Writing about writing

October 7th 2018

Pencil a smile or a frown on my face,
Make me a monster with papermaché
         - Porcelain Face, 4 Door Theater

As you can see, I have decided to create a blog. I have done so, mainly because it gives me a place to ramble about writing, when I’m not doing the actual writing, making sure that I am writing just about all of the time. I used to keep a blog at another website, but as those were in Danish, it wasn’t like I could just copy/paste the whole thing over here and be done with it. But this is perfect really: A place for writing, where I also write about writing? Yeah, that seems like the way to go.

I’m sick these days, which annoys me to no end. Last night I got so dizzy I barely made it from the laptop to the bed, without dying halfway there. I feel slightly better right now, but only because my sister brought me soda and chocolate. I guess that really is a universal ‘get well’ trick. That – luckily – means I can now spend a little time in front of my computer, instead of just lying around in bed, watching PowerPuff Girls.

I have spend some time working during the last couple of days, in spite of obviously having the plague. I’m getting ready for the NaNoWriMo, something I have never even dared try before, but now actually feel sort of confident I can pull through. My goal is to write somewhere between 2000 and 3000 words every day, as I foresee that my entry might be slightly longer than 50.000 words. I have a tendency to ramble on forever and ever, and if nothing else, it will give me a little time to edit. As I don’t have a regular 9 to 5 job, it should be doable. Coffee was invented for overworked writers, I’m sure of it, and it is definitely my one true love in that aspect. Well in every aspect really, it has been my best buddy since I was 13, and you just can’t question those kind of relationships.

Right now I’m working on world description, and it’s not going quite as smoothly as I had hoped for. I know what it looks like, I know what I want it to do, how I want it to work, I just need to be able to get it down on paper. I tend to use art as an endless source of inspiration, always looking at pictures and mentally trying to describe them, which is why I have an excessive Pinterest account. Feel free to check it out, https://www.pinterest.dk/thorbjoernw/, you might end up getting inspired too, or at the very least, you’ll get to see some bad-ass artwork.

I worked out a to-do list yesterday though, and there’s a lot of stuff I need to do before the end of the month. The only thing I’ve done so far is ‘Basic Information’, which is… Well, it’s all very nice and shit, but it’s not very impressive to say the least. I look forward to doing the character descriptions, those have always been one of my favorite parts of note taking, but I need to get the whole world description down first. I need to know where I’m going to place them, before I create them fully. I do have some notes and general ideas as to who they are and such, but the really detailed descriptions I’m saving for later. Besides the character design and world building, there are 18 points on that list, all of them being quite comprehensive. It’ll be fine though, I’ve got 24 days left, I’m pretty sure I can pull it off. I’m one of those people who plan out everything before even considering writing the actual story, it just works better for me that way.

At this point in time though, I have written more on this blog post, than on actual work today. This does not make me a happy camper.

At least I’m reading a lot, trying really hard to focus on this world building problem. One thing is the Pinterest account, and using it for gathering ideas, but I also spend a lot of time with my books, trying to get a grasp on how to describe this place, the best way possible. Thankfully, books is something I have plenty of, I’d say roughly a thousand, and there should be just what I need, hidden somewhere inside of them. There always is, I have learned, somewhere in my extensive collection, there is always exactly what I need. It might take a while to actually find it, but it’s always there.

I acquired a new bulletin board for this November challenge, or more precisely, my sister donated me one to make me quit my whining. The last one is still covered in post it notes about Swaying Between Worlds, and I really didn’t much care for removing them all, only to put them back up there when I was done. So yeah, I got my hands on a new one, and there must be at least 25 notes on it already. I like post it notes, in fact, I pretty much love them. I have little pads of them everywhere too, bed, bathroom, every single table my apartment contains, there’s always a post it pad within reach. It feels somewhat safe and secure to have them around, always there for a quick note, should anything remotely intelligent pop up in my head.

And now, it seems to be way past my usual bedtime, and due to the whole ‘being annoyingly sick’ thing, I should probably try and get some rest. I don’t particularly want to, if anything I would much rather work right now, but sometimes you really have to do the smart thing, instead of the things you feel like doing.