Preparing for NaNoWriMo

Looking around on the NaNo site has inspired me for this year's marathon. I'll need to tidy up my study, which looks at least a little bit like a bomb hit it, and get my tools arranged. I tend to grab a Moleskine cahier for my noveling notes, though I never use the entire thing.

I'll need to select one or two special writing utensils, hopefully from the massive collection I already own, to be my faithful companions, along with my laptop computer, this year. There are always a couple of standouts amongst my pens and pencils, a few with just that extra sprinkle of awesomeness. I'm particularly fond of Sakura Gelly Roll pens, though the glittery ones have heavy ink I dislike. They're cheap, though on certain ones I've bought ink flow can be a problem. My old standby, the green and blue fountain pen, is usually near to hand, and I've enlisted any number of gel pens over the years.

Three years of noveling
madness!

I've got my handy thumb drive, which, though cluttered, has enough room for another NaNo masterpiece. Which reminds me: don't forget to save early and save often! I usually get into the habit very quickly of hitting the save function of whatever program I'm using during NaNo, such that I find myself typing Ctrl-S or its equivalent even when I'm not noveling. It's a good habit to have. Backups are also crucial. I tend to save my work to at least two, frequently three places, because you just never know. I also print out my daily work, in draft quality and often on scrap printer paper, so as to have a certain backup, as well as a physical reminder of the volume of my work. There's nothing like seeing a pile of paper slowly grow over the days, first clipped together with a paper clip, but rapidly outgrowing it and requiring a binder clip to keep it contained. And of course I complete each NaNo by picking up the packet and dropping it on a hard surface from a height of half a foot or so, just to hear the satisfying 'thunk' it makes. It's the thunk of accomplishment, and you can hear it too! Join me this year and take the journey down the crazy, inspired, painful, and joyous road!

Poems and Piccadilly

So National Poetry Month is over. I didn't complete the Poem-A-Day Challenge, but I did write some poetry and I had some fun doing it. I made a plan for a chant-style poem that mocks both major political parties in the US and tentatively subtitled it "The Death Threat Poem", because it's an equal-opportunity offender (I don't get involved in politics: I shun them). I wrote a cinquain about a lawn tool (prompt #8). I wrote a hopeless poem (prompt #27). And I wrote a handful of other poems that didn't fit the prompts.

I did these in my Piccadilly lined notebook, which I grabbed at Borders for about $5. That I bought a Piccadilly and not a Moleskine is not entirely noteworthy; I've been meaning to try Piccadilly books for a while now. That I bought a lined notebook is noteworthy. I've long been a staunch "unlined only" journaller. But the lines are perfect for poetry and other list-like things. I did my Time Finder in that journal, and made lists of things I had to get done in it as well. My one complaint is the poor quality of the cover. I bought a softcover journal, and it's made of basically cardboard with a faux oilskin sheet pasted to it. It started to split when I tried to tuck my steel pen's clip into it. I can bend the cover back and fold it under, but after doing this a couple dozen times, the black fabric pulls away from the spine, revealing the glued-in bookmark. The bookmark stays put, thankfully, but with the fabric bulged out like that it's not the most attractive book. The bulging makes it a bit harder to handle, too.

All in all, though, the Piccadilly journal is a good buy. The quality in certain places is far outshined by Moleskine, but you can get about three Piccadillys for the price of one Moleskine. I'm less touchy about this notebook getting jammed into my bag and maybe slightly abused (by accident, I assure you) because it is less expensive.

My regular journal, which I've been neglecting for a while, mostly because I do my brain-dumps into my Morning Pages notebook these days, is a plain softcover Moleskine, and is nearly finished. When I reach the end of that book, I have a plain Miquelrius to start. I'm already using a gridded Miquelrius for my role-playing notes, and I like the quality and feel of it. They're a little more expensive than Piccadilly, but they have more pages. A mid-range option, I would say.

Piccadilly and Moleskine are available at most major booksellers such as Borders and Barnes and Noble. So far the only place I can clearly recall seeing Miquelrius is at Dick Blick. Got a journalling preference? Are you picky about your journals or do you grab just any old book and get to work?

It's Monday. It's raining off and on, looking foggy and bleak. I've got the lights and the heater on to help chase the cold damp away while I write. I never quite got around to putting up a blog post last night, and this morning I've been playing with Blogger's new Template Designer in my test blog. I love the music in the video they put up about it - I want to know whose music that is.

The only writing I did this weekend was on a role-playing game called Cat. I put in some time designing an adventure for this game about the secret (and not-so-secret) lives of everyday housecats. It's a rules-light, fun game that my fellow gamers seem to really love. It's much easier to put time in on a project when you know you have an audience that enjoys it. I didn't design the game, but if players are asking me when we'll play next, knowing I'm the one writing the adventures we play, it makes me eager to get to work.

As to the blog, I'm thinking of going to a three-column format so all the links and things I've started including can be easily viewed without the reader having to scroll down the entire length of the screen. I may use the Template Designer for that. I still need a custom header image, too. More on that later. Also on the subject of the blog, I need to get in touch with the folks at Moleskine for help with the MSK format. I don't know if any of my readers uses the format, but I'd like to have a hard-copy of my blog on hand, and printing it out in MSK format will make it easy to take with me. I've been a bit neglectful on that score.

This week I hope to tackle the issue of publication for no pay - is it a good idea? Is exposure for a neophyte writer its own reward? And if so, what are the best markets to submit to?

Have a creative week!

Moleskine love:MSK templates

You may know that I love Moleskine journals. I love the cream-coloured paper, thin but strong, able to leap tall buildings in a single ... no, wait... able to resist all but the heaviest of inks. There, yes.

I've recently thought, particularly while I was working with my guitar last weekend, 'Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have a few sheets of music staff paper in my regular Moleskine notebook?' Moleskine makes a notebook filled with staff paper, but really, I don't need a whole notebook of it. I only rarely work with music in that way, but it'd be nice to be able to jot down what I perceive to be the notes floating around in my head when they appear.

Now I can. Moleskine now has a feature called MSK, where you can print out individual sheets of gridded, lined, music, and a few other kinds of papers, and put them in your notebook. You can also make your own MSK from your contacts or calendar, or by typing stuff in and adding a picture, if you like. Take a look:



But that's not the coolest part. Let me tell you about the coolest part. The coolest part is: you can make MSKs out of your blog entries. Think about that: you could take your favourite posts from Drops of Blood On My Forehead (assuming you have any, and I do hope you do!) and print them out and take them along in your Moleskine (or similar notebook). How awesome is that?

Unfortunately I haven't quite worked out the details of having a printable post appear every time I post... yet. Hopefully people on the Blogger Forum will be able to throw me a bone on that account.

Snowy Observations and Wishing for Spring

Last Friday I had a doctor's appointment to check in over lab results. While I waited in the exam room for the doctor to see me, I looked out the back window. The snow that had just fallen two days earlier was bright and largely unbroken - beautiful. I wrote this in my handy-dandy Moleskine notebook:

The exam room is snow-bright - the vast sheet of white behind the building reflects ths sunlight mercilessly. Twin lines of tracks, evidence someone blazed their way through the thigh-deep snow, criss-cross the field, reaching out toward a loading dock in one direction and the road in the other. Nearby a gazebo sits shrouded beneath a white crown. The tracks pass it by.

The snow-sheet, painfully brilliant to behold even with eyes squinted partly shut for protection, is beautiful, broad and unbroken except for the criss-crossing paths. Its surface is lightly decorated with crinkles from wind-blown snow drifting across its surface. The shadows of overhead power lines, barely visible above, stroke across the sheet.

A man in a Day-Glo yellow jacket and hood comes out to scrape ice from the loading dock's driveway. Against the backdrop of the snow-sheet he looks tiny, insignificant.

I never seem to get tired of writing about snow. I should use stuff like this in the story idea I had last month. I sure have written enough of it lately. Thankfully our forecast seems largely free of snow for the next week or so. I've enjoyed this winter stuff, I suppose, but I'm ready for spring. A friend online mentioned being eager for warm weather, the scent of freshly-mown grass, and birdsong. I second that. I can't wait until I can go out for a walk with only a light jacket, or hop on my bike and ride up to the bird sanctuary again.