NaNuPoMo

[Zeke]

Still workin' on the ol' PhD. This is the year I have to finish my comprehensive exams, so it's especially important.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

PhDs are eternal. I don't think they actually ever end, or progress. You just wake up one day on the wrong side of thirty and accept you're going to be here for the rest of your life.

It's a bit like life imprisonment, only I think convicted murderers get a but more respect.

[Zeke]

November 2

NaNuPoMo continues today with a link to a site I often find very useful. One weakness of Google is that it mostly lacks the traditional DOS wildcard search. You can stick a * in a phrase, say "chakotay 1 * 0", and match a word or two, but you can't use ? to match characters or * for parts of words. Someone had to fill this gap (match this pattern?), and OneLook did so. It's a multi-dictionary search, which is useful on its own, but it also has full wildcard abilities and other handy features. So next time you're stuck on a crossword answer like, I dunno, "P_R_H_S", use OneLook to narrow it down.

(Note to forumites: rather than fill the board with newspost threads, I'll be putting all the link posts in this master thread. Updates will still get their own.)

[evay]

The first time an enthused coworker told me about NaNoWriMo, I practically recoiled. He was all "But you'll have a novel at the end of the month!" and I had to keep explaining "No, you'll have fifty thousand words of crap at the end of the month. Aiming for a pure word count is just logorrhea. Writing a real novel takes planning."

After working with someone who's a "pantser," aka "discovery writer," I find I hold this opinion even more strongly.

Creating a story takes work. It takes preparation, planning, editing, feedback, killing your darlings, rewriting, foresight, and backfilling.

If someone wants to use NaNoWriMo as a way to get over the fear of getting words on the page, or to break writer's block, hey, go for it. But don't pretend you have an actual novel on December 1. You might, possibly, have the start of a novel, if you're ruthless enough to go back and fix all the problems. But you don't have something publishable. Harrumph.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Still workin' on the ol' PhD. This is the year I have to finish my comprehensive exams, so it's especially important.

Good luck!

[Zeke]

November 4

Today's link is to the LJ of squid314 (Scott to his friends), specifically his analysis of the relative unrealisticness of certain popular fiction franchises. He first considers Babylon 5, then Doctor Who... but what's the most far-fetched one of all? The answer may surprise you. (The rest of Scott's journal is worth checking out too, as he's a smart guy in general. He won points with me right off with the pangrammatic title.)

[NAHTMMM]

^ Some of the comments on that are pretty good, too.

[Zeke]

November 5

Remember, remember the fifth of November! Specifically, the one back in 2005, when I posted Five-Minute Rings. Yep, this is an X Years Ago post, and today X=6. The '05 Hallowe'en event was a sequel to the '03 event; like most sequels, it didn't quite deliver, but there was some good stuff. My contribution was this fiver of a DVD extra taking place before The Ring Two. Rings packed a lot of scares into a short runtime and laid some groundwork for the movie. As with my fiver of the first film, there are a few in-jokes here for Ring fans; for instance, "general discussion" and "serious theorizing" are shoutouts to the real Ring forum (apparently down right now), which had boards labeled that way.

Why would I relink something so obscure? Let's say it's because Daylight Savings Time is mentioned in the fiver, making it timely. That is the reason. There are no others.

[Zeke]

November 6

Today's link: the ringworld. I've linked to it before, but that was eight years ago, and it's still the best Ring site around. This time I want to highlight a couple of specific sections. The scripts and translations page is a great resource; among other things, it includes full translations by founder J Lopez of the original Japanese movie and the manga of the sequel, Rasen. If you've ever wondered how I became such a Ring series connoisseur in the first place when I've mentioned I can barely watch the freaking things, that's how. The fanfic section also has some interesting items, including a spooky sequel, "6155", by J himself (see if you can decode the title!) and two short pieces by nostalgia, an acquaintance of mine whose fic I've recommended before.

But that's odd... two Ring updates in a row? Eh. It's probably nothing. Or maybe I'm just doing it because J vanished off the face of the Earth in '07 or so; four years since last update makes even me look good.

[Zeke]

November 7

Okay, enough Ring stuff. Today we'll do something else. Here's a [kssssh]

Um, guess we got some static there. Here's [kssssh]

[kssssh] think this is really [kssssh] know why [kssssh]

Maybe I'll just [kssssh]

[ksssssssssssh]