It’s the end of my day off, and I find myself wondering what I’ve done all day. I got up at about ten to eight this morning because W had to go to the chiropractor for an early appointment (she forgot about having the day off when she booked it).
The first hour this morning was spent sitting in my house coat, drinking tea, and watching various news channels on the television. Watching news for an hour meant that I saw all the news stories thirty eight times. Once I was sick of it I got off my backside and had a shower.
We walked into town this morning to post some bits and pieces, and pick up some parcels from the sorting office (more wool that W bought on e-bay). I managed to walk into Blockbusters, WHSmiths, and the book shop without buying a single thing. Wonders will never cease.
While looking around in WHSmiths (a newsagent/stationer chain, for those outside the UK), I spotted the “Concise Oxford Dictionary” on CD-ROM. It was only 10ukp (about 16 dollars), but I didn’t pick it up. My thought was that if I am going to take part in Nanowrimo later in the year (and therefore get back into writing) perhaps I should have a dictionary on the computer… only then I thought “but I have a paper dictionary at home!”. I can’t really see any benefit to having any clever software beyond my trusty text editor. I guess a word processor will help with styling text and making notes, but would I actually use any of that kind of thing?
Looking over my shoulder at the bookshelf behind me (an entire end of our lounge is filled with floor to ceiling bookshelves), I just spotted a book called “Mini Sagas”. It’s great. It’sfilled with entries from a competition in one of our national newspapers (The Daily Telegraph) a few years ago. Each entry had to consist of 50 words.
Hmmm. Somewhere we have a book of short story exercises (dramatic pause here as Jonathan wanders off through the house to hunt on the other bookshelves throughout the house for it)
After much digging around I have unearthed a few paperbacks - “What If”, “The Fiction Writers Handbook” and “Teach Yourself Writin a Novel”. I’ll probably just run through a few of the exercises and put my scrawlings up on the net for people to comment on. I might browse through some of the “handbook” type books, but I can’t see much point - I think the act of writing is probably more valuable than reading about how to write.
My only real concern about taking part in Nanowrimo is getting enough spare time to hit 50,000 words in the month. I’m not sure how quickly I’ll be able to churn out words - so I guess doing some writing exercises will give me an idea.
It’s just gone 10pm as I type this. Crap. That means it’s nearly the end of my day off, and I have to start thinking about work again. Maybe I’ll have a flick through this writing exercise book first