Scrivener

I have downloaded the free Beta 1 edition of Scrivener. It will be interesting to see how I go with it, I have already started a short story with it and I like how you can name the different pages

I have a beginning and alt beginning and its nice to see how they are separated.

I plan to finish the Dead Red Heart short story on there and see what I think :)

It is not very expensive, I believe it retails at $35-40 dollar, I am thinking that it will be worth the investment and I already ask a few authors on Vision writers group and I have good feedback.

Fantasy at its Most Confusing

I bought Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson yesterday.

I opened it full of anticipation of a great read, it sounded interesting and it had good reviews on the back cover, I never thought to look at the first chapter or read the authors introduction.

As I am reading the authors intro I am still thinking, ''Hey I'm a fan of fantasy, I don't mind reading something difficult, I don't mind reading books with alot of characters".

But the moment I started reading I was slapped in the face with Erikson's style. It is V-E-R-Y different from what I normally read. I will go as far as saying it is something that I will never read. The opening paragraph which is suppose to snare a readers attention, instead made me feel alienated and confused.

The opening paragraph is about a weather vane, but instead of crisp and clean details, the author uses many many descriptive words so that the reader is left floundering. I actually finished the paragraph thinking. 'what the' surely all that descriptive prose was not just about one object.

I kept finding myself going back and rereading sections. I even flicked through the rest of the book and read parts, but it seemed that he never got into a lighter read, one section had a lot of head hopping and I think that is what he warned about in his introduction.

I respect authors that try something different and I am not criticizing him as a author, I am simply making a statement about how hard this is for me to read, and how this style of book is the most confusing for me to read.

I believe that he could of gathered alot more fans if he had simplified his writing, but as an artist, he cannot change who HE is for us.

No possible way LOL

There is no possible way I can finish NaNoWriMo this year. There is a couple of reasons for it,

A) I am not used to writing that fast and really struggled, it was taking me 1.5-2 hrs to write about 500-700 words. I tried breaking it up and writing two and three times a day but there was not enough hours left in the day LOL

B) I have to print out all my study notes for Uni, and I need to participate online with other students, as well as do my Uni readings, impossible to do with the full on writing schedule.

so my decision is this:

I will still continue to participate and write but it will be fitted in around my schedule, even if I can write 25,000 words it will be better then nothing. OR I have a short story competition that I want to submit to which is due December 1st. I might use that for my nanowrimo word count so that I keep things positive.

Ugh! I hate failing.

Harder than I thought!

UGH!

Nanowrimo is harder than I thought. I just can't seem to let loose and write heaps. I usually like to take a long time writing my paragraphs so that I don't have to re-edit to badly.

There is NO way that I can do that this time and manage to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I think that Nanowrimo is going to take me completely out of my comfort zone and shake me up.

Its good to be challenged though.

On another note. I started Uni yesterday. Well I was suppose to LOL but I have had issues with enrolling so all my course notes are late. I will have to start printing tonight. I expect that the next few weeks will be very very hard trying to juggle both Uni and Nanowrimo.

I almost forgot, I also want to write another short story for an anthology. Its due date is Dec 1st. To begin with I didn't know what I was going to do but I had a few great ideas last night, so it will be great to finish that in time as well.

I might need to have my head read after all this LOL!!!