wallwalker

Figured I'd post goals separately, since these are technically monthly things..

( December results/January goals )

First week of Meta Month is done, check the link if you want to see the list so far. (I'm still open to suggestions.)

I made progress on NaNo novel for the first time in a while... not as much as I'd like, but y'know, it's progress. It's taken me almost a month to write what I wrote in about five days before. I should really write with a group more often.

...I should hit the third thing I need to work on tonight, which is Yuletide. But I'm not sure I'm up for it. I might go to bed early instead.

Posted first day of Meta Month a day late. I've got to stay on top of it better than this. (To be fair, yesterday was basically this: Work - Lunch - More Work, Stay Late - Get Home - Drive Across Town Twice - Hunt For Things We Need For Later - Drive Back Across Town For Game - Come Home - Crash In Easy Chair. Not much downtime there.) Second post will come later today! First day is basically just an introduction - I figured letting people who don't know me well see where I'm coming from is a good idea.

( Goals )

So you've heard of Write or Die, right? The answer seems to be "probably," because lots of people swear by that site, myself included. It's helped me through many a tight spot, writing-wise. And that's good.

But sometimes, you want something like this, but not quite so draconian. Sometimes you want the carrot rather than the stick. If you want this, and you're a cat lover, you might want to check out Written? Kitten! The concept is simple: Write 100 words (or more - you can choose the levels at the bottom of the page) and you get a cute picture of a kitten. Keep writing, and you keep getting more kittens.

It's very adorable. I find it helps me a lot; I've shared it with my local WriMos with mixed reviews (a few people said that the kittens were adorable, but sort of distracting when they were in a Word War.) It was especially nice for Word Wars for me, since someone else was timing them and I didn't have to worry about that aspect.

I really like this site! So far I've only had a few small issues and/or suggestions, which I should probably write up and e-mail to the creators.

1. A timer of some sort would be really nice for something like this. I still tend to prefer WoD for writing when I need to time myself; it has the timer function built right in. That's something that would make this site far more useful.

2. The same pictures tend to repeat a lot. I suppose that's not entirely the site's issue, since they pull their images from another site - and I'm hoping no one ever realizes that and decides to troll! - but it is something that I noticed - I often got the same image three or four times in a two-hour write-in. I think it's partially related to the next issue, though.

3. On Chrome, at least, the site has a difficult time with deleting and restarting. Let me explain - if I write, say, 750 words, then delete all of them and start over, I don't seem to get another kitten for a long time - I suspect that I'd get one once I hit 800. I will test that later. At any rate, it means that if you want to use this for word wars and the like ,you need to refresh every time you need to restart to get an accurate count AND see fresh kittens. And I think that contributes to the frequent repeats, too.
[ETA: Tested it, confirmed my suspicions exactly - if I stop writing at 320 and then delete it, and I'm supposed to get a new picture every hundred words, I have to write to 400 to get a new picture, unless I refresh the page. So if you should want to use it for successive word wars or whatever, then you have to refresh.]

Other than that, though, it's an adorable little widget, and it helped me at the last NaNo write in a lot, so if you like kittens, give it a shot.

Word Count: 41,352/50,000!
Time spent writing: About... three hours? That's my best guess.
Yays: Well, I got through a particularly difficult scene, although it was technically an add-on to a previous one.
Boos: Same as Day 11, am honestly feeling a bit of motivation issues, the feeling that no one really cares. Also, am concerned that once I hit 50K there won't be any motivation for me to finish the novel. :/ It's happened before.

We'll see.

Catching up with this.

Days 7 and 8 - literally nothing. Partially because I was distracted by fic_promptly and Shadowrun. I did write quite a few words - about five thousand between the two days - just nothing I counted for NaNo. (I've done the "Everything I write in November counts!" thing before, and I think it's a fine way to approach things, if it helps you get your words out. I just think that since my other goal is to finish the rough draft of In The Sporelands, it would help motivate me if I only count the writing I do toward that goal.)

Day 9 - Um. So. First we had the write-in run by one of our MLs (who apparently lives around the corner from me.) I was there for three and a half hours, and about half of that was word wars. Apparently I average about 950 words in fifteen minutes. I came very close to hitting 25K while I was there, and subsequently managed to hit 25K a few hours later at home.

Then my brain started saying, "Hey, you managed to write seven thousand words just that morning. Why not see if you can write five thousand more and hit 30K before the end of the day?" And since it turned out we weren't going to end up going out that night, I eventually gave it a shot.

Long story short, I ended the day with 30,005 words. O_o

Day 10 so far: Woke up early, have to leave for work in fifteen minutes. Fired up Write or Die shortly after waking up. Decided to see if I could get a thousand words in fifteen minutes, before breakfast.

Total word count: 31,079.

...part of me is really wondering why I've never finished a big bang when I'm apparently capable of this kind of output. O_o (Then again, I've never had trouble reaching word counts for big bangs - I just can't finish the stories!)

Granted, this is rough draft stuff that I'm kind of embarrassed to share with anyone right now. I'm maybe a third of the way through the plot at this point, with that many words. And I'd estimate that at least a quarter of these words are going to be gone in the first rewrite. But still, I'm honestly shocked. Apparently getting enough sleep really does make all the difference, on a side note. I need to keep doing that.

Hoping for at least another thousand tonight.

Total today: 15608/50000. So I've only written about 400 words today. This is unsurprising; it was a busy day.

We'll see if I can keep any words coming at all over the weekend. Frankly, it'll be tough. Tomorrow will be as busy as today. Sunday afternoon is a possibility if I skip LARP to nap.

More data and snippets later. So tired.

I'm honestly a bit stunned.

Total so far: 10,059/50,000
Time spent writing: Again, not sure. I think that it was about five more hours? Thank goodness for days off, anyway.
Snippet: Hard to find one right now - ten thousand words in and we're not even out of the first town yet. (I call it FFVII syndrome.) I'm close, though. Will probably get out tomorrow.
Currently Distraction: EBZ, mostly.

It's good that I'm ahead, to be frank, because being done before things get crazy would be nice.

Food for thought. Inspired by this.

Pop tarts will keep on a shelf darned near indefinitely. In contrast, fresh fruit spoils after a week, if you're lucky. Same with most meat and fresh vegetables. Bread's slightly better, but still a crap shoot; I've had some loaves of bread last me for weeks without spoiling while others were moldy after six days. I'm not sure what's going on there, frankly. And milk/dairy lasts... maybe a month, if you're careful about sell-by dates and can store it properly. (Not accounting for freezing, here. Freezing helps, if you have the means.)

Anyway. Say you're missing some of the conveniences that you've thus far enjoyed in life. You don't have a reliable fridge/freezer, or the one you have is shared and you have little space. Maybe you don't have a reliable stove. Maybe you don't have a lot of free time - maybe you work two jobs to make ends meet and still have to feed a family. Maybe you don't have a car to drive back and forth from the store; you have to take a bus or get a ride from a friend, if you're lucky, and if you're not you walk. (I've had to rely on walking to and from a store for all of my groceries before; it was not fun. And that was with a grocery store that was only a little over a mile away!) Or maybe you don't have a home at all.

My point is, under those circumstances... which of the above foods is going to look more attractive to you? The "healthy" or "real" food that you might not be able to store properly, that you might not have the resources, time, energy or any of the above to cook, and that will more likely spoil before you can actually eat all of it? Or the pop tart, which keeps forever in a little box on a shelf, can be eaten out of hand without any trouble, and will keep you alive and nourish you enough to get you through a few hours?

It's not enough to just tell people that pop tarts aren't good for you and that they should buy "real food." Education is important - it's a good idea to teach people how to cook and keep a kitchen, because so many of us just don't know - but it can't make up for lack of time, proper cookware, or proper storage and facilities. It is possible to eat healthier on a lower income if you have the knowhow and the proper tools, but it has to be taught with the person's individual situation in mind; there's no one-size-fits-all solution. And it's too easy to get stuck in that way of thinking - "Well, X worked for me, so it'll work for everyone." Sure, you can get cheap fresh produce in bulk - IF you have a freezer, or a lot of people to help eat it. Otherwise half of it will spoil, and no matter how cheap it was, if it goes bad before you can eat it, you've wasted the money you spent. Sure, you can get to a store that sells decent food for a decent price - IF such a store exists within a distance that you can reasonably travel to, then travel back while carrying said food. Tall order, if you don't have a car and the store isn't right down the street - if it's on the other side of town, well, some towns have decent mass transit but other towns don't. For so many people, fresh food is a luxury, for those and so many other reasons.

I'm not saying that eating as healthily as possible isn't a good thing, mind you. I'm a strong believer! If you have a choice between an apple and a pop tart to eat today, and choosing one over the other isn't going to cause any big problems, I would say to go for the apple every time. But I just want people to acknowledge that it just isn't always possible to eat the way that the guidelines tell us we should eat. There's no way to find solutions if people can't recognize the problem.

This happened because of someone on another site pointing me towards an anthology that was asking for, among other things, post-apocalyptic fiction. I immediately perked up, because post-apocalyptic fiction of various stripes is an interest of mine, and went to check out the link and read the details. However, the anthology is requesting post-apocalyptic fiction wherein civilization was destroyed via "natural" causes - climate, disease, meteors, that sort of thing. And I was turned off.

How can I enjoy this genre when I'm turned off immediately by so many of its possible causes? This is me trying to figure it out. And the preliminary conclusion that I've come to is this: I am a fan of post-apocalyptic fantasy, not necessarily post-apocalyptic fiction.

( What's the difference? Some thoughts below the cut. )

So, since I haven't found very much recently (or, honestly, had the chance to look for it) that really pings me in that regard, does anyone reading this have some recommendations?

Notes:

- Any type of media would be welcome.
- Video games: I have access to a PS3, a decent (if not brand new) gaming PC, a Gamecube, a PSP, a DS and a PS2, so as far as games go I can access a decent range.
- Books: Most likely I'll be able to pick up a book from the local library; eBooks are somewhat more problematic, but if you can think of a really good suggestion, feel free and I'll see what I can do.
- TV/Movies: Aside from possible DVD rentals, I can stream movies and TV episodes on Netflix, so if you know of anything there, let me know. I'm open to animated or live-action, from any country of origin.
- Fanworks: I'm all for post-apocalyptic interpretations of my various fandoms, or good fanworks of post-apocalyptic canons that deal with aspects of the canon that weren't considered very important by canon. Check out my AO3 profile; look at the list of fandoms in which I have works. Pretty much any one of those would be fair game, for starters!
- General: If at all possible, I'd really, really like narratives that prominently feature characters other than the standard Straight White Guys going out and saving the world. I'd like to see plots where various sorts of minorities are allowed to be awesome, please.

Thanks in advance, everyone.