Lots of little things have been happening around here and while I do broadcast some of them over at twitter (which I feel should end up in the sidebar of the blog someday, as a kind of “micro-blogging”), here’s a wrap-up of the last few days.
Yesterday was a holiday and since the weather was rather nice I decided to go over to the beach at Guincho and take the book I was reading (which I finished right there on the beach incidentally) for some sand, sun and mind traveling.
It turns out it was so good out there that I ended up going for a swim. At Guincho. On November the first.
This is the same beach I was cast out of numerous times during the summer, by high cold wind and icy water.
Something is definitely off-whack here but hey, I’m not complaining!
And yet it is most definitely autumn now as I was painfully reminded earlier in the week, when a friend asked me for advice on the best time and location to watch the sunset on the Estoril coast. This particular friend knows quite well how I’m into that sort of stuff and I was more than happy to help, but I completely forgot about the daylight-savings hour change a few days back and I ended up telling her to be there an hour later. Luckily she was going for a stroll in the general vicinity and ended up watching the sunset on a nice place anyway (though not on the spot)…
This friend was taking the afternoon off, strolling around and catching some sun because she had just turned in her master’s dissertation so congratulations to you! :-)
I never did get a master’s degree, but I remember full well the time when I finished the last project at university and the relief I felt. I was working full-time at that time (just like my friend is) and I remember how great it felt to be able to live my life without the studying (or the guilt over not studying. After all, not only was I working, I was also recently wed by then…) ;-)
In other news, NaNoWriMo 2007 has started and, just today, I decided to take part in it. Which means I have to come up with a story idea and do some writing to catch up with the two day delay I already have.
Don’t know what NaNoWriMo is? Well, I suggest you go over to the site and check it out, but just as a quick recap, NaNoWriMo stand for Na_tional _No_vel _Wri_ting _Mo_nth (although it is not specific to any particular nation or country) and the goal is to have people from all over the world write a novel (one each, mind you) of at least 50.000 words from November the first up until November the thirtieth.
Yes, 50.000 words as a novel is debatable, but that’s just a technicality.
No, you won’t get much good writing done with that kind of a deadline, but that’s really not the point. You see, since you will be writing like crazy to meet a word count deadline, you will not have time to go over the stuff you’ve written again and again and edit it until it is just perfect and so you (hopefully) just let your creativity flow and get your ideas out on paper (heh) as fast as you can. Then, _after NaNoWriMo is over, you may go over and re-visit your novel and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find you have something worthwhile, a first draft of a great story. If not well, you just had fun participating and writing like a madman. Or madwoman, whatever.
Yes, it is do-able, 50.000 words in 30 days comes in at roughly 1.700 words a day. It is hard, but still doable, and the winners of the NaNoWriMo are all those who can deliver the 50.000 words by the end of November, regardless of quality (in fact you are assured that they will not ever read your material, just word-count it.
No, I don’t really expect to be a winner (i.e. get to 50.000 words by the end of November), but I do expect to jump-start my life-long semi-project of writing something on the broad genres of fiction and/or romance.
Yes, I do expect it to be fun. And I have the time after all…
Although other things have arisen lately to rob me of said time, namely, it looks like there’s something fishy with all the books and accounts at the condo I live in and I ended up moving in smack in the middle of a massive (and somewhat unpleasant) change in the administration company. So now it looks like I’ll be “drafted in” to be part of a committee to oversee the work of the new administration.
I’ll never know just what they saw in me that inspired their trust… ;-)
My friends are all either marrying (the “late” ones) or having their kids. Two of them have spawned their child processes this last couple of weeks.
Congrats guys (and gals). I may be getting older, but you lot are taking giant steps to out-perform me on the ageing department. Hah! :-)