So, NaNoWriMo 2011 is far, far over.

Before the NaNo kicked in, I recommended people to check out org-mode and look at my ramblings on my endless struggles with other writing software packages.

That ramble was a little bit premature because I hadn’t actually completed a major writing project with Emacs. I’ve written a lot of short stories over the last year or so, but due to my increasing self-critique I’ve not actually gotten anything out. And, of course, the fact that I kept switching software probably didn’t help much either. =)

But NaNoWriMo is now done, and bashing out 51,757 words probably counts as some sort of an achievement that gives a little bit of an indicator of how Emacs works as a prose writing tool.

I told people it would work, and dammit, it did. Except for a few small snags.

It’s sad that I haven’t had found the time to comment on my NaNoWriMo progress on my blogs at all. This NaNoWriMo seemed to be a bit more bleak than the last year’s incredibly fun journey, mostly because some of the people I followed last year weren’t writing and I didn’t even get a chance to follow some other people. Also, NaNoWriMo website’s tools were not as fun this year around.

But overall, it was still an incredible journey. Just with a little bit more of proverbial taste of blood in the mouth. I’d say I survived through NaNo this time, not really finished it.

I’ll probably release my book draft later on. As in last year, I’ll release a PDF and possibly an EPUB version. Cover is already drawn, and shown on the right (click for a larger version).

I’ve also made some sort of a video journal. Once I get around to editing it (and doing the EpicDiff run to show how the text mutated over time), I’ll put it to my YouTube channel. This is also the first time I’ve ever produced anything major in Org-Mode, so I’ll also write a separate blog post on my experiences with Emacs as an authoring environment. (Summary: it’s probably the best environment I’ve tried so far, but there are a few snags that I really wish were fixed easier.)

Anyway - the following is basically just a copy-paste of my /r/nanowrimo posts, with some minor tweaks. Hope it’s interesting enough.

It is a lingering doubt, but an important one: Is it time to rethink why I write? Maybe it’s always a good time to rethink why I write, and how I write.

One thing is sure, though: I’m always learning, and the fact that I didn’t get completely depressed again when I recently got some critique is a good sign that I’m probably showing - maybe - some improvement. I think I’ve conclusively shown that the answer to the obvious first question, “should I write to begin with?”, is a resounding “yep”.

Now, I just need to seek some guidance on “how” and “why”.

Somewhere around the previous post, I made an outlandish promise that I might try out Celtx to see how well I could write a story in the “novel mode”.

I think I have to take it back. Because Emacs foiled that plan.

And I still can’t believe it.

Emacs as a prose editor. Bah. Pigs are flying.

It’s that time again - time to rant about software!

All I’ve learned over the past few years is that developing writing software sounds deceptively easy, yet no one seems to get it right.

One of the reasons I like open source is that vendor lock-in is less likely. Often, open source applications are built on open file formats and open standards, and files can be edited in different applications. The reason people stick to specific applications is that they happen to work for them. There’s something in each app that makes them suitable for specific tasks. This is not always optimal; for example, currently OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice is the best implementation of all OpenDocument features (i.e., if you want metadata and templates to work properly, you use these applications, because other applications are likely to mess things up), but if you want to just get access to the file content, there’s plenty of applications that read ODF files and can write ODF format files.

But there is one application that illustrates that you can get into vendor lock-in hell in open source world.

Character design is a funny process.

A lot of people seem to think that it's crucial to design the characters beforehand, write all sorts of character questionnaire forms, and whatnot.

But as a software guy, I don't really believe in that. Just like software is often best designed in an interative fashion - you make plans, implement something, refine plans, refine implementation, and so on - the characters are pretty much easiest to build that. So the "character sheets", to me, are just a springboard.

Okay - here's a completely pointless blog post that's a whole lot of hot air over a non-issue. But dammit, it needs to be said. Sort of.

Here's a frequently heard bit of writing advice: one all-too-often neglected part of character design is the character's sexuality; it crops up way too often in unexpected places.

Here's another frequently heard bit of writing advice: if your fictional characters start talking to you, go see a shrink.

The big question: Are they trying to mess with my head? =)

All I can say is that the NaNoWriMo 2010 was an amazing experience.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The novel didn't turn out to be as good as I expected because I just didn't have time to add all of the neat stuff in, and the beginning of the story ballooned so much that the last part of the story is kind of sparse, but hey, I finished the story. Yay yay yay. There's the remaining 11 months before the next November to finish it up! =)

"Dusts of Avalon" is, contrary to what I've previously written, a military science fiction novel that also deals with some Arthurian stuff. Epic stuff all around! You can read it at Scribd and comment there, or download the PDF from there, or you can also grab the PDF from ye official Web 1.0-compliant website. I'll probably make the story available in other formats (EPUB and plain ol' HTML) later on.

Back to revisions. And, of course, back to writing more Avarthrel stuff!

A little note:

I've stalled it in previous years, but this year, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo, dammit. Here's my participant page, in case you're interested.

I'm doing fine. 8 days out of 30 behind. 18,038 words out of 50,000 done - that's over one third, which jives pretty well with the fact that I'm getting close to done on the first act/part of the novel. I'm apparently slightly ahead of the nominal schedule.Yayyy.

NaNoWriMo is turning out to be slightly challenging. One of the reasons is that I'm decidedly not writing an Avarthrel tale; this is a military science fiction novel that is set on 27th-century Earth. It's also challenging because it's based on Arthurian legends (and mating King Arthur with science fiction was actually inspired by this fine entry in Good Show Sir) and I don't know that much about Arthurian tales, so it's a little bit of a research problem too.

But the biggest problem is simply this: it takes me months to get a 8000-word short story done. When I started writing Avarthrel tales, I started writing a novel, quickly figured "gee, this is really damn difficult, isn't it?" and decided to stick to short stories until I get the milieu properly figured out. Getting "Shadows Over Nothross" done was probably my biggest literary achievement so far, editing that tale took a whole spring and in retrospect, that tale probably had a wide variety of problems stemming from the lack of planning. And it's only 22,000 words.

Now I'm looking at the effort of writing a 50,000-word novel. In a world based on real world, on a genre I really love as a reader, but haven't yet written anything significant in that genre. And I'm looking at the word counter that says 18,038 and I'm thinking "bloody hell, that word count algorithm is probably buggy. I probably use too many dashes. Yeeeeeeeah, that's probably pretty damn endemic in my writing."
And I'm also thinking "Damn it, I can finish this."
And I'm also thinking that every time I ramble about this project to anyone at all outside, it commits me harder to this project.
Now I absolutely, positively have to finish this project, come hell or high water.

In other news, the Avarthrel tales that were slightly late to begin with will be slightly more late, due to NaNoWriMo. As if that would come as a surprise. =)

Back to writing!