nanowrimo
I've signed m'self up for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Which means through the month of November, I intend to write a novel 50,000 words in length or more. That's nearly 2000 words a day. I've decided to do this for a number of reasons. 1) I've got plenty of time to waste, 2) I'd like to write more, 3) I've been intending to buy a laptop, and this is a good excuse to feel like it's not a pointless waste of money (which it is) however much I might want it, 4) I've wanted to write a mystery for a while, but feel bogged down by the need to be clever about it and 5) I've got plenty of time to waste.
I'm actually excited about the project. This is basically what sold me on the idea:
- Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.
Basically, writing a novel in a month is a ridiculous thing to try to do. So why not do it?
In other news, I went out and bought a bunch of graphic novels and manga yesterday. I've been doing that a lot lately. Vol.4 of Utena finally came out, now that Viz has switch to the unflipped format. Trigun vol.1 is out and is 350 pages (!), so I decided to give that a shot, since I heard when it was airing that the manga covers a lot of neat background stuff that the anime leaves out. I also bought a cute little indy graphic novel called Rosemary's Backpack. Now and Then has a graphic novel bargain bin now which is great for trying out different stuff. While it wasn't revolutionary, Rosemary's Backpack was a nice, light and fun adventure where most indy graphic novels... aren't.