ROW80 Round 2 - 16th Update

Another check-in, another week with no novella writing being done :( I've still been busy though, writing the story for my interactive steampunk assignment. I've also set up the entire structure for the application in Flash; the programming, interface and navigation buttons are all complete. All that remains now is to set up the models in Google SketchUp and create my screenshots and animations. I know I said I was going to do that last week, but I got annoyed with SketchUp crashing every five minutes and decided I'd rather do the programming instead. Yes, I, who hate programming, decided it would be more fun writing code than using the steaming pile of sadness that is SketchUp. So now I'll be spending the next three days solid making things in SketchUp. Or, as is more likely, waiting for SketchUp to unfreeze.

Have I mentioned that I hate SketchUp?

While avoiding my assignment, I also stumbled across another site that looks interesting; She Writes. Basically it's like Facebook for writers, from what I can see. I've joined, so if anyone else is a member, you can add me here.

The assignment I'm working on now is the last for this semester. Once I've submitted it on Wednesday, I plan to spend a few days doing nothing but writing Dark and Silent Waters, though I may break out my Derwent collection and do some illustrations as well. It feels like I haven't touched my novella for a month - apart from squeezing in a few rushed writing sessions here and there - and I've had so many ideas and scenes churning around in my head that I really need to get them down on paper. Well, on screen. Up til this point I have pretty much failed to meet my 500 words per day goal - I did have a few days where I churned out one or two thousand, but not enough to make up for the days I didn't write. Hopefully with all assignments out of the way, I'll be able to power home through the last few weeks of ROW80 with a bit more to show for it.

Don't let Judgemental Dog catch you slacking off...

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ROW80 Round 2 - 15th Update

Not much to report this week. It's been one of those weeks where every time I try to do something, it blows up in my face. I managed to get my conference paper done, but it is - to put it bluntly - rubbish. Well, it probably wasn't terrible, but it's not to the standard I would have liked. I wasn't well and I was running out of time and I'd had no sleep, so in the end it was a case of "just get the word count and hope for the best". Then again, even if the theoretical structure isn't brilliant, I can at least console myself that it was grammatically correct and coherent.

And then I had no internet from Tuesday morning to late Wednesday afternoon because of an ISP fail, which normally wouldn't upset me that much... But I need internet access to be able to do my final assignment for the semester (I need to be able to download models from the online database for Google SketchUp). On the bright side, I did manage to write a few hundred words of my novella, even though it was from a later chapter. I also got most of the planning work for my assignment sorted out. Still, now I'm back to working on my Narrative assignment, wondering how I can create a steampunk world out of relatively few steampunk-themed models (aside from the odd dirigible, SketchUp doesn't seem to have a great selection for the genre). Once I've constructed the world, I'll be taking still shots and animations from it, which will be imported into Flash. Then I'll be adding some text and navigation buttons, so the end product will be a steampunk choose-your-own-adventure interactive story thingy. Lots of work involved, but it will be fun.

Are you worthy of Judgemental Dog's gaze?

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ROW80 Round 2 - 14th Update

*pauses while stuffing my face with the chocolates I got for my birthday* What's that? Time for a ROW80 update, you say? Very well...

I decided this morning that I didn't want to spend the whole day writing my dumb conference paper (I'm so sick of looking at it that it's not funny), so I spent a few hours working on my novella. Though I didn't make that much progress on the word count front (no more than 400-500 words), I did manage to actually finish the third chapter. Well, a first draft of it, anyway; I know that as soon as I reread it I'm going to want to pull it all to bits. So I now have the prologue, epilogue, chapters 1-3 and 8 completed, as well as random slabs of other chapters. After I hand in my conference paper (which is due tomorrow), I'm planning to spend another few hours on my novella, but after that I'll be working on my narrative assignment and I won't get much time to write again for a week.

Also, I got my results back for my conference paper presentation last Thursday: 95% High Distinction. This was a pleasant surprise, since I normally don't do brilliantly at any public speaking things. I'm one of those people who gets nervous talking in front of large groups of people and ends up speaking too fast, turning what was planned to be a 20 minute presentation into 10 minutes of horrified gabbling, interspersed with the occasional vague gesture at the slides. Add this to the fact that my presentation was fraught with mishaps and I'm surprised I didn't just have a breakdown in the middle of it, though I at least managed to get a few laughs from the class. I have included some choice quotes from the ordeal:

"I've examined the background literature and proposed a new method of looking at the issue." BANG! "And for your entertainment, I also hired a bird to smash into the window."
*after PowerPoint crashed for the third time in as many minutes* "This is why we don't pay for software, kids!"
"Many people don't like eBooks because they prefer the feel and smell of a paperback book. Though if they're the sort of person who makes a habit of sniffing books, I'd say they have bigger issues in life to worry about."
*responding to student asking how I made my diagram* "Yes, it was all very technical. I made a picture. Out of squares."

Anyway, I still have to finish writing the conference paper. It's been one of those assignments where I don't really know what I'm doing, so I've just been sort of winging it and hoping for the best. My word count for it is fluctuating because I keep writing stuff and then deleting stuff. At the moment I'm at about 1,200. It's meant to be between 2,000 and 3,000, but with all the background crap I have to put in, I'll most likely be nudging at the upper end of that limit. Which means I have to write more... *sigh* Once it's finished, I'll also be submitting it to some academic conferences, though since most of this year's deadlines have lapsed, even if it does get accepted, it won't be published until next year.

Ah well. Back to work I go!

*resumes chocolate-gutsing*

Judgemental Dog is happy, at least for the moment...

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ROW80 Round 2 - 13th Update

Not much to report this week; I've been alternating between working on my conference paper on eBook technology and interaction methods and tinkering with my multimedia narrative game prototype. While working on the latter, I managed to crash not only Google SketchUp, but also my whole computer. I achieved this feat by loading at least 30 dirigible models into one scene. In a way, I was a bit like that kid who pokes at a bullants' nest with a sharp stick; she knows it won't end well, but she can't help but see how far she can push her luck in the meantime.

I haz mad computer destruction skillz.

While avoiding working on my conference paper today, I also joined an interesting Twitter discussion about literary fiction versus genre fiction. It raised some fascinating arguments, which I've blogged about here.

Anyway, that's me over and out for another week. Better keep slogging away at my conference paper. So far I've written 1,000 words of that, but I need at least another 1,500. I also have to give a presentation for it tomorrow :( (I think that whoever decided making students do class presentations was a good idea should be hunted down with pitchforks and burning torches). I shall leave you under the watchful gaze of Judgemental Dog:

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ROW80 Round 2 - 12th Update

Since my update last week, I haven't had time to touch my novella. Which is really annoying, because the story has been kicking around in my brain a bit lately, and I would have liked to spend some time just getting those words on the page. Especially after doing the background work on it last week; I feel like if I'd just had time to sit down and write for a couple of days, I could have cranked out another few thousand words. Ah well. In about two and a half weeks I'll be handing in my final assignment for the semester, and I intend to spend the first week after that doing nothing but writing my novella, though I may also do a few illustrations.

On Monday I had to give my interim presentation to the IT staff at uni. It was fairly informal as it doesn't get marked, but the main purpose of it was to let other staff besides my supervisor know about my thesis and offer feedback or advice. My original topic was eBook interaction methods for fictional eBooks - already narrowed down a lot from my original ideas - but the general consensus was that I should take it a step further. Since I'd mentioned fantasy in some of my examples, and since I'm planning to use the first part of my fantasy novella in my Flash eBook prototype, it was suggested that I focus on what features and interactions users would most want in a fantasy eBook and problems fantasy readers sometimes have with paperback versions. This means my thesis prototype will let me muck around with writing, fantasy, illustration, graphic design and IT/multimedia. I basically get to combine all my favourite hobbies. Could it get any more awesome? I think not. Of course, refining my topic means I have to change my original plans for the prototype and my user survey and interview questions etc, which will involve a fair bit of work. But I think it's work I will enjoy doing.

Over the next week, I'll be working on my conference paper for my IT Research Methods subject, since I have to give a presentation for it on Thursday next week (I've finally picked a topic for it), as well as my Multimedia Narrative assignment. It's the assignment I'm most looking forward to; I'm creating an interactive steampunk story using the characters I drew earlier in the subject, but I still have to create the graphics for the background and interface. Thanks to my inability to just draw the characters and forget about them while doing the original assignment, I have the novel trilogy for them outlined, though I've had to change some key elements of the plot so it will work as a non-linear story. Now I'm just breaking it up so it can be presented as an interactive narrative with multiple paths, which is what I'll be doing for the rest of tonight.

Judgemental Dog doesn't understand the concept of deadlines:

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ROW80 Round 2 - 11th Update

Monday was spent editing my literature review and planning out my game narrative assignment. Tuesday was a write-off because I was at uni all day and at my nan's all evening, though I did tinker around with some world-building for Dark and Silent Waters when I got home.

Today I worked on my novella, went to the dentist to get tortured a bit, and then came home and worked on my novella some more.

Oh, my poor novella.

I was quite happy with the world-building I did on Monday, and I continued dabbling in that this morning as well. I've managed to develop a more thorough understanding of the mythology of the story - especially the laws and forces governing the supernatural characters and realms - and as a result I've fixed some of the plot holes that were in the story.

Unfortunately, this rendered a good few thousand words of what I'd written obsolete.

After the world-building stuff was done, I started reading over my novella so far, finding bits that were now either irrelevant or contradictory to how the world and the story worked. In the process I also found bits that were overly descriptive, bits that smacked of exposition and bits that were just poorly written. My inner writer curled up in a ball and cried, while my inner editor gleefully whipped out her red pen. Thus I went at it like a crazy machete-wielding word-ninja, hacking out paragraph after paragraph of narrative diarrhoea.

Looking at my word count after I'd finished was quite depressing; I'd reduced my novella from the 23/24,000 word mark to around 20,000 words. I don't really know how I could have got around it though, since I'd sort of hit a wall and wasn't sure how to continue on the path I was taking. I just hope that, now that things are clearer in my mind, I'll be able to take more steps forward and fewer steps back.

There's just no pleasing Judgemental Dog:

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ROW80 Round 2 - 10th Update

Ahem...

I FINISHED MY LITERATURE REVIEW! I FINISHED MY LITERATURE REVIEW! I FINISHED MY LITERATURE REVIEW!

*dances a jig, trips over the dog, hurts self, gets up, sits back at desk and hopes no one noticed*

Well, I still have to go through and proofread it and finish off a reference here and there, but essentially it is complete, at a total of 6,205 words and 36 references.

On a semi-related note, I feel that I must branch off into a brief rant.

I had always thought that academic papers - either journal articles or conference reports - were submitted to at least some form of standard control before being published. Obviously some errors will get through no matter how many times it's checked, but you would think that by the time it saw the light of day, it would at least be presentable. Now, I've been reading at least a few academic papers for years - being a uni student I didn't have much choice in the matter - but as most assignments only required you to read 5-10 of these articles, quality was something that generally didn't stand out; we just read the bare minumum, referenced quotes we needed and never looked at those articles again. However, now that I'm working on a thesis - which has required me to read upwards of 50 papers - I'm starting to see that problems in the writing are much more common than I thought. And I don't just mean incorrect referencing or misquoted facts. I mean problems with basic spelling and grammar.

I understand that some of these articles are written by people whose first language is not English, but since they were eventually published in an English journal or conference, shouldn't they still have undergone editing and checks for quality and coherence? While some of the errors were minor, some of them were quite substantial, either completely changing the meaning of the sentence or just rendering it impossible to understand. And it's not like it was just one or two sentences; there were at least three or four entire articles that I had to give up on reading because they were impossible to decode. They just did not make sense. I just have to wonder, how do these publications - or academic authors - have any credibility when they can barely string a few words together? Then again, I suppose it will improve my chances of getting my conference paper published later this year...

Okay, so that wasn't exactly brief, but it's a subject that frustrates me. Poor grammar irritates me enough coming from the general public, but from academics who are supposed to have a proper grasp of this sort of thing, it's unacceptable.

Anyhoo.

I'm not going over my literature review tonight, because I'm sick of looking at it, and even one more glance of a paragraph about eBooks will be enough to send me off on a homicidal rampage. Instead I shall try to bully my poor mushy brain into belting out at least a few hundred words of my novella, since apart from a short scene I wrote on Wednesday, I haven't really touched it for a few weeks. Tomorrow I'll look over my literature review before sending it off to my supervisor. I also really need to start on my two final assignments; a narrative game prototype and a conference paper. Though they're not due til early June, they're going to be massive assignments, and I also have to find the time to put together two presentations and keep tinkering with my eBook prototype.

I'm gonna need a lot of energy drinks.

I'm also hoping that this time Blogger doesn't throw a tanty and delete all my comments :\

He's a harsh taskmaster, is Judgemental Dog...

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