Currently viewing the category:
"Writers’ Retreat"
As the title explains, I’m holding up posting new MTWNB blogs until I’ve slogged and sweated and cried my way through the 30 days of NaNoWriMo.
You can still read all the previous MTWNBs here.
As for NaNoWriMo 2011 progress…it’s probably better you don’t ask me that just now. It’s been one hell of a week.
Next week, hopefully, everything will calm down and I’ll be able to get back into the swing of things. I currently need to write 2492 words a day (assuming I’m not working weekends) in order to finish on time. More than do-able, provided I don’t have a repeat of last week again.
Caio!
Alright, so NaNoWriMo kind of crept up on me this year. With everything else that’s been going on in my life, it’s like “who the fuck cares about a little writing competition?! You have real life shit to worry about, woman”. But then I realise that I’ve been in this limbo since September, and while I’ve gone nowhere, be it personally or creatively, the world has continued to turn. Like a recent fortune cookie said to me: “Time waits for no man”.
OK, just to forewarn you, this is going to be a big one (that’s what she said, hur hur), because I’ve been waiting a long time to get the opportunity to talk about Final Fantasy VII, and – on the off-chance that you have never played Final Fantasy VII – be aware that story spoilers are more than likely. If you want to skip the story and move straight to the tunes: I don’t care about your life story, woman, just tell me about the music…
To give you an idea of how much I love the music from Final Fantasy VII, I walked down the aisle to one of the songs. So, yeah, I think it’s safe to say I’m a big fan.
Shadow of the Colossus is a PlayStation 2 game released in 2005 (and re-released in HD for the PS3 in 2011). It tells the story of a young man who ventures into a forbidden land in the hope of reviving his dead girlfriend, and who is instructed by forces unknown to kill the creatures (the colossi) that inhabit this vast landscape in order to restore life to his beloved.
Kill all 16 of these majestic, building-sized beasts,
and you might get what you want…but at a price!
(Watch a video of this particular fight here)
It’s safe to assume that you have at least heard of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, whether through the book itself, the Disney classic based on it, the Tim Burton “re-imagining”, any of the lesser known TV movies based on it, or even the porno (yes, there’s a porno – click for a review, which is NSFW, for obvious reasons). But in October 2000, a PC game that explored a darker Wonderland was released for the PC.
Alice and the Cheshire Cat as they’re depicted in the game.
Koudelka was released in 2000, and is a Horror/RPG, one of the first of its kind to blend both classic ‘fantasy’ elements of an RPG with certain ‘horror’ elements akin to the likes of, say, Parasite Eve [...].
I like music. That’s OK, though, because other people also like music, too. There are people who don’t like music, and they should be rounded up like cattle and beaten to death with pool cues. I mean, really, who doesn’t like music? Soulless cretins, that’s who.
What was I saying?
Right. Yes. I like music, and I also write books (or, rather, I try to), and I like to listen to music while I write the aforementioned books. I find the right track can focus my mind on the task at hand: my fight scenes work to Pendulum, my death scenes (hypothetical death scenes, that is, since nobody dies…that would be spoilers!) are supported by Ludovico Einaudi, and so on.
So I’m going to try something new: every Sunday, I will share some of my music tastes with you (plus, in most cases, the stories behind how I came to listen to them). Won’t that be exciting! Yes, it will.
Shut up.
The Music
These won’t be released in this order; it’s more a case of ‘when I get around to it’.
- American McGee’s Alice & Alice: Madness Returns [VG]
- Bad Mojo [VG]
- Blood+ [Anime]
- Bloodrayne II [VG]
- The City of Lost Children [Film]
- Deus Ex [VG]
- Devil May Cry [VG]
- Discworld II: Missing Presumed Dead [VG]
- Ecco the Dolphin, Ecco: the Tides of Time & Ecco: Defender of Earth’s Future [VG]
- Ergo Proxy [Anime]
- The Fifth Element [Film]
- Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core & Related Final Fantasy music
- Fingathing [Band]
- Folklore [Game]
- Ico [VG]
- Koudelka [VG]
- Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver I & II [VG]
- Lost [TV]
- Ludovico Einaudi [Musician]
- Pendulum [Band]
- Puscifer [Band]
- Queen of the Damned Score [Film]
- Shadow of the Colossus [VG]
- Skindred [Band]
- Skinny Puppy [Band]
- Stardust [Film]
- Supernatural Score [TV]
- The Land Before Time [Film]
- Two Steps from Hell [Band]
- Underworld, Underworld: Evolution & Underworld: Rise of the Lycans [Film]
- Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines [VG]
- Vib Ribbon [VG]
FAQ
Q // Can you tell me where I can download [name of music here]?
Nope, sorry. While I can’t stop you stealing music off the Internet, I’m not about to support it by providing links. I will always look out for and provide links to any music that can be purchased (either through services such as iTunes or the good old-fashioned CD).
Q // Can you e-mail me a particular track/album?
Sorry, no. Again, I’ll provide purchase links, or you can look for the music yourself.
Q // Why haven’t you looked at [name of music here]?
The music I look it comes purely from my own experiences and discoveries. If I haven’t looked at something that seems blatantly obvious, chances are it’s just because I haven’t come across it.
Q // Will you look at [name of music here]?
If you have a suggestion, I’d be happy to hear it. Leave a comment below or contact me and I might check it out. Just bear in mind that music – like everything – is a matter of personal taste, and I will not talk about music that I don’t personally enjoy, as I would be unable to do it justice.
Q // So does this mean you’re not actually writing at the minute?
I am doing both. Now leave me alone.
OK, so here I am, just over the half way mark.
First off, my writer’s wall has sprouted out fresh limbs.
I now have a yearly planner as well as the monthly one. That sure is exciting, even though I have nothing else to plan for beyond September. Not yet, at least.
I have also appealed to my asthetic side and printed out some mock up covers I made a while ago, with a gentle reminder beneath:
Don’t you have a job to do?
Don’t you have something to write?*
Both it and the covers are at eye-level, meaning they’re the first thing I see when said eyes wonder towards the window and the charming rural view, reminding me there’s something I should be working on.
And up at the top was a print out from Thursday, when my new laser printer arrived and I wanted to print something out as a test. The words are important, plus they’re REALLY BIG and therefore hard to miss.
On the actual writing front, it’s been going OK. I’ve had a few personal issues I can’t go into for legal reasons (no, really), but I still think I can finish on target.
You might have noticed that on the 12th of September, the word count took a flying leap from 35k to 64k. While I’d like to pretend this was the result of some time-bending phenomenon that allowed me an additional fortnight to produce a meatier word count, I’m sure it comes as no surprise that this was not the case.
Since this book essentially a skeletal rewrite of a draft from 2006, there are some scenes from the original that are still relevant. So I threw them in as well. All 30,000 words of them. Will I regret this later? Probably. Hence why now from the 25th to the 30th, I have time set aside for revision.
And that’s where I’ll be in that last week, sitting in the dark, stitching these scenes together with ink and sweat, screaming: “Why won’t you just FIT, damn you!”
* Yes, that is a Demolition Man reference. Simon Phoenix is DA BOMB.
“Don’t you have a job to do? Don’t you have someone to kill?”
I have a book to finish.
I have no excuse not to complete this draft within the timescales I previously set one of many a drunken nights on Twitter.
I have take the liberty of printing myself a calendar off* and scribbling all over it with the days I’ve essentially lost to procrastination or just general laziness.
Now I have the remaining days to work myself into the ground in an attempt to get a working draft out for my beta readers by the first week in October.
I remember mentioning a long time ago about an inspirational quote I read at a customer’s workstation, which stated:
A Goal Without a Plan is just a Wish
I have the plan for the story. I wrote it months ago.
I have no excuse.
It begins here.
* I print my calendars from CalendarsThatWork.com. You should, too.
Subscribe
