It only took 4 days for the Nano-Squishy brains to recede; at least, enough to me to write a blog post. While I must admit I’m thankful that it’s over, I also have to admit that I’m already missing it. It’s really nice to stay within the house and know that all I have to do is write. My hand doesn’t hurt as much when I’m spending all my time writing, as strange as that may sound. It’s the monotonous typing at work that is the worst for it.
Now of course, it’s December and I have to split my time between family, commitments, shopping, work, writing and editing. Fortunately, as much as that all sounds like work, a lot of it is stuff I enjoy doing. Which is really what December is all about for me. We’re starting our critique group up again on Monday evening, I still have a query to send in, and a book to edit along with everything else. Fortunately, I love the idea of doing that work.
Yesterday was our city’s TGIO party. And, I must admit that of all the TGIO’s I’ve attended this one has been my favourite. Not only because I had great people to sit with or even because I won a brilliant prize of a hat with kitsune ears and a scarf that had a chainsaw on it; No, it was awesome because we had a visitor from Toronto join us.
He had apparently missed his own TGIO party and decided to join ours. It’s awesome and we encourage such. We are always willing to have other Nano’ers join us. In particular, I was ecstatic because though I’ve never met our guest, I’ve been a bit fan of his for years.
Our guest was Errol, of Nano-video fame. You may remember, I had a video of his that I put up for the last day of Nanowrimo.
Here’s a picture of us together, along with my awesome new hat and scarf that was donated by Paper Street Cosplay. Kitsune ears are my favourite.
This is a rather short post today, but I will get you all up to date. My total is now, 17,372 words, which is almost a full 1000 below the 18,333 words I should be at. However, I should be able to make that up tomorrow while I write. At the very least, I should be caught up again by Monday.
I would have been further ahead, but this is the time of me learning to write as a career and still have a life. I had friends come over for Poker tonight and let me say, it was a blast. Sometimes taking a single night off can be awesome (especially if you were able to write prior to your company arriving) and can really recharge your flagging spirits.
For the rest of my post, I’ll leave you with a video of Errol’s, A Nano-er from Ontario. He does parody songs all year round, but this one he did with a few of his Nano friends is awesome. Please, enjoy.
.
Errol himself has done quite a few awesome Nanowrimo based videos alone, but I would suggest subscribing to both his personal channel and this one for DebsAndErrol.
Posted in Blogs on November 12th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
It’s been a while since I last posted, so let’s get started. Today I’m going to break the first rule and show not tell.
First off is a video today. As I’m certain you’ve all heard if you’ve been paying attention to my site is that Philippa Ballantines book, Geist is coming out, with a Canadian release date of October 26, 2010. I cannot wait to see it come out and in fact, I think that I’ll be making it my “nano-treat”. I do have a great little treat for all of you though. Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris have gotten together and made a book trailer and if you haven’t seen it before it’s great.
Personally I’m not really sure how to look at these “book trailers” . On the outside it appears to be a really good idea, but I’m not sure if it is. On one hand I have always felt that’s really interesting to see what the author envisioned but on the other some people may be disappointed with a given book simply because the promise made in the video is different than the promise made in the book. While it doesn’t happen often with book covers when it does it can make a really good book come off as a cheap hack. On the other hand when this is done right it can make the book seem even better knowing not only have the author saw the book but how you saw it as well.
So basically I’m on the fence about this one and I’ll keep you updated as to when I make a permanent decision on whether these are good or bad. In the meantime though watch Philippa‘s video that I’ve put up on here. I guarantee that you won’t be disappointed. A friend at my work is going to be picking up the book as well, based solely on how interesting the cover picture is. I’m very impressed.
A lot of people are coming up with very interesting ways to show how much they love nanowrimo, and with the boards back up they have ample opportunity to share their creations with the world. One of my friends, whom I will refer to here as “Tim of the Awesome” has been put in novels around the world in a nano challenge the last couple of years. As he puts it nowadays “put me in your novel, add a couple thousand words and let the awesome flow.” While I heartily suggest putting Tim in your novel that’s not actually why I’m mentioning him today.
Tim (known as Hero on the nano forums) wrote a parody of that old spice commercial. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.
Hello Wrimos.
Look at your novel, now back to mine, now back at your novel, now back to MINE.
Sadly, it isn’t mine, but if you started writing 1667 words a day it could be as long as mine.
Look down, back up, where are you? You’re at your computer WITH THE NOVEL YOUR NOVEL COULD LOOK LIKE.
What’s in your hand? Back at me. It’s the remains of your silenced inner editor.
Look again.
THE EDITOR IS NOW DIAMONDS!
Anything is possible with NaNoWriMo.
I’m on a forum.
Definitely awesome is it not? I’ve heard that Tim may be planning on doing a live commercial version of this… if he does I will definitely have the video linked if not posted here. If you like this though go over to the nano forums and show Hero some love.
Another gentleman is making waves is one of the Toronto-Wrimo’s who uses the handle Errol. His new video, “good’Ol nanowrimo” is another brilliant example of people supporting things they love, doing it in creative ways and getting the word out there. Here’s the link for it.
I’ll be making my own video to go along with these “showing the love” examples later this week.
In other news, I finally finished reading Brandon Sanderson’s “the way of Kings”. All I can say on this is that the book is brilliant, well written, intelligent and thought-provoking. The only part that I wonder if it could’ve been done better is how he told Kaladin’s story. He did a present scene followed by a past scene for most of it. While it did work it didn’t seem to come off quite as smoothly as it could have, although I definitely don’t know how or if it could’ve been done better in this particular medium. Definitely a good read and I suggest you read it.
Finally I just want to quickly mention once more SIWC. I will be heading out next week on Tuesday for the beautiful lands of Abbotsford, Canada. I’ll be staying with a variety of friends and family for Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday I will be on-site signing in for my hotel room and preparing for my class on revision in the rewrite. I contacted the teacher last night and got homework help me prepare for the class. While it was a little overwhelming, it did raise my expectations of the class. I look forward to learning quite a bit and improving my novel in brilliant ways. If any of you are taking that course or will be over at the SIWC for the weekend look me up. I’d love to meet some of you in person.
It only took 4 days for the Nano-Squishy brains to recede; at least, enough to me to write a blog post. While I must admit I’m thankful that it’s over, I also have to admit that I’m already missing it. It’s really nice to stay within the house and know that all I have to do is write. My hand doesn’t hurt as much when I’m spending all my time writing, as strange as that may sound. It’s the monotonous typing at work that is the worst for it.
Now of course, it’s December and I have to split my time between family, commitments, shopping, work, writing and editing. Fortunately, as much as that all sounds like work, a lot of it is stuff I enjoy doing. Which is really what December is all about for me. We’re starting our critique group up again on Monday evening, I still have a query to send in, and a book to edit along with everything else. Fortunately, I love the idea of doing that work.
Yesterday was our city’s TGIO party. And, I must admit that of all the TGIO’s I’ve attended this one has been my favourite. Not only because I had great people to sit with or even because I won a brilliant prize of a hat with kitsune ears and a scarf that had a chainsaw on it; No, it was awesome because we had a visitor from Toronto join us.
He had apparently missed his own TGIO party and decided to join ours. It’s awesome and we encourage such. We are always willing to have other Nano’ers join us. In particular, I was ecstatic because though I’ve never met our guest, I’ve been a bit fan of his for years.
Our guest was Errol, of Nano-video fame. You may remember, I had a video of his that I put up for the last day of Nanowrimo.
Here’s a picture of us together, along with my awesome new hat and scarf that was donated by Paper Street Cosplay. Kitsune ears are my favourite.
This is a rather short post today, but I will get you all up to date. My total is now, 17,372 words, which is almost a full 1000 below the 18,333 words I should be at. However, I should be able to make that up tomorrow while I write. At the very least, I should be caught up again by Monday.
I would have been further ahead, but this is the time of me learning to write as a career and still have a life. I had friends come over for Poker tonight and let me say, it was a blast. Sometimes taking a single night off can be awesome (especially if you were able to write prior to your company arriving) and can really recharge your flagging spirits.
For the rest of my post, I’ll leave you with a video of Errol’s, A Nano-er from Ontario. He does parody songs all year round, but this one he did with a few of his Nano friends is awesome. Please, enjoy.
.
Errol himself has done quite a few awesome Nanowrimo based videos alone, but I would suggest subscribing to both his personal channel and this one for DebsAndErrol.
It’s been a while since I last posted, so let’s get started. Today I’m going to break the first rule and show not tell.
First off is a video today. As I’m certain you’ve all heard if you’ve been paying attention to my site is that Philippa Ballantines book, Geist is coming out, with a Canadian release date of October 26, 2010. I cannot wait to see it come out and in fact, I think that I’ll be making it my “nano-treat”. I do have a great little treat for all of you though. Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris have gotten together and made a book trailer and if you haven’t seen it before it’s great.
Personally I’m not really sure how to look at these “book trailers” . On the outside it appears to be a really good idea, but I’m not sure if it is. On one hand I have always felt that’s really interesting to see what the author envisioned but on the other some people may be disappointed with a given book simply because the promise made in the video is different than the promise made in the book. While it doesn’t happen often with book covers when it does it can make a really good book come off as a cheap hack. On the other hand when this is done right it can make the book seem even better knowing not only have the author saw the book but how you saw it as well.
So basically I’m on the fence about this one and I’ll keep you updated as to when I make a permanent decision on whether these are good or bad. In the meantime though watch Philippa‘s video that I’ve put up on here. I guarantee that you won’t be disappointed. A friend at my work is going to be picking up the book as well, based solely on how interesting the cover picture is. I’m very impressed.
A lot of people are coming up with very interesting ways to show how much they love nanowrimo, and with the boards back up they have ample opportunity to share their creations with the world. One of my friends, whom I will refer to here as “Tim of the Awesome” has been put in novels around the world in a nano challenge the last couple of years. As he puts it nowadays “put me in your novel, add a couple thousand words and let the awesome flow.” While I heartily suggest putting Tim in your novel that’s not actually why I’m mentioning him today.
Tim (known as Hero on the nano forums) wrote a parody of that old spice commercial. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.
Hello Wrimos.
Look at your novel, now back to mine, now back at your novel, now back to MINE.
Sadly, it isn’t mine, but if you started writing 1667 words a day it could be as long as mine.
Look down, back up, where are you? You’re at your computer WITH THE NOVEL YOUR NOVEL COULD LOOK LIKE.
What’s in your hand? Back at me. It’s the remains of your silenced inner editor.
Look again.
THE EDITOR IS NOW DIAMONDS!
Anything is possible with NaNoWriMo.
I’m on a forum.
Definitely awesome is it not? I’ve heard that Tim may be planning on doing a live commercial version of this… if he does I will definitely have the video linked if not posted here. If you like this though go over to the nano forums and show Hero some love.
Another gentleman is making waves is one of the Toronto-Wrimo’s who uses the handle Errol. His new video, “good’Ol nanowrimo” is another brilliant example of people supporting things they love, doing it in creative ways and getting the word out there. Here’s the link for it.
I’ll be making my own video to go along with these “showing the love” examples later this week.
In other news, I finally finished reading Brandon Sanderson’s “the way of Kings”. All I can say on this is that the book is brilliant, well written, intelligent and thought-provoking. The only part that I wonder if it could’ve been done better is how he told Kaladin’s story. He did a present scene followed by a past scene for most of it. While it did work it didn’t seem to come off quite as smoothly as it could have, although I definitely don’t know how or if it could’ve been done better in this particular medium. Definitely a good read and I suggest you read it.
Finally I just want to quickly mention once more SIWC. I will be heading out next week on Tuesday for the beautiful lands of Abbotsford, Canada. I’ll be staying with a variety of friends and family for Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday I will be on-site signing in for my hotel room and preparing for my class on revision in the rewrite. I contacted the teacher last night and got homework help me prepare for the class. While it was a little overwhelming, it did raise my expectations of the class. I look forward to learning quite a bit and improving my novel in brilliant ways. If any of you are taking that course or will be over at the SIWC for the weekend look me up. I’d love to meet some of you in person.
B.A. Matthews is an amateur author hoping to make her way into the world of published works. Her novels and short stories tend to be Fantasy, slipping into Dark Fantasy often as not. She also used to write music reviews over at Pagan Radio Network (www.paganradio.net).
I am currently working on two novels, Falling through the Threshold and a book tentatively titled Dual Melodies.
B.A. Matthews tries to update her blogs once a week and her various writings under the Pages section twice a month.
