NaNoWriMo tips for next time

Well, as I pass the 75% mark of my novel and start realizing the need to wind down the story and tie up all my plot and such I also realized that I need to write down some of the things I discovered along the way. It would be a waste to go through all this, have a bad 50,000 word novel, and forgotten all of what I learned up to now. So here’s a brief list of some of the stuff I thought about while I was writing.

-50,000 Words really isn’t that much, especially if you have a lot of characters you want to describe.

-It would have helped a lot if I had known all the major conflicts I wanted to put in so that I could story board them ahead of time.

-I find my characters magically progressing through the plot rather than experiencing any interpersonal conflicts that would make it interesting.  I kind of pretend like they happened anyway and write about what I wanted to have happened later on.

-I think it’s better to introduce most of the characters fairly early, only 1 or 2 to come in later.  I just didn’t get a chance to really flesh them out so they end up just being tag-a-longs.

-I have no idea what a subplot is.

-My characters need more motivation for their weird actions, I’m having to figure that out as I go and it doesn’t always seem genuine.

-A running tab of the characters and their background info would be a useful reference sheet so I wouldn’t have to scout back through and see what I wrote 20,000 words prior.

-Consistency would have been good, I think I lacked that when I drastically changed the way my protagonist acted without much of a clear catalyst.  Dynamics are fine if they make sense…

10k Run

This morning I participated in Hidaka Village’s annual Mohei Marathon, which is actually a half marathon event including a 10k, a 3k, and a 1.5k run as well. Most of my students than ran participated in the 3k and 1.5k, largely depending on their age. I ran in the 10k placing 81/121.

I managed to run the whole thing in 58′21″ which I thought was pretty good. I was happy to keep the time under an hour, meaning I averaged roughly 6 minutes per kilometer. When you figure that a kilometer is the better part of a mile that means I was probably running between 8-12 minute miles throughout the run. I’m not a runner, I occasionally got for 1-3k jogs to stay healthy but I haven’t done a distance like that since high school. It was fun and I think I’ll probably participate next year too.

I’m still behind on my novel. Im going to force myself to catch up tonight and tomorrow. It’s getting more and more difficult to just write crap because I’m rather connected to what’s going on, even though what I’ve written so far isn’t that good. I want to try to make it good, but I really need to just focus on finishing for now. Even if I try to make it good that doesn’t mean it will be good and I think some of the best parts I’ve written up to now were things I hadn’t planned that just came out while I was trying to meet the word limit.

December is for revisions, November is for spitting out more words per hour than you ever thought you could! w

NaNoWriMo 50%

25,000 Words, half way, getting there. The Plot pieces are assembled. Now it’s more or less time to just knock em down one by one. Havn’t figured out the ending yet. It might be a shocker.

JET Program

So, I’ve decided that the JET Program is a lot like College. Except that we’re the foreign teachers, the campus is way spread out, we are the opposite of broke, and we start out the program with a drinking problem rather than ending it with one.

So that analogy doesn’t really go that far unless you force it. But there’s some inkling of that feeling of peer colleagues that’s a little different from “real” work life but resembles the feeling of peer classmates and drinking buddies.

Also all JETs don’t have a drinking problem, just Kochi ones. Just kidding… Kochi JETs don’t have a drinking problem, they’re just generalizably talented at drinking, whereas everyone else is less so.

Making headway on my novel

I’ve broken the 10,000 word threshold with my novel. I’ve never written this much of a single story before and it’s awesome. I more or less know where I’m going with it and I’m largely pleased with my writing so far. No, it’s not publishable quality, but I wasn’t expecting it to be. Besides, maybe after a finishing and revising a few drafts it could be. Check out my user page on NaNoWriMo’s website

Iya Valley and trans-Shikoku travel

Okay so it’s purely amazing how much time difference the most direct mountain roads and the toll expressway have between eachother. It took us like 6 hours from The northern part of Kochi prefecture to get to the middle of Tokushima. Then it took only 1.5 hours to get back by toll road. Granted the toll was like 20$ without the ETC card thingy, but still it’s totally worth it for how much easier of a drive it is.

Anyway, Iya Valley was gorgeous. The leaves were every color leaves can be. Walking on the vine bridges was pretty scary even with the cables laced through them. Lots of places to twist your ankle if you’re not careful, and they move whenever someone else takes a step.

I had my first Onsen experience, and it was awesome! Pretty cheap place that only cost 1000 yen (10 bucks) and it was pretty nice. Felt great afterwards, I’d do that every weekend.

November hits

Sweet. I am rockin and rollin’. Actually that’s a cover up, but my true emotions are a well guarded secret that only the characters in my NaNoWriMo story know about. I’m pumping them full of feeling, sapped from my real life wants, desires, hates, fears, and fantasies. It’s awesome, Novel writing month kicked off and I’ve already passed the daily quota of 1666 words I’m over 2300 and plan on doing near 3000 by the end of the night.

Right now I’m cooking up some chicken, cabbage, bean sprouts, and left over stir fry. Gotta get some nutrients before our trip to Iya Valley tomorrow. Matt and I are going outside the prefecture for the first time since we’ve been in Kochi. Totally stoked to see one of Japan’s “Hidden Valleys”. After that we’re meeting up with my friend from Tokushima.

Saturday Tyler and I made our way down to Irino beach. I tried out my new surfboard. It’s fuckin’ difficult, but that’s okay. I loved being in the waves and trying my best to ride them in to shore. I couldn’t stand up on this board, but I think I’ll be able to after a few weeks of practice in spring. It was glorious to be out on the beach again and it reminded me once more how much I love this prefecture of Japan.

The awesomest thing ever, last night a semi-coworker from the town office had a halloween party for several kids from the village. They actually organized a neighborhood trick-or-treat. I was blown away. The kids costumes were so legit too, and the neighbors loaded them down with candy. It was just like Halloween in the states would be on a good year. I’m so happy about the people around here and how open to new things and new ideas they are. P.S. Halloween is not a Japanese holiday, they mostly just decorate stores and such and have a costume party or two. Trick-or-treating is still a foreign concept entirely.

Tour of my apartment

I posted an HD video tour of my apartment on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCAaXd0wKfw Give it a look see. The thing I’m about to say at the end of it is, “I might put some flowers out here”

I Made my dinner very japanesey

I Made my dinner very japanesey, originally uploaded by Mark Mrwizard.

a new flavor of evil

Ever wonder why I titled my blog this?  Well it’s not that long of an explanation actually but it has multiple facets. After I graduated high school I wanted to change my AIM screen name away from LHS Mark J, because I wasn’t reppin’ Liberty High School anymore. I was particularly fascinated by the concept of absolute good and evil and convinced that there was no such thing. As such I made my new screen name with evil in it, and went with EvilestMark. Furthermore this had a nice parallel with my brother’s screen name which comprised the same grammatical format, “AdjectiveName”. When studying abroad in Tokyo I found with my friends that my first name could be represented by two very interesting chinese characters, 真悪. The first is pronounced “Mah”, and the second “aku”. When transliterating from English to Japanese, “r” sounds towards the end of syllables like in my name “Mark” turn into long vowels. 真 means something like truth, reality, or similar. It’s also used in 写真 “shah-sheen” which are the characters for photograph, as in “capturing reality” as well as in 真っ白 “Mahs-sheeroh” which means absolute white. 悪 by itself means bad, evil, terrible, etc. When you put the two together most people I’ve talked to, and myself interpret it basically as “Ultimate evil”, “perfect evil”, “truly evil” or something that is essentially, and coincidentally equivalent to “Evilest”. I’m rather fond of this fact, especially since I didn’t know about it at all when initially selecting my screen name for AIM. Though there are many other ways of transliterating my first name into Chinese characters (Kanji), I choose this one because it either shocks the Japanese people I meet or makes them burst out in laughter. Either response I appreciate greatly.

The name of this blog in particular “a new flavor of evil” originated from my previous fascination in philosophical good and evil. I adapted my feelings about the absence of inherent goodness or evilness and decided that my perspectives could rightly be subjectively evil, perceived to be so by myself or others. At anyrate, who likes the same old same old? Not me. I like the new flavors of most anything So I figured my blogged views and commentary could represent a “new flavor of evil”.

For November is National Novel Writing Month I’m planning on using good and evil as strong themes in my book, beyond just the typical amount of protagonist repping the good and antagonist repping the bad, or some anti-hero. I want to really explore what that means. And I know it’s been done before, but it will be fun for me to try to write.