NaNoWriMo: Day One

I don’t know about this. I’m sure I’ll get back into the swing of things soon, but I only managed to write about 800 words tonight. I was still remembering how my plot worked, though, and looking through my copious notes (thank goodness I took plenty) to remember what subplots I was setting up and what my characters’ motivations were.

I read an interesting and helpful character development exercise on one of the NaNoWriMo message boards, which was in turn ganked from a Harry Potter role-playing message board:

The BEEP test is a form of character development, using the following four things: Boggart, Expecto Patronum, Mirror of Erised, and Pensieve.

1) Boggart – What would your character’s Boggart turn into? This is your character’s worst fear; nothing can define a character like their weaknesses. They are what make us human. (And nobody likes a Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu)

2) Expecto Patronum – What would your character’s Patronus be? What protects them? What might they think of to conjure a patronus? This is a character’s strength.

3) Mirror of Erised – What would you see in the mirror? Your character’s deepest, most secret desires.

4) Pensieve – What memories would your chaarcter put into the Pensieve? What recollections are their most treasured? Their most private? The most burdensome?

That actually helped me decide how to develop my main character, as he needs some serious development. Getting into the thick of the plot is going to be interesting, too, as I just read my whacked-out web of plots and who’s-deceiving-whom. I also need to work on my writing style, as I find it to be much more laborious than my standard blogging style, which I kind of like better.

I hope I can do this… and even if I don’t get my 50,000 words in a month, no biggie. At least I got my finally story back out of mothballs.

NaNoWriMo

Well, I did it. I joined up for National Novel Writing Month. I’m starting with 17,180 words, so my goal by the end of the month is 70,000 words total.

This story has been sitting dormant for a couple years now, and NaNoWriMo is as good an excuse as any to get going on it again.

…Just so long as I get my Mom’s birthday present done before the end of November, too. Yeesh… I’ve got my free time pretty much tied up, eh?

Lunar Eclipse

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times:

Always have an extra camera battery.

It would also help to remember to turn off your camera after the last use.

Fear not, though: the lunar eclipse photography attempt was not completely in vain. I got some good shots of the partial eclipse (I hope), and a couple good ones of the last sliver of moon before totality. Just as I was ready to take the last photo before the total eclipse, though—that was when my battery finally gave out.

So, no photos of the absolute total eclipse, but that’s no biggie. I’m wagering that my setup wasn’t quite equipped to take photos of totality, since my 2x extender cuts my aperture by 1/2 while it multiplies my focal length by two. Meaning, for the photo-savvy, that my teleconverted telephoto lens wide-open is about a 400mm f/8 lens. For the non-photo-savvy, all this means is that while my gadget makes faraway subjects bigger in the frame, less light can get to the film, making for less successful low-light photography. Like total lunar eclipses.

We’ll see, though. I’ll post photos as soon as I get them back from Dale, and we can discuss.