Archive for Steely Challenge

well…

{ October 4, 2008 @ 10:37 pm } · { Steely Challenge }
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It’s October 4th (so like me, all the time stating the obvious) and I haven’t even started on Steely Challenge. Don’t know if I will. Right now I’m busy getting things done (i.e. read) before November (and being madly in love with The Shoebox Project). I think I’m currently reading five or six books from the library, and I’d like to finish them within a reasonable time. I’ve also got school – maths, physics, physics lab, social studies, Finnish and geography and no doubt I’m going to have to write a lot of things. Plus I don’t really have any ideas for SC, and I don’t even really feel like writing.

I might not feel this way in the middle of the month. We’ll see.

Pathetic, I know

{ October 31, 2007 @ 9:21 am } · { Music, NaNoWriMo, Steely Challenge, TV }
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Less than 15 hours until the start-off of NaNoWriMo! I still have to write a couple hundred words of Steely, ’cause I didn’t really have time to write yesterday. I would have of course, but I was hunting for the best House M.D. intro music ever. Found it of course on YouTube, but I would really have liked to find an audio file. Well, you can’t get everything, but I really prefer that theme to the others. We of course don’t have the Teardrop intro, but the music was different in Season 1. I do hate the Season 2 intro music. What I am talking about is this piece of music. I know it’s not any longer than that, but I’d have thought someone had ripped it from the video or something. I found a link but alas, the site wasn’t working.

I really can’t wait for tomorrow. But now I’ve got almos two hours to win SC, so I guess I’ll be doing that. And then I was going to write a short Halloween piece but we’ll see what happens to that.

(And if anyone happened to have that House piece, please do tell me ^^)

Halfway Inn

{ October 21, 2007 @ 7:21 pm } · { Music, Steely Challenge }
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7:03 pm my SC wordcount was 5,003 which means halfway through! It always is a relief – knowing that you’re on the better side and now you’ve written more words than you still have to, and you can tell yourself that it’s only 6½ pages, no more, you can do it. And this gives also some guidance towards NaNo – if 10k makes 13 pages, 50k will mean typing through ~65 pages. I’m calculating this now, because I’ve changed my font from last year’s TNR size 12 to Verdana 9. Usually I write using Tahoma 8, which is quite small, but I’m not using it with long texts, because it eventually gives even me headache.

Of course I’ll be having an Open Office Calc sheet to show me how much I’ve written, how fast I write and how much there’s still to go to the day’s goal. I don’t know if it’s good for me – I find just staring at the graphs brilliant entertainment when I should be writing. Procrastinating is okay, but that’s just pathetic.

And I’ve got another six five minutes before the end of this twenty-minute halfway inn break. What to do? Change the song maybe – I’ve been having Within Temptation’s Our Solemn Hour (brilliance!) on repeat for the last 25 minutes. And Winamp gives me… Evanescence’s October. Suitable.

And in two minutes I’ll be back at my writing. Bye.

a 1000 words call out through the ages

{ October 20, 2007 @ 8:17 pm } · { Steely Challenge, TV }
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Wrote about 1,000 words of Steely today, so the total’s now something like 4,5k. I’ll make it, I swear, but my problems with maths won’t really help. And I don’t really like the story, today’s word count consisted mostly about a wizard telling about his history with a lady – a pairing I made up while playing Battle for Wesnoth.

The holiday’s almost over and no planning made for NaNo. Maybe I’ll get creative back at school. But I feel I’ve wasted my time and I’ve got to admit that I’ve been dealing a lot with my laptop. No more playing for me, doctor’s orders. But I watched one episode of Yes Prime Minister today and that was the therapy I needed. Humphrey-therapy I call it ^^
The Last Post thread! I should spend more time on the NaNo forums, but somehow I always end up blogging or something. Going now.

Just 21 days to go!

{ October 10, 2007 @ 3:33 pm } · { NaNoWriMo, Steely Challenge }
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The NaNo forums are up again! I’ve been getting very bad withdrawal symptoms, so I’m glad they’re back!

Also, I found this pretty handy tool called the Inspirator (click) from the Finnish Risingshadow forums. It’s still a beta, but customable, and I thought it a nice tool indeed. Basically it’s about generating plots, events, characters, almost anything.

Now to spam the forums again, as I’ve got a whole 45 minutes before my piano lesson.

(No progress made with SC whatsoever, but next week is holiday and for writing, and hopefully getting to know a bit about my NaNo characters.)

Writing and sewing and everything

{ October 7, 2007 @ 3:18 pm } · { Music, NaNoWriMo, Steely Challenge }
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I caught up a little with my SC text today, and wrote about 1,000 words, and I’m beginning to fear that 2k a day will be to much. Not despairing yet, but it seemed so easy last year, and now there’s the second year curse haunting me. But on the other hand – I tend to be inspired by deadlines. And I was thinking of writing most of SC in the last week of October on NaNo pace anyway.

I’m trying to be patient and understanding – it’s no wonder the NaNo site isn’t working very smoothly because of the new system and, well, the season. But for a forum-addicted person like me it’s so hard, when you just can’t get there because the server’s so busy. So I had to come up with other ways to keep me busy, so I took out my sewing machine, and made a practice version of the top of my dress for the Senior’s ball. It didn’t seem so hard to do, though the material will be more slippery than cotton ;)

But today the forums are accessible again. It’s definitely NaNo-season, you can almost sense the excitement, even though I’m probably the only NaNoer in my school. Luckily my friends understand me to some degree, so I can have my “wohoo, it’s November soon!!!” fits and they won’t wonder whether they should take me to the hospital.

And I just listened a couple of new songs from Tarja Turunen’s new album, Ciarán’s Well and The Reign. Sounds good to me, and I’m pretty sure I’ll get My Winter Storm when it’s released.

I’m getting so many ideas for NaNo, that I don’t know what to do with them. Write them in, obviously, because I certainly need all the material I can come up with (it’s so good I realised what my genre might be, now I can use Wikipedia as an endless source of help!), but how I’m going to put all the pieces together? I watched the video for Tarja’s I Walk Alone (very Lórienish scenes with Tarja in a Sharon den Adel-ish make-up, two children getting separated and lost in the woods, and then something darker – yes, we wants a forest, precious!) and that inspired something – nothing specific, but a couple more of vague ideas in my head.

I need to listen to more music, find more pictures and write that SC to get the routine, and now I feel ready for it!

NaNobanneri1

(I made some lovely banners, and this is one of them)

Shouldn’t be here

{ September 25, 2007 @ 6:11 pm } · { NaNoWriMo, Steely Challenge }
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I should be studying philosophy – got an exam on moral ethics tomorrow – but let’s face it, I’m here.

I spend just one and a half day without internet and what happens meanwhile? This blog has been ’sherlocked’ (not a difficult task, though, should’ve done… something *wink*) and I hear that we’ve got a new SC participant (welcoming Vehka!) Then I find myself an admin of a Steely Challenge site (feeling embarrassed now [22]). And a wonderful looong e-mail from NaNo-manager Chris Baty. I’m really looking forward to the NaNo site re-launching in October – there seems to be a lot of exciting things coming up! (Oh why did I start a writing blog – there’s probably going to be one there too. Well, I’ll have three then – who knows what I’ll come up with – maybe I’ll leave my lovely dark passion play unwritten for this time, and write a story of a girl trapped with four blogs and several other sites…)

I’ll just have to make people understand that I won’t have time for anything really. But it’s so fun! (Wanna buy some rewarding chocolate and write now!

To moral theories….

Steely Challenge

{ September 23, 2007 @ 3:57 pm } · { Steely Challenge }
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Miccoh challenged me to write 10,000 words in October as a warm-up for NaNovember. It’s going to be a piece of cake, thinketh the authoress, and yes, it is half of Screnzy. And I’ve got absolutely no ideas. Well, I do, but they’re not really well suited for SC. I’m thinking of writing fanfics and some short stories, but they’re just my last hopes for SC and projects for some other time. Well, I’ve got a week (when I should write 1,000 words+an English essay+take part in some exams!) to figure out what I’m going to write (unless I decide to try the NaNo-speed and only begin Oct. 25th or something ^^). And I’m dying to get to NaNo, I love how the scenes in my head just get darker and more grim.

Now where did that name come from? It’s somehow connected to me (can’t figure out how [22]). My usual nickname is Steelsheen, or then just Steel. It comes from the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, and I’m not going to repeat the story anymore, because there isn’t a story.

There will be cable ties and steel included, and perhaps me and the Traveling Shovel of Death(TM) will meet again ;)