Dangerous women
Day 2 will be a night
We woke up without the announced downpour (that happened last night) and floating in thick fog – autumn is finally here. And we wasted much of the morning doing useless chores and wondering around public offices.
So, here I am, and I have not written a single word of my 5 Days Novel.
Which means I’ll start around 2 pm and I will go on long into the night because – lucky me – insomnia is back (as it usually happens when the going gets rough, to make it rougher).
And counting my small blessings, I am also lucky enough to have lost my access password to the Open University web site where, I just discovered, there is a free online course about the moons of our solar system.
The lost password means I will do that part of my research after I finish the novel.
Good.
So here we go – large pot of hot tea, one short walk break every hour, and on we go into the night.
5 Days Novel – Day 1
Today was a slow day – I started writing at 10 am, and I stopped at 6.30 pm. I take a break every hour, more or less – and I also had a long talk with a contact for a prospect job, so I was not able to do as much as I wanted.
The balance for today is 10.000 words – which is at least 5.000 words short of what I planned.
Writing science fiction comes with the complication of having to check out science facts. In this sense, the web is a life saver and a time waster.
Today I checked out the details of the Saturn system (eighty-two moons!) and a few videos on the nature of gravitational waves.
A little jazz for the young ones
I’m taking a moment to post about something I’ve just found out and it’s incredibly fun, and intelligent, and good.
In a nutshell: a bunch of musicians and youtubers (or youtube musicians, or something), got together to create a record of arrangements of classic children tunes, injecting in them all kinds of jazz goodness – off rhythms, key changes, triplets and quintuplets and what else.
The end result is a strange beast, a record of children songs that are also fun to listen to for grown-ups.
I started listening to jazz – properly listening to jazz, that is – with Dave Brubeck, and therefore I was spoiled for odd time signatures and exotic arrangements.
Thsi collection might be a good way to start the young ones on a strange musical journey they’d probably enjoy.
And all proceeds go to Save the Children UK, so you know you are helping a good cause.
5 Days Novel – Day 0
Yes, I know, I am cheating. But today is the day when I lay down the foundation of the next four or five days of frantic writing and editing, and so I am calling it Zero.
So sue me.
What I did this morning, was jotting down the notes for my story
- Concept
- Background
- Set-up
- Outline
- Character Profiles
Getting ready
The good thing about announcing a demented project on my blog is, when I come back to sanity, it’s too late and I can’t back down. So here I am, trying to get ready for this wild idea of writing a novel in five days.
And mind you, it’s a scary idea.
But on the other hand, should I fail, what am I losing?
I might end up with a good start for a novel to finish at leisure, or I might nail a solid novella – that would be a good result, anyway.
And it would be a morale-booster, anyway.
Right now, I am juggling three possible ideas – because ideas are everywhere, and tomorrow I’ll see which one comes alive during the set-up phase.
Meanwhile I’ve collected resources, and stuff that might come in handy.
Like this – that I will not probably use, but is interesting…
Tomorrow I’ll start posting brief updates – and more extra stuff on my Patreon.
Keep an eye out for updates, and if you feel like, buy me a coffee.
Gotham and ghosts
One of the good things of working on a podcast like Paura & Delirio is, it gives me a good excuse to dig deep into movies to try and find something intelligent to say when we record our episodes, and as a consequence, leads me to discover more movies, stuff I missed the first time around.
For instance – we are planning a special episode (it’s all hush-hush, so no details, sorry), about a movie I know almost by heart, but while looking it up in search of ideas, I followed the thread of one of the screenwriters, and came to a 1988 movie I missed – a TV thing called Gotham, featuring Tommy Lee Jones and Virginia Madsen.
A supernatural noir – why not?
Karavansara 