Rules

After an epic writing failure yesterday (I squeezed out a painful 500 words, ugh), I need to average a cool 2000 words a day to meet my 50,000 end goal.

On October 31st (the day before NaNoWriMo began), I laid down some ground rules for myself:

1. Write, don't type. Typing makes it too easy to overuse my delete button, which means I write pages worth of content and end up with a few over-edited, awkward paragraphs. And it also makes surfing the internet waaay to easy. I had to scrap this rule pretty early on in the process. I filled up about 20 pages in my notebook then spent about an hour typing it up. Every hour is precious at this point, so it's back to Microsoft Word.
2. Don't apologize for what I write. I tend to be a self-conscious writer. Let's just admit, for a first time fiction writer, most of this book will be crap. Just keep writing.
   
3. Don't drink too much coffee. I get over-caffeinated, a little paranoid, pee a lot, then fall asleep. Let's avoid that.
   
4. Pace myself. For the love of God I need to crank out 2,000 words a night, minimum. So I'm not going to sleep each night until I reach that goal. Tonight's bedtime isn't looking good.

Aaaand my crazy writing session starts now and continues all night. Allowed breaks: season finale of Mad Men (then no more tv all month!); dinner.

Den out.

NEW MUSIC: The Wildness of Manitoba

Has anyone ever noticed the amazingness to come out of Canada recently? There's Rural Alberta Advantage, of Montreal, and now: The Wilderness of Manitoba... which is evidently in Ontario. I think I need to find a course in geography before I leave this place so that I can actually pretend to understand where places are in the world...

Their music sounds like the Low Anthem, full of great vocal harmonies and banjo and down home, American-sounding folk with a Canadian twist. Check out the two songs below.

MP3: Wilderness of Manitoba - Crow's Feet

MP3: Wilderness of Manitoba - Evening

I'll post more musically inclined inspiration as the month goes on to keep Den on track. But that's all for now...

Ban, out.

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriWhat?

NaNoWriMo is national novel writing month. It's pretty self-explanatory, you try to write a whole novel (defined as 50,000 words) within one month.

Yes, I'm trying to do it (just finishing will be challenging, let alone trying to work around a 40 hour work week, but that's why they call it a challenge right?).

I'm doing it for a couple of reasons:

1) Since Colgate I've been feeling this creative black hole in my life.

2) The resulting novel will probably be crap, but the experience will be good. I've always wanted to write and practice makes perfect so maybe I'll come out of this thing with a more natural ability to write fiction (that's my hope anyways).

3) I've had this really cool plot idea for a couple months now that I can't get out of my head. Actually, it's more like three plot ideas. So I'm making a go of it, lumping two of those ideas together, and seeing if those two lumps will join together into one superawesome lump of a novel.

Why am I blogging about this, you may ask?

I'm doing it for a couple of reasons:

1) One of the motivation techniques the NaNoWriMoers recommend is telling everyone you know that you are writing a novel within a month. That way, if you start second guessing yourself or think about quitting halfway through, you then have to explain to all those people that you're a failure at novel writing. Granted, I don't think anyone reads this blog anymore after Ban and I FAILED at updating it. Could you comment if you still read this so I know who's still around?

2) If I can't think of anything else to write during a writing session, I decided to write a little blip in this blog (a blog blip!). That way I'm still at least writing.

So here's where I stand right now: 2,600 words (about 1/25th of the way there). I should be near 10,000 words right now, so I'm REALLY behind schedule. But I got sick earlier this week which put me out of commission for two days.

That's it for now. I'm a-gonna write like crazy. Daily updates to come about my process, the plot (as I figure it out), and the writing rules I created for myself.

Here's the website if you're curious: www.nanowrimo.org

PS. Sorry Ban, I changed the blog color scheme because it was hurting my eyes. The colors are still a little weird...

Den out.

I AM ALIVE and bringing you Dead Heart Bloom

I'm trying to remember the last time I cried. Someone today asked me if I did, if I were able to, or something like that, something along the lines of like "hey Ben, how can you pull all-nighters if you're not going to cry" and I was like, "I'm a mutant." She just giggled and said something about being delirious but I was serious!

Either way: here's some great great music! By that, I mean an amazing song that is subtle in its delivery but with a really catchy feel. It's got personality. Kind of summery... Maybe? I don't know. Maybe wintry. No! I've got it. It's a spring song. One of those songs you listen to while driving down a tree-lined road, straddling the yellow lines, the creek to your left, and no cars in sight, for the first time since you left home and now that you're back you've got the windows down and your sunglasses on and the sun above. You look up through your sunroof and you see the leaves pass by with the familiar woosh woosh woosh as the spaces between trees fly by and the birds flying between trees flash by and then you remember to look at the road and then you laugh to yourself because you almost hit a pole. But you saved it and then the song ended and you started it over again and again, letting it become your soundtrack.

Dead Heart Bloom - Flash in a Bottle

Music Mondays get underway

This is me, beginning a new project, hoping to bring a new and interesting song or band or whatever musically related thing each Monday. It's got a good alliteration, slant rhyming thing going for it, so I'm happy about that.

This week is Ganache. Kind of creepy picture, right? Don't let it scare you away. Ganache is Thom Stylinski (of The Whiskers), is on Awkwardcore records, and his first album (A Halter Pardon Him and Hell Gnaw His Bones!) is a brilliant mix of four vaguely electronic songs. It's a short one, but there is more than enough to leave me interested, intrigued, and definitely wanting more. Each song is distinct, but stylistically connected through Stylinski's voice in such a way that it should never, ever stop singing.

Take a listen, and if you like it, go to the site, download the album, and donate.

Ganache - In Pidgin

Note: If you represent an artist or a label and want a song taken down, please send me an email bnhoover(at)gmail(dot)com and I'll be more than happy to remove it.

PMUFEOh no.

In light of recent scathing criticisms of PMUFE, I have decided to change our web address to pmufeo.blogspot.com. Please act accordingly but don’t worry, we’re still the late greats of blog and roll. I haven’t decided if that’s funny. It feels like it could be but it also feels like people would just look at me, laugh, roll their eyes, and/or walk away. Really, any of the above are possibilities.

But but but… I wish my computer were on earlier because ever since starting this blog I’ve wanted to live blog something and I had the perfect opportunity roughly twelve minutes ago. I debated live blogging Colin Powell last night but didn’t think the State Troopers would appreciate me bringing my bag into the Fieldhouse. That’s unimportant because mere moments ago, THE MOMENT I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR, I decided that a recounting of Dan’s hatred for golf was in order and, even though not technically live blogging, I will attempt to recount the important parts of this mini-discussion. All quotes are paraphrased or completely fabricated versions of Dan’s rant and all other commentary is by me.

“If I’m playing a sport, I expect to be huffing and puffing.” The take home message? Dan likes to sweat and is upset that walking and swinging at a little white ball doesn’t do it for him. Maybe he should try something along the lines of spinning. I hear that is a high quality way to elevate one’s heart rate and, if one so desires, sweat. I guess it is a logical point IF someone wants to sweat, but I sweat enough. I don’t need more.

“I can at least see value in Frisbee golf.” This seemed a little contradictory to me. What’s different about throwing a Frisbee, which I think (but I might be wrong here) ARE PLASTIC and typically NOT HEAVY, at something than hitting a golf ball at something? I would even argue that controlling the speed and placement of a golf ball would be more challenging.

“I golf once a year and an eight year old is better than me.” And this is when the light bulb clicked on. Den’s just jealous. That’s he doesn’t like golf. Just practice. You’ll get better, Dan. I guarantee it!

And that’s the gist of it. I made some stupid comments along the way and Dan shot me down and I developed a complex, but all in all, I’d say this was a positive experience in developing blogging skills. Coming soon? Live blogging an SLF meeting with Conor Tucker as the focus. I look forward to that one.