All Hallow's Eve? No, it's NaNo Eve.

It has begun. We're 28 minutes into NaNo '09 and I'm excited! I've writeen 550 words so far, but will not be staying up late, as I'll be meeting up with some local WriMos tomorrow!

More updates coming soon...expect them to become less and less coherent. :D

Names!

I have a basic idea of what my NaNo novel is going to be about. Now, I need character names! The main characters are a brother and a sister, and I think I'm going for Jesse for the brother. I'm struggling to think of a girl's name for his sister, so I'm throwing it to anyone who has any ideas...

Please?! :D

I also need a surname, ya know, if you think of any!

*Cross-Posted to 'Family Portrait' blog.*

Disciplined Writing!

I am making this week the week I try to finish Snap Shot - probably an unrealistic goal, since I have, if it's the same as Family Portrait, just over 20,000 words to go, in the 8 days before NaNo starts. However, I am aiming to write at least 1500 words a day, and the other day I wrote 4000, so maybe it's possible. It's all good practice for NaNo! I'm aiming to have it finished by Christmas, including the month out for NaNo.

So, I am having to be disciplined. Inspired by some other blogs, I am gonna set out my rules for this week and next month:

NO: endless repeats of FRIENDS. Not only do I have them all on DVD, they're always on E4/Channel 4, and I love them. Cpnsidering I can practically quote every episode, this is a waste of time. It is. So, no more. Also, I must sit down and write something every day, even if it's rubbish.

LESS: Facebook. Seriously, I don't care that much what people are doing and who's playing FarmVille - why do I feel the need to compulsivley check? I think internet in general needs to be limited.

I won't say less AbsoluteWrite, because I've told everyone on the TWFT thread to kick me off if I'm procrastinating too much!

So, let's hope Snap Shot will get a big wordcount boost this week. :D

I'm a useless blogger

Okay, it's been a long time since I've blogged, and I'm sorry! Lots of things have happened since my last post, such as me passing my driving test :D and getting up to 50,000 words on Snap Shot! So, I'm going to try and blog more regularly on day-to-day stuff, but this blog post is about NaNoWriMo. If you don't know what it is, check it out here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano

Anyway, the basic gist of it is that I will be (attempting) to write a 50,000 word Novel during the month of December, one which will be completely unrelated to Family Portrait/Snap Shot/Camera Shy. I'm going to attempt to blog daily about my progress - small updates, as you can imagine with 50k to write, but I'm going to try. I'll post here and maybe on my other blog, not sure as it's not Family Portrait related, but I thought I'd let you know what I'm up to!

I'm sure encouragement will be required when I'm struggling to juggle school/uni applications/writing. And hopefully some celebration too if I hit 50k!

I seem to have a label for NaNo, so maybe I've already blogged about it. Ah, memory loss at 17...

A Tragic Day

At seventeen, the worst thing you think will happen wilst driving is smashing the car up and having to face your mother's wrath. We think we're invincible - recently passed our tests, freedom to go anywhere, do anything.

I woke up this morning to a text message informing me that a friend of ours - a guy who had been in my year, my tutor, my classes, and had hung around with a similar group of people to me for the past six years - had died in a car crash last night.

It's still sinking in: it's unfair, that someone so young, with so much ahead of him, had his life taken away. In the car there was also an eighteen year old, who I vaguely knew, and a nine-year-old. They both died too. I could not believe it when I heard; it seemed like some awful prank. Not only is it a sad loss for their parents, siblings, families and all the friends they had, but it's also a wake up call: who knows when their time is coming.

I had to post in memory of them all, but especially for the guy from my year, who will be missed by us all. I have just left flowers at the scene; RIP, to three young men whose lives were taken far too soon.

Veganism - Day one

I've been vegetarian for thirteen years now, and have always wanted to become vegan - that is, removing all products that come from animals from my diet - but have never had the willpower. After reading another article on the way animals are treated for eggs/milk etc, I decided yesterday to take the plunge - and so today is my first day as a vegan!

I'm starting the process slowly, as it will take a while to get used to checking all food packaging for any animal products, but I'm hoping I'll be able to stick to it - even though my friends are quite cynical! Today I've eaten completely vegan, and have bought some vegan 'butter', vegan pate, vegan 'mozarella' and vegan ice cream - which I'm going to go and try now! I think the hardest part will be going out and going to friends' houses, and so I may end up being a flexi-vegan at those times - it's quite difficult, I would imagine, to be vegan outside your own home.

Anyway, just a quick update! In other news, Snap Sho - the sequel to 'Family Portrait' - is nearing 20,000 words, which I'm very pleased with!

A lot of reading

Lately I seem to have been having less and less time to read, chill out and blog. Unfortunately, I have completely lost my revision drive this weekend, andhave done nothing. I worked all day today, but have found that I'm caring less and less about revision, which is really quite worrying. My last exam's on Monday, and I really need to revise, but I just can't find the motivation to. I'm really exhausted all the time at the minute, and not really sleeping, and feeling quite down about going back to school. I'm not sure why, but I'm dreading it. So, I've been reading quite a lot, and taking advantage of the nice weather to sunbathe.

So, my reading list this week has been: The Other Boleyn Girl, The Luxe, The Manny, and Cradle Snatcher. I loved The Other Boleyn Girl - I'm really interested in the Tudor period, and found the book fascinating; I'd definitley recommend it. The Luxe was also interesting - it's all about high-class society in New York in the 19th century, and whilst it was quite predictable, I enjoyed it. The Manny was a light chick-lit book, but I was quite disappointed with it. I tend to feel I have to finish books as I always want to know what happens at the end, but the writing style really annoyed me. I've always bene quite critical, and since I've been writing and criticising my own work, I'm even worse. The use of '!!!!' and '??!!' really bugged me, as did the constant use of caps lock - "YOU! SUCK!" is an example of one sentence in it. Another thing was having to use repeated vowels all the time - "Pleeeease!" and "Noooooo". I just feel that if you need to use things like that (little bit of English Language showing off here - it is called replacing prosodic features) then it means your writing can't show the way it's being said without it.

Anyway, enough moaning :) I'm off to watch ER!