Tuesday, November 26, 2013

I am so tired of writing software underlining my words in red.
Smidge IS a word, and I have it spelled correctly.
Leave in utero alone.
It goes on and on.
And since my spelling is horrible, I can have no confidence in it.
So I have to look up every underlined word.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Quadruple drat



Oh apparently I've totally botched distinguishing affect from effect. What is the effect of not realizing this? As I wannabe writer (and someone who doesn't like seeming an idiot) persistent bad grammar affects everything. This issue has always confused me, so I gave up using affect (at all) years ago.  I thought it meant acting- an affectation-an emotion one doesn't feel. But that is not the impression I just got. No. And the effect is that I feel stupid, that is how this affects me. Affect is a verb, which I clearly needed to have been using. Oops.

But most of what I read about it, just made me confused. The whole aardvark easy noun thing for remembering affect is a verb. And if you replace transform which is a noun for affect in a sentence and it works then that shows it is right because affect is a verb. Say what????? Though elsewhere on that site, it does say to try using-to transform- as in transforming- transformed- etc which are verbs- but that if you can use transformation then it isn't affect it is effect (that I can comprehend).

However, I am still not sure if I am using them right. Eeeerrr, boggy brain.

Darn research, and grammar, time swallowing annihilators.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Typing up my notes for NaNoWriMo is diving into a crazy mind hopscotching through a story. What mind writes everything out of order? Certainly it can't be mine. Turn a notebook page and land anywhere in the story. Scenes are strewn and scattered, never sequential. Never.

 At least now that I am on the second notebook, entries read from left to right, in the first one, I put entries in from the back of the notebook to the front, plus I randomly opened it and wrote notes in. So when I turned a page I never knew if I was looking at the first or last page of an entry.

 I type and type on, even though some of it is clearly awful. No point in struggling over single puzzle pieces before I see the overall picture.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Well it is that time of the year again-November-National Novel Writing Month- NaNoWriMo. And so I have to decide what, if anything, that means to me. It certainly doesn't mean playing by the rules and totally pantsing (sp?) it through an entire novel. Nope, so no badge for me even if I make it to the 50,000 goal. My best bet as far as personal progress goes would be to type up all the bits of my novel J.A.D. which I have scattered across different notebooks. This would not follow the rules of play at all, as it isn't coming up with stuff on the fly. Though my typing up stuff does always include coming up with additional ideas and scenes. Still, intermittent bursts of spontaneous inspiration aside, it would be masses of notebook prewritten cheating.

So why am I considering signing up at all? Well if you look over at my novel progress bar on the right- all those that are over 50,00 words well that is because I worked on them for NaNoWriMo. Because of the energy in it- the daily word count goal- the virtual company. Generally NaNoWriMo requires over 1,000 words a day to finish on time. And if I toss myself into that stream, that flow, and require myself to play along- then it will be a giant push to end November with 50,000 words typed in, rather than the 8,000 I have now. And it isn't that exciting going through my notebooks, trying to decipher my scribbly scrawl, butt in chair transcribing. I need an outside push. I did sign up for the same reason with the same project last year- but let myself be sidelined by confusing and frustrating health quirks and questions. I shouldn't need this external motivation. I have been working on typing this project up. But I want my words to surge forward rather than waddle forth. So I guess I have decided, I am going to play  under this heading, a different game with the same goal, so yes count me in.  Okay signed up- and stated in my synopsis that I am working on the same novel as last year. Conscience clear.