I just looked at when my last post was. 23 October?! Yikes!

So what have I been up to? Well, it was November, so my long time readers know exactly what that means for me: National Novel Writing Month. It managed to successfully eat my life pretty much all month, and now I am 70,060 words towards a first draft of a gothic horror/thriller novel. And I think that I might have found what I should be writing. Of course there is still a ton to do before this story ever sees the light of day, especially since the first draft isn’t even finished yet.

Still, I had some massive writing days (in excess of 6,000 words) and I sat down and pounded out a few thousand nearly every day. I hit 50,000 words (the NaNoWriMo “finish line”) at the end of the 14th. There were only a few days where I didn’t sit down and write something.

As always, this year was a bit of an experiment. In addition to writing in a different genre (yet again), I also used a different writing tool. It was still my trusty MacBook, but rather than using a word processor, I used Journler. Each day I started a new entry and tagged it as part of NaNoWriMo 2008. I had a smart folder that collected all of those entries so that I could spit the whole thing out as a single file. But each day I sat down to a blank page. At the bottom it gave me the word count for that entry, which meant that I knew immediately whether I had met my daily goal or not. And because I could not easily go back and reread work from previous days, it kept me from continually checking what I had previously written. While it might not work for some projects, for NaNoWriMo it was perfection (or close to it).

In addition to being Novel Writing Month, November is also National Solo Album Month. The goal is to write and record roughly a half hour of music during November with no outside help. I had heard about it a few years ago and have been wanting to give it a try. I thought that it might be a good excuse to finally write that goth album I have wanted to write for the past twenty or more years. In the end, though, I ended up with about 20-25 minutes of sketches and demos which will mostly wind up on the second Maniac Art Pond album, once I have reworked them. I know that I have still to wrap up Winter Colors, but these fit the theme that I had been planning on for the second album. I am hoping to make significant progress on both over the next two months. It would be fantastic to be able to release them both next autumn.

I think that this might be the last year for both NaNoWriMo and NaSoAlMo for me, at least for a few years. I have so much raw material to go through and polish that I think I could use with a break. There are a few other challenges that I would like to do, though. Feburary Album Writing Month, with the goal of writing fourteen songs in twenty-eight days is, not so surprisingly, in February. April is now Script Frenzy, and I think that it might work out well for me now that they have significantly reworked the rules. Of course, I may simply sit down and work on the scripts that have been on the back burner for the past few years without the help of the challenge.

First comes the holidays, though, and all of the work leading up to those. My stomach knots just thinking everything that I want to have done before I see my family again.

Tschuess.

Let me begin by noting that my final National Novel Writing Month word count was 51,807, marking my third successful NaNoWriMo. The story is basically done. There are a few scenes that need some filling in once I have gone back and reread it, analyzed what did and what did not work in the plot structure, and reevaluated the roles the characters really play in the overall development. For the time being, that is all that I am going to say about it, other than that it is a noir story tentatively titled Death is My Job.

Now it is December, though. Since the month of novel writing is over, I can finally devote my creative energy to the album that I have been working on all year. The last few nights I have sat down for the first time in over a month and worked on that. I made some decent progress on the opening track. It still needs more work, but one of the core themes is worked out now, I think, as is a really nice string figure. As I often do these days, I did my writing on guitar and then scored what I worked out so that it will be easy to make changes as the piece develops. When I am done with everything, I will go back and record live guitars.

Here is the road map for the tracks on the new album. I am not giving any titles yet. Even though I am blogging this, I do like to keep some secrets.

1. This track is moving forward well. Right now it is a bit repetitive, so I need to work out a way to work in more movement.
2. Right now I only have vague ideas. I had a flash of inspiration in the shower a month or so ago, but it was gone by the time I sat down to record it. This one is likely to be the hardest, since it will be substantially different from all of the other tracks, and making it fit in with the rest of the album will be tough. The rest of the album is very minimal and soundtrack-y. The first part of this is more of a rocker.
3. This used to be integrated with the next track. When I was in Boulder with Kristi in October, I decided that it should be its own piece. The sounds did not translate from Garage Band to Logic and I also want to replace the synth pad with a string part. I am going to use this work as an opportunity to make another pass at this. The same idea, but hopefully something better realized. A few evenings of work will probably have this ready to be demoed.
4. This piece for guitar and piano is pretty much done. When I moved it over to Logic, I stripped out the synth pad and also expanded it slightly in the middle section. I think that this works even better now than it did before. This is the piece that has set the bar for the rest of the album and has slowed down progress so much.
5. I am imagining this to be along the lines of k | drouble, but expanded and with more movement. If I just sat down with this for a few evenings, this would be done.
6. The concept of this one has evolved significantly since I started working on the album. I am now envisioning this as a light and positive piece. Other than that vague statement, I do not have any of this worked out. This will likely be one of the most difficult pieces to write.

I plan to have tracks 3, 5, and possibly 1 largely wrapped up by this time next week. Wish me luck on that.

Tschuess.

50,086 out of 50,000 words.

I do have a bit more writing to do to wrap things up, but I just wanted to note that I just crossed the finish line. Woot!

Tschuess.