RhetoricVille

It went slower today. I was re-reading too much. Yes, I revised some, but only a little. Mostly added in things.

I need to stop that. Just flog the damn story ahead. Crack the whip on those huskies and get the sled moving. Kind of violent sounding, but extreme times call for extreme measures. The little children in Nome need that medicine.

Well, for all that, I did get to 5,633 words. That’s an addtion of 2,700 words today. But I took too long doing it. I won’t always have this much time. Must write faster! No revising! Onward! Mush! Mush, you huskies!

Nanowrimo has begun! I understand that some people start writing at midnight. I waited until 7:45 am today.

I wrote a chapter of 2,928 words. It took me a full three hours, though, and I won’t always have that much time to write.

I’ve been working up some notes for my novel, the one I am going to write next month. But I am trying not to overplan. The idea is to write a discovery draft. Fast and furious.

But it’s a good idea to have some ideas stockpiled.

This should be a perfect way for me to write a novel, maybe the only way. I have a very well developed inner editor. Too well developed for a “creative writer.” This is why I teach and write non-fiction!

Anne Lamott (in Bird by Bird) has a hilarious image of picking up all your inner critics and editors, those nagging little voices in your head for whom nothing you write is ever good enough, and dropping them one by one like insects into a jar. Then you have dial that lets you slowly turn down the volume, until you can’t hear them anymore. But they are still in the jar, hopping mad. Once the volume is all the way down, you can go ahead and write a lousy first draft. But that lousy first draft is a necessary step to get to better second and third drafts.

The basic idea of NaNoWriMo is to write so fast that your inner critics are left in the dust.

I have joined nanowrimo in order to write a novel this November. One month — 50,000 words of fictional prose, quality optional. You can view my profile at the nanowrimo.com web site, but I will also be using this blog for updates.

The idea is to write about 1,667 words a day and not look back until the end of the month.

I’m going to use my Mitch Gann character as an amateur detective. But I’m not sure if I want the story to be contemporary or historical fiction. (Yes, I figure any story set in the period of my youth or young adulthood would now qualify as historical fiction!)

I’ve been a hobbiest computer programmer almost since the day we got our first PC in 1984. Not quite since that day, though, because the computer (a Zenith with two 5.25 floppy drives and a green-screen monitor) did not come with any programming software, unless you count DOS batch files as programs. In those days, there was no web, and very few computer stores. I was lucky to have a shareware word processing program — in theory all I needed since we bought the computer for me to write my dissertation on. I wanted to write programs, though. I saw an ad in some magazine for “Utah Basic,” a relatively inexpensive Basic language interpreter. My wife mail ordered it for my birthday. When I looked at the manual, I couldn’t figure out what it was talking about. The directions were intended for someone who already knew how to program. Luckily, I came across a large-format book called “100 Basic Game Programs” or some such, which was much more at my level. The first time I wrote a program (using a plain old text editor) and got it to run, I was hooked. I’ve been writing programs ever since, in a variety of languages. I even made a little money at it years ago, writing custom software for a local business. But mostly I just do it for fun.

This spring, I’ve been creating computer games, using a nice, very affordable (free or $20 for full registration) program called Game Maker, developed by a computer science professor named Mark Overmars. Supposedly, you can drag and drop your way to a game, but the program has a built in scripting language, similar to C, which extends the functionality a great deal. I’ve had a lot of fun with it. Below are screen shots from a couple of my early games. Mostly these were learning exercises. I have several in various stages of development, and in different genres. Lately I’ve been working on a word game. I haven’t made any games available on the web yet, but will at some point.

“Brick Blitz” is a Breakout clone, but with unlimited levels. However, the ball gets too fast to handle after 9 or 10 levels. My top score is 6,000. My older daughter score over 11,000. (This is not my favorite kind of game to play! But it is an easy sort to program, so a good one to start with.)

“Cape Crimson” is more ambitious. It’s basically “Space Invaders” with pirate ships, but has a resource management angle. You have to watch your powder supply, which means not firing with a full charge when you don’t need to. Otherwise, you will run out of powder and the pirates will sack the town you are defending.

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