Reading: King Rat by China Meiville
Music: John Hartford's "Me Oh My, How The Time Does Fly"
TV/Movie: Sunset Blvd.
Link o' the Day: Cortland Comic.
Wordcount for current Novel-in-a-Month - Day 1: 1,920

Okay, so the past few months were still full of silence from me despite being on second shift and having a lot of unsupervised time to myself and access to the internet.

What did I do with that time? Mostly freelance, a little bit of writing, a lot of web-browsing.

Now I'm back on first shift again, getting up early, heading out early. Working days and taking busses. So far, so good. It's busier during the day, but I don't mind that. There's more random noise to contend with, but I can deal with that.

What will this mean to writing? Who's to say?I think it may actually work out okay. By the time I'd be done with my actual work on second shift, I'd be too mind-tired to write. I couldn't do much more than brainlessly browse the web. Now when I go home, I can recharge with a short nap. Make dinner, and write around freelance work and maybe take better advantage of the time.

We'll see, as I'm trying out something special this month. Traditionally, November is the NaNoWriMo month, but I'm going to try it in October. Same number of days, and if I had waited another month, I'd have overwritten my pre-writing, and would likely have gotten nowhere.

Yesterday I produced 1,920 words. My minimum daily is 1,700. These numbers are just a touch higher than the "standard" minimums, but I'd rather be over than under.

Now the funny part of this, I decided to tackle this about two weeks ago, and said to myself, "Self, you got two weeks to get your outlining and characterizing and researchizing and all that other izing done. Then it's to work, me boyo!"

Well that's what I did. I spent two weeks roughing out and refining plotlines, characters, and scenes. I filled up a stack of index cards with such. Then last night, I sit down to write, and what happens? (Some of you might have guessed already.)

I went in an entirely different direction. I chucked all my pre-writing notes and am tackling a storyline that I have only the vaguest notions regarding. Hell, it's not even the same genre. The original was an urban fantasy sort of tale. This is more along the lines of a thriller. I don't know anything about writing thrillers, but I'm doing it anyway. We'll see what direction this goes in.

On a totally different tack, one other nice thing about this new workshift is that I get to return to the Tuesday night Irish music sessions at Patrick's Pub. It'll be interesting playing there again. I've fallen out of practice with playing in a group, and while I did get a chance to practice a bit at a slow session last week, it wasn't really the sort of speed I'm used to having to play at. I've taken the resonator off my banjo so that when I play this Tuesday, it'll be a touch more quiet, and I'll be able to hear myself more, and then get back into the right reel swing.

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Today's link is a webcomic--who's surprised? Anyway, this is the only webcomic I've seen that addresses the kind of work I do, the kind of customers I work for, and the kind of people I deal with as a professional typesetter/layout artist. It's a comic, but it's not too far off. Enjoy Cortland Comic.

Cheers!