On Writing And Then Writing

I was suffering a little at the start of the weekend from a lack of progress on the writing front. The Oaks Grove was a little stalled on 10,514 words, and while I knew a little of what I needed to write I had no concrete plan. A quiet chat with the E.I.C. solidified the plot lines, and enabled me last night to complete the chapter plan. I know form last time that with a chapter plan my writing becomes a lot more fluid.

I decided today to attempt to write a big hunk of the work. This would get me back in the flow, and bring back on target to finish NaNoWriMo which is to write 50,000 words in a novel in one month. At nearly half way through the month I had only written 10,000. Well today, after writing on and off for thirteen hours, I started at 8.30 in the morning and have just finished for the day at 9.30 at night, I have lifted the tally to 20,534 words. A total of 10,020 words in a day. A unit known as a Lowell to some of us in podcasting, after the author Nathan Lowell who has been known to regularly complete that number of words in a day.

I might do it again, I don’t know, but I do know that this story is now well and truly on track to be finished before Christmas, and that I can achieve the NaNoWriMo target . I have 17 days to write just under 30,000 words, which is just under 2,000 a day. Very doable, especially if I can convince the family to let me write for a full day again next Sunday!

Movember Redux

 

Being A Fan Boy For Nathan Lowell Wearing My Quarter Share Shirt

You have probably seen of those shows Ten Years Younger In Ten Days. Well this is Ten Years Younger in Five Minutes!

For Movember I had shaved most of the beard, leaving a Dirty Sanchez Moustache!  That was a big cheat…

So in the spirit of it all, I am now, for the first time in long while, clean shaven. But I won’t be growing a moustache or a beard for a while.

 

Vacuum Pack And Quarter Share

Today was a good day for mail. We had two parcels, one from America and one local.

The first parcel was our hardback copy of Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell. We first found Nathan on podiobooks.com, and for both the E.I.C. and myself his series was the one that really made us fans. We have listened to the entire series of five books multiple times. The thing is it’s a bit strange to read the story that we now know so well. The E.I.C. described at as meeting a dear old friend after having some sort of plastic surgery. Strange but cool. It was a lot like that when I received our copy of Scott Siglers The Rookie.

The other parcel was the prize pack of Vacuum Packs. It was strangely fun storing stuff in them…

Anyway below is a photo of the book and our blankets all safely stored.

More On The Golden Clipper Podiobooks

We have finished our binge of the podiobooks by Nathan Lowell in his Golden Age of The Solar Clipper series. It didn’t take long for us to run through all five books, especially when you are listening to three or four episodes a night. It might have to admit to the fact that some of the lake of diligence displayed in my writing other the last two weeks, may just have something to do with the fact that I needed to keep listening.

I have to say that the whole series is excellent, even though we found the second in the sequence the most challenging, but I can see why he put it in there. I will be awaiting the concluding story Owners Share which is due to drop sometime in 2010 with anticipation.  I  understand that Nathan is inking a deal to put the books out in print format. It will be interesting to see what differences emerge between versions after a professional editor has passed their pen over the manuscript. I will also be curious to see if Nathan re-releases the podiobooks updated to reflect any changes made in the print publishing process.

Now we need to figure out what we will listen to now.

Golden Age of the Solar Clipper – Review

We have had a real binge recently of listening to podiobooks. We not only found a good book, but it was the first part in a series of five others, all complete. The series is called A Traders Tale From the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper, and is written by Nathan Lowell. You can find his blog at Trader’s Diary.

So far we have listened to the first in the series Quarter Share, and the second Half Share. The first book was great. Nothing much happens, but it doesn’t happen really well. The story is just a gentle coming of age, dealing with changes in circumstances type story. No real drama, or conflicts. There is a whole chapter devoted to the main character making coffee. Not normally interesting, but the way it was written and read was just wonderful.

The second was not quite as fun, as Nathan took the story into dealing with issues about relationships on board a mixed gender space ship. The tone changed, and even though it was still well written and read, I just didn’t really like the change of tone so much. Hopefully on the next one he has got that out of his system and moves in another direction.