I’ve been doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month, (a far more relaxed approach to the National Novel Writing Month event in November, where you get to pick your own goal count and rebelling by not choosing to do a traditional novel is totally in style.) Writing with a fountain pen eases a lot of my wrist strain, and it’s been nice being able to quickly set down and pick up my writing setup when I get enough wherewithal to dash down something.
So far, the progress has looked like this:
Day 0: Written pledge of intent to participate.
Day 1: Brainstorming, research, drafting scenes list.
Day 2: Brainstorming, research, title and themes.
Day 3: Setting up digital interface.
Day 4: Setting up digital interface.
Day 5: Brainstorming, assembling world logic.
Day 6: Organization on paper for workflow.
Day 7: Drafting by hand.
Day 8: Drafting by hand.
Day 9: Drafting by hand.
Day 10: Drafting by hand.
I’m aiming to fill out at least a B5 page with single spaced handwriting on drafting days, wall of text style. No clue on the word count, but progress has been steady.
After a wonderful two weeks of vacation in the PNW, I’ve returned home to my cats. Who are less thrilled than I am about me picking them up and squishing my face into their fur.
After a long first day of Open Water Course (diving), I’m exhausted. We spent a good six hours watching repetitive videos on diving, a lot of which we already knew (our parents are very experienced divers).
In the end, I’m happy to be done and looking forward to getting in the pool for practicals tomorrow!
Came back from a weekend away, meeting with my mom and sister in NYC, walking over 50km during that weekend, and surviving a delayed train…
Back to writing games
This story all turns out well in the end, so fear not.
Our dog started vomiting. A lot. And then the vomit turned pink, and then she was throwing up blood, scary amounts of blood. We ran to the vet, and it turned out she had just ruptured a blood vessel with all the barfing and they gave her a big shot of anti-nausea meds and said that it seemed really scary, but it was fine. She probably ate the wrong poop, or a poisonous bug, because the dog philosophy is that if you don’t know whether or not it’s food, go ahead and eat it anyway.
The really good part is that they saw on the X-ray that there was massive impending diarrhea, and told us that we’d have an extremely bad evening of exploding dog bowels. They gave us pills but said that it might not help much. And we came home and watched the dog with eagle eyes and gave her the pills and… no diarrhea. Any day that starts with vomiting blood which turn out to be no big deal, and where a medical professional promises massive dog diarrhea and it doesn’t happen, is an amazing day.
Managed some more French chromatic button accordion learning. Still in the early stages, but getting better. Today as well as practicing repeated exercises I played by ear an old favourite Sunrise Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof, and tunes from my home town in the Scottish Borders.
The crumbcat noticed that I’ve been using a tracker to make sure that I remember to take my vitamins, write in my diary, and drink enough water with the summer heat lately and wanted his own version. He was very excited by the idea of his Quest Log, including the little water tracker he decided to base off of Minecraft hearts, and I doodled a little avatar next to it per his request. Apparently that’s supposed to be a Netherrack sword.
Had some fun editing this Camp NaNoWriMo activity tracker together for myself, and finally got around to charging my drawing tablet. I feel like a little mousie sometimes, burrowing away in a warren maze of computer tunnels and electrical wiring, with all of the cables floating around lately…
Okay, that’s a super cool and creative way to approach the daily routine and I might just try something like that myself. It’s always great when you can make something that is both very useful and appeals really well to your interests!
Today hasn’t started amazing so far, having spent most of the morning in the bathroom emptying my stomach, and having to deal with our local grocery store closing… but they still had a pain au chocolat and a hazelnut-spread croissant on top of the prezels. So when my stomach settles, I have something to look for…
My mono laser printer needed its toner cartridge changing for the first since we bought the printer new 2.5 years ago. Watched a video online and puzzled over things, then we managed it easily. Big relief!
Last night my rabbit suddenly decided to eat a big chunk of velcro from the back of a chair, which he has never done in the many years he’s had the opportunity. We just passed the 24-hour monitoring window with no ill effects. He’s sitting under the chair now looking very innocent.
The kid rated today’s baking experiment as a “20 out of 10.” As a cake, it leaves a bit to be desired- but as brownies, it’s fantastic. I adjusted some little touches- the amount of salt, adding a pinch or two of instant coffee, grinding the cocoa powder with the sugar first, and was quite pleased with the result.
Good result is finally getting myself a chromatic button accordion app for my iPad, so I can practice more using that, not just when I get my new French CBA accordion out. I am still very much in the beginning stages. Chromatic button accordion - specifically C system in this case - is new to me. My French box only has all black keys, so it’s interesting to see white for naturals and black for flats/sharps in the app.
Screenshot of a chromatic button accordion interface on an app, with a red background and white and black keys. On the left side are the bass buttons, in a layout so you can play them holding the iPad app. On the right side are the treble chromatic button keyboard keys, here in C layout. The sharps and flats have black buttons, the naturals white. The note letters and chord letters are indicated visually on each button. The word Hohner in capitals runs up the centre of the image.
I finished and dropped a game for Jinx’s gamejam, which I’m pretty pleased with, since I had to pivot at the last minute and worked on it while dealing with double knee hemorrhages. (Huh. Why is it that I usually find myself in this situation? Thinking back to Origin of Love’s conception in under four hours…)
It was a lot more emotionally difficult than my other games have been to write- because it’s more or less a lightly fictionalized autobiographical work. A bit grim, despite the poppy background- everything Jasper says in it has been said to me before by a partner. He isn’t a one-to-one of any particular person, but rather an amalgamation of several people’s worst moments. The setup to the game -the awards, the writing community- will likely feel familiar to forum regulars, which was intentional. It all has a happy ending, which thankfully does reflect real life too! And it was really fun pulling traits from my friends to stick 'em into the game. Despite being an enthusiast of the Gothic, I’m a sucker for a happy-ish ending, like in Sweetpea. And writing the dedication was a lovely experience- being able to slip in a reference to a Mary Oliver poem is always a pleasure.
I learned a lot while cobbling together the code, and it’s pretty basic stuff, like customizing the appearance of blockquotes, or figuring out how cells in a table worked, but I had a great time puzzling those little scraps into something pleasing to me, and it’ll be useful in future Twines, probably. They’re like patchwork quilts, my Twine files are a disaster of useful bits and bobs. Plus, it’s always a good day when I can work a little pink into the design of something- though the neon bright Lisa Frank-esque tones were a fun complement to the pink, I think, and therefore a successful experiment for me to edge slightly out of my comfort zone.
And I even got to put in a Goncharov reference! Very satisfied with what I’ve made. Fingers crossed my friends like it when they play, Jinx was very sweet when she got to read an earlier draft. The cover was a last minute slapping elements together in Canva, but I realized the re-colour tool is super useful, and I like how it came together in the end, even if it’s a bit busy by my usual tastes. It’s like, girly, and cute, in a way that oddly reminds me of early internet personal blogs or current Neocities, which is fun.
