HBO is creating a show based on the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin, A Game of Thrones being the first novel in that series. From what I gather, each novel will be one full season.

In NanoNews, I broke the 25,000 word mark yesterday with only 25,000 more words to go. Halfway there!

So what’s my novel about? It’s complicated. I can tell you that it falls squarely in the fantasy genre. At least I think it does. It takes place in another world, there are various types of humanoid races each possessing a unique ability (although I won’t go as far as to call in magic), there are great battles, lots of deep lore… so yeah, fantasy, right? As I write this fantasy story, this story that’s been kicking around inside my head for years, I realized that I have no idea what I’m doing. The story is crystal clear in my mind, but when I try to convert my brain waves into written words, I quickly realize that I am at a loss for those very words. Then I realized why. I never read fantasy. I read sci-fi, classic literature, history, science, philosophy… everything but fantasy. This became clear to me when I tried to describe various parts of a soldiers armor or the weapons they carried or the ancient watchtower overlooking the sea. I didn’t have the right words. Sure I could do a little research, but it’s more than that. I’m lacking the proper tone in my story that one expects to find when reading fantasy. So that’s when I decided, five minutes ago, to throw some fantasy into my literary mix.

I just finished reading Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Sirens of Titan, and Mother Night (which I may elaborate on in another post). I still have Breakfast of Champions and Slaughter House Five on deck, but I’ve decided to put them on the back burner and take a sharp detour into the realm of fantasy. By the way, I cheated in the middle of my Vonnegut spree and read How to Win Friends and Influence People and The Definitive Book of Body Language. Both were fantastic. Sorry Kurt, I’ll get back to you shortly.

Game of Thrones by George R R Martin is the fantasy title I have chosen to help hone my fantastical story telling skills. It’s part of his highly acclaimed A Song of Ice and Fire series and, from what I understand, is extremely well written and epic in scope. It also looks pretty damn cool.

Finally, I want to throw out links to two podcasts I’ve been listening to for the last three or four months which have been invaluable to me as a new writer, I Should Be Writing and Writing Excuses. Check them out and may they be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

Yesterday I finished my first public 30 day challenge; 750 words a day, everyday, for 30 days. 22,500 words in total. I wrote short stories mostly, but I also did a lot of free writing, which was equal parts comical, enlightening, scary, and intriguing. Now that I’ve successfully hit the 22,500 word mark, my sights are set on a new target, NaNoWriMo, also know as National Novel Writing Month. From November 1st to November 30th, write 50,000 words. Piece of cake. The rules are pretty simple:

* Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
* Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people’s works).
* Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you’re writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
* Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
* Write multiple words (not the same word repeated 50,000 times).
* Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

Right. So this October I’ll be busy brainstorming, outlining, and shadowboxing to “Eye of the Tiger” in preparation of the literary maelstrom lurking on the horizon. I’ll also be reading Vonnegut, carving pumpkins, and saying goodbye to my friends and family. See you again in December!

Hemingway once said, “Write drunk, edit sober.” I don’t think I’ll be doing much editing come November. Cheers.

I’ve been doing 30 day challenges for eons now. It all started with a little plan I devised called “The okTober Project”, which is just a fancy name for a 30 day challenge that took place in October –I was pretty dramatic back then. I can’t remember all the specifics, but the list of items I had to accomplish in 30 days was mind-numbing. Over the years, the oKtober Project spread into other months. I also stopped overloading myself with an obscene amount of objectives and settled on just a few, well thought out goals per challenge. I’ve taken it one step further recently, limiting myself to one goal per 30 day challenge. This way I can focus and not get too overwhelmed.

The first challenge making its debut in my shiny new 30 Day category, will be to write 750 words per day, everyday, for 30 days. I won’t lie to you, I’m slightly terrified. I got the idea from a great website called, believe it or not, 750words.com. Here’s what the creator of that site has to say:

I’ve long been inspired by an idea I first learned about in The Artist’s Way called morning pages. Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in “long hand”, typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It’s about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day.

So it begins. From September 1st, which happens to be today, to September 30th, I shall write –and I shall write hard! It won’t be pretty, I won’t win any awards, I might even cry a little, but I shall prevail. There’s little to no chance that anyone will see what I write, so don’t ask (how Salinger of me). I’ll post progress updates to my twitter account from time to time. When the challenge is over, I will post a full recount of my 30 days and hopefully I will be 22,500 words the richer, but until that day….I write!

“Call me Ishmael” –wait, has that been used already?

For the last few days I’ve been messing around with a great program for the Mac called Journler. It’s like a journal on steroids. It has all the basic features you would expect from journaling software, but then takes it to a whole other level. You can do things like add audio, video, and photos to your entries with the click of a button, or record them directly using your built-in hardware. You can even publish your entries to your blog (I haven’t actually tried this yet, cross your fingers). The interface is sleek and intuitive, just what you’d expect from a Mac app.

Don’t look at this as a full review of Journler though, since I’m still plummeting head first through the learning curve, but I was impressed enough with what I saw to give it a mention to anyone who has never heard of it.

Journler

I’m still a big time Mac noob. I’ve had this MacBook for about a year now and I just recently discovered what that weird little diagonal line is that all the Mac tutorials refer to. But I do listen. The OS X gurus may not think I’m listening, but I am — and every now and then I pick up on their good habits. I’ve recently been introduced to another little app called Quicksilver. I’m really not the guy to be giving a full review of this app either, or any Mac app for that matter, but from what I’ve seen of it so far, it’s pretty damn incredible. Here’s what I can tell from the little time I’ve spent with it — it’s an extremely powerful search application with a slew of built in macros (is that the right word?) which allow you to do all sorts of things to the items that you’ve just searched for. It uses a lot of keyboard shortcuts (which I love) to accomplish tasks at a lightning fast pace.

I’m really not doing this program any justice, so I’m gonna shut up now. The guys over at the Blacktree Inc. will most likely be sending me a cease and desist letter any day now anyways because of this literary mutilation of their product. Go ahead and check it out for yourself. I think you’ll really like it. If you don’t, blame the gurus.

Quicksilver

This isn’t an isolated case my friends. Oh no. Here is another great example. I decided to start running again about a year ago. But could I just run? No of course not, don’t be stupid. I had to prepare for it. I went out and bought a new mp3 player, new Nike running shorts, a new sweat absorbing sport shirt, and shiny new Nike sneakers. I carefully selected which songs would be on my new mp3 player. I drove around looking for the perfect spot to go running. That’s right, drove around. Guess how many miles I run a week now. On an average week I run anywhere between 0 and .01 miles. However, in the summer time that number rises to about .02 miles per week. Good thing I bought that sweat absorbing sport shirt. My point is I have to stop preparing all the time and just do it. I got that last line from Nike.

I ran across something I haven’t seen in years and it piqued my interest again. It’s called The Game of Life. Though it’s not actually a game. It’s a mathematical experiment. You’ll see what I mean. Check it out and make sure to read the whole page. It actually is quite fascinating.

If you feel the urge to dumb yourself down a bit today then check out these totally useless but sort of cool sites. They are courtousey of LadyGwen over at the DDB.

• Remember this piece of crap? I hated it then and I hate it now.
• Oh this is much better. So pretty…
• This doesn’t make you dumber, it just makes you feel dumb.
• This is just plain cool.
• I only spent 13 minutes of my life on this one.

I need to go prepare for something. See you in a month.