal info on a hard drive that I couldn’t damage to keep that information from being read (perhaps.).

Oh well.

End of Drama.

Memorial Day Weekend

thegutstotry — Sun, 29 May 2011 14:46:11 +0000

Hellllllo Allllllll…

That’s the sound that I’m sure you expected to hear…the sound of my voice coming up from the bottom of a well. Where else could I possibly be that I wouldn’t have internet access and be unable to post to my blog…where indeed.

I have been behind a keyboard and doing all sorts of thing. Writing, reading, programming and wasting time on Black Ops.

I’ve been writing quite a few challenge responses to the writing group, Fantasy_Writing, but I haven’t been posting them here. I may do that in the future, but I’m also knocking around the idea of going over them, cleaning them up, lengthening a few and pulling them together into a short, short story book. I have almost 100K words tied up in there and it might be neat to do that and put them up on Amazon, smashwords, etc. Make it like $1 just for laughs. I was also thinking of going back and put a short blurb after each story to explain the mindset or history behind each bit. There are a few clunkers in there, but for the most part, they are kind of solid, but could use some work.

Programming!! Ah Yes. I’ve written an app for the android platform. It is a writing utility called the daily flash app and provides a daily writers prompt to get the juices flowing. It also contains an editing window to write in if you choose. It allows you to save what you have written to the SD card and also lets you send the text wirelessly over any of the available wireless mechanisms available. It’s available on the google marketplace as well as Amazon’s AppStore. .99 cents .

bad luck update

thegutstotry — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 04:51:16 +0000

I contacted the manufacturer of the fan (Thermaltake) to place a claim to replace the fan and the hard drive. After the claim form was emailed to me I filled it out and faxed it back. Within a couple of hours i had an RMA number and then I hit the first snag.

They wanted me to send them the fan and the hard drive. Trouble was, they were going to look at it, cut me a check for the replacement and then pack up the fan and drive and ship it off to their factory/HQ. The drive had/has personal information on it that I don’t really want to drop into strangers hands if I can avoid it.

I couldn’t open or damage the platters inside either, so the situation is at an impasse right now.

I’ll update this story if it ends up getting resolved somehow.

Bad luck

thegutstotry — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:10:39 +0000

Bad luck has struck again.

I stopped by radio shack to pick up a 2 ohm resistor for work and there on the shelf above the resistors was a blue led lit 80mm cooling fan. I didn’t really care about the blue led part, but one of the cooling fans in my desktop has been whining lately and for $10 I picked it up.

Bad move

The fan had two connectors on it that were a pass-thru type of deal. The connectors are the standard 4 pin molox connectors that have been used for power in PCs for years. The feed through is supposed to allow you to put the fan anywhere in the power chain and not break the chain.

Supposed.

The connectors are keyed as they would have a square opening, but there are two corners that are beveled, or filled at an angle, thereby making it so that the connectors can only be inserted one way. The wiring for the connectors is a 12v wire, two ground wires and a 5v wire.

I connected the fan in line, switched on the power and the fan began to spin, but the PC wouldn’t boot.

Oh oh.

Disconnected the fan and the PC still wouldn’t boot. Pulled the fan out and found one of the connectors had been oriented backwards such that when it was connected as a feed through, it swapped the 5v and the 12v wires.

I had burned out my primary hard drive..the C: drive.

Great.

Fallen off the face of the Earth.

thegutstotry — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 14:40:35 +0000

With life, work, family and a million other things going on, I have neglected to update this blog with my latest writings. This evening I’ll get things up to date. Sorry for the lack of entertaining stories that I’m sure you’ve been missing.

Been so Quiet

thegutstotry — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:07:48 +0000

Just too a look at the date of my last posting here and it was mid June… Oh my, how time seems to fly and things get in the way of posting something on your blog site.

Mostly I have been busy with work and projects there. Been doing some engineering, developing 3 devices that are wireless and are used as sensors or specialized relay modules for a Zigbee network. The hardware development is fine, been doing it for the last 15-20 years or so, but I’m also responsible for the firmware development in addition to the normal tasks that I have as the liaison between the company I work for and our Hong Kong contract manufacturer.

The liaison part is tons of emails, answering questions, a few phone calls, plenty of clarifications and confusion, but things are working out. We have been going back and forth over a programming and testing procedure for much too long, and have finally agreed upon what was correct and acceptable. The cultural issues is one thing, but you couple that with the wide range of technical understanding (where it ranges from knowing nothing technical to PCB manufacturers suggesting track widths for RF impedance matching) and it is very hard to write a testing document that is at the right skill level.

So, I’ve been busy at work.

Writing. I have had two short stories accepted for an anthology to be published by Pill Hill Press called 365 days of flash fiction.. whooo hoooo! I have also had a short story accepted for Winter Nights 2. It’s another anthology that I managed to miss getting into the first issue last year, so I put a post-it in my mind to get a short story for it together. Yea!!!!

And of course, the writing challenges, many of which I have posted here, but are strangely missing since mid June. I will go back and copy them to these pages to give my faithful readers more to read.

…and of course, I’ll try to be more timely in posting here.

A-Team, the Movie

thegutstotry — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 16:09:03 +0000

Last night was “family movie night” for my Wife, Son and I. We looked at the offerings out there and decided we would give A-Team a chance after reading a so-so review of “Killers”. It turned out to be an excellent choice.

In case you don’t know, A-Team was a television series about a group of ex-military guys who were wrongfully charged with a crime, dishonorably discharged, and now work as “mercenaries” helping people, righting wrongs. The movie brings the story to slightly post-present day.

The movie shows the team being formed and their performing military missions in Iraq during the final days of the US forces leaving. Their final mission involves the recovery of $1 Billion US counterfeit dollars and the printing plates used to produce them.

The original show was over -the-top in cornball humor and action sequences. I was very concerned that the movie would try to become a thriller and become a serious look at the A-Team. I had nothing to fear. The movie is filled with humorous dialog that manages to stand up well with the action sequences and the interaction between the characters.

The characters are drawn from the original TV series and the acting to make those characters come alive on the big screen is dead on. Hannable, the leader is the planner of the group, the mastermind. ”B-A” is the muscle, made famous by Mr T in the tv series. Face is the smooth talking ladies man, and Murdock is the more than slightly nuts, pilot/driver for the group. All of the actors brought their characters to life and the delivery of their lines as well as the facial/body movements brought more out and out laughter, instead of eye-rolling and chuckles, which are the usual for TV Series-to-Movie crossovers.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie is not going to be another Citizen Kane. This movie is a ‘shut your mind off’ movie where you sit back, laugh, and enjoy the action sequences regardless of how impossible or at least, improbable they are. The aircraft sequences (of which there are plenty), are over-the-top, but enjoyably so, based on the dialog and acting. Trust me, if you’re flying with these guys, you want to stock up on the Dramamine.

This type of movie is not my wife’s normal cup of tea. She’s more of a romantic comedy sort of woman, but she was laughing out loud throughout the movie and as we were walking out the theater, she was congratulating my son and I for the choice of the movie. High marks indeed.

Definitely worth the admission price, as long as you’re looking for an entertaining, action packed movie and can just accept the technical stretches.

Recently Unearthed Discarded Dialog from JRR Tolkin

thegutstotry — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 14:07:14 +0000

“We’re doomed!”

“Doomed? So, this Lich King is a bad hombre of some sort?”

“Bad? The Lich King and his army of 7000 undead warriors have swept

over the lands of the pixies, the giants, the gnomes, the halflings

and the elves. They have been an unstoppable wave, a black scourge,

leaving death and wasted lands in their wake.”

“So, surrender is probably out of the question.”

“Surrender? The Lich King will boil us alive, rend the flesh from our

bones and using black magic, make us join his undead army.”

Conrad looked at ragged group of 5 adventurers, “Oh, sorry, I meant

them surrendering to us.”

And it has happened!

thegutstotry — Sun, 02 May 2010 17:48:33 +0000

If you need further proof of the coming apocalypse, here it is. One of my submissions to my Fantasy_Writing group has been accepted for publication by Pill Hill Press for a flash fiction book. 365 days of flash fiction.
The submission was “The Old Man” and was one that I wrote originally as a gag for the group since they were (at the time) having a lively discussion of Men vs. Women, and I wanted to add a little levity to the mood.
I cut about 10% of the story to get it to 500 words (it’s 499 now) and edited a bit to make the remaining words do more of the heavy lifting.

Anyway, whoo hoo me. Mini wave and all that. Ahhh and I was just lementing the need to get on tract for publishing this year.