Nanowrimo progression after nine days at it
I’m not doing too badly. I’m 1000 words ahead of the minimum per day if you take the 1667 word per day rule seriously.
Might work up to 20,000 tonight. I’m just 4000 away…
That’s it. I’ve made it. I wrote 50,000 words in 25 days, That’s an average of 2000 words a day for 25 days. That’s a lot of writing. That’s a lot of re-writing. It was fun meeting some of these writers over the past two weeks and I look forward to at least one or two more meetups. In the meantime I’m one of those that have completed the task.
Let’s see how many others have achieved the goal.
50,000 words is a nice goal. I’ve already got ten thousand of those words in a document on google docs. My Nanowrimo attempt is exploring social media, new technology and the effect it’s having on human interactions. So far the ideas have been flowing. 5600 words the first day, 8000 the day after that and now over 10,000 four days in and I still have some writing time.
I’m really looking forward to writing the eighty percent that remain because it’s a learning curve. I’ve started making the chapters longer and attempting to elongate the scenes. I want to create an idea and elaborate. I don’t want to skip from one character to the other.
Two people already want to help me with the project but I really don’t want to start editing till I have the first fifty thousand words typed out.
Nanowrimo isn’t just about me though
There are quite a few people working on the project at the same time. Many of them are still struggling with ideas. Some are speaking about foregoing the social life to progress as far as possible. A few people have reached 10,000 words.
It’s a funny month for all of those deciding to take one of the national challenge month to fruition. There’s blogging, writing, podcasting, vlogging and I’m not sure what else.
There are many podcamps but Podcampuk was my podcamp. This was an event which was similar to just one previous experience. It was an event where everyone you talked to had at least one website and others may have had several. They also used twitter and prepared radio programs.
What is great about the podcast UK crowd is that they’re a creative entrepreneurial group. Rather than take a 9 to 5 job some work as freelancers. They have a variety of skills from drivers to information technology people, university and schoolteachers and more. They range in age from mid twenties and upwards. It’s a nice sample of people.
When I arrived on Friday night I heard John Buckley talk about his podcast Dissident Vox and it was interesting to see him describe the cost of creating podcasts. He was talking about time. For certain topics he would spend more than seventy hours researching the topic in order to gain an in depth understanding of his topic. Another podcaster mentioned how the personal nature of podcasts, reaching their audience through earphones, meant that he should be careful about how to present his research. In reality certain podcasters are highly informed people who want to present their ideas and worry as much as academics about what they present.
Podcasting I simpler than some thought initially. One great example of this is the presentation by Jason Jarrett who talked about how he had complicated his own life when learning about podcasting. Equipment requirements for podcasting are not as great as some had expected. He talked about how he had purchased one piece of technology and then another to attempt to resolve an issue he was having, sound in just one ear. It’s only after a few weeks that he was informed that the problem was mono sound. He was a great presenter getting many laughs from his audience.
Another presenter that was of interest is the one by Trevor Dann from the Radio Acadamy talking about broadcasting. What I got from his presentation is the contrast between professional sports and broadcasting. In both mediums people who are at the top of the scale can make really good money whilst those at the bottom do so mainly for the pleasure. One point which I thought was of particular interest was that of amateur cricket players not taking money away from the professionals. In other words both could cohabit quite easily. I really appreciated that sentence.
For months or even years I have been worrying about the new media and what effect it will have on me whilst I look for work. If more and more people want to get content for free and appreciate mediocrity would this mean that there is less space for professional content to be in demand. According to that speech I understood that whilst people’s consumer habits are changing the need and appreciation of well-produced work will still be great enough to make a living. In effect both complement each other.
As more and more people pick up a microphone and camera to create their content so the same passion from amateur footballers watching the best of the best is transposed from the amateur viewer to the professional player.
Podcasting has a great diversity of talent and some participants of podcamp UK looked at this from an education point of view. Joe Dale from the Isle of Wight was telling us about how he was using podcasting within the classroom. He is in charge of students ranging from 7 years and up and encourages them to create audiovisual content which will help them learn French. They have to produce, write and script their own shows. As a result of this they are involved in improving their written work as well as their aural skill. This is a great, and for young students, far more fun way of learning. It also creates an opportunity to link with people living in different parts of the world. If you’re in England and you’re learning one language then via the World Wide Web it is easy to reach a global audience who may give feedback as to how you could improve.
What made Podcamp UK so interesting is the European flavour of the event. One person travelled from Rome to be there whilst UK podcasters came from everywhere in England. As a result of this we saw what the British podcast environment has to offer rather than be limited by what’s going on in San Francisco. I’m glad I got to meet so many interesting individuals with so many interesting projects and I hope to remain in contact with them and see how their ideas progress. It was a great look at the podcasting sub-culture and how it’s progressed in parallel with mainstream media.
The lac de Joux eventually froze over completely. As a result of this you could walk on the ice. Some people were kitesurfing whilst others were having Marrons chaud. In one or two places you could see that the water level had decreased as a result of which the ice sheet had broken.
Walking across the ice was an interesting experience. The ice can be seen through. Due to recent snow melt on the ice you were walking through a few centimeters of water in place. The feeling is disconcerting.
Enjoy the beauty.
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Working with blocks speeds up the process of formatting posts because it allows for you to write each paragraph as a block of text and to insert images with ease.
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I would love to see us move back towards having websites, blogs and user-owned websites. I want to go back to when people enjoyed writing and sharing content without competing with hundreds of others. The beauty of a blog, as opposed to a Facebook, Linkedin or other posts, is that it can be multimedia rich. We can add images anywhere in the post and we can write information about them. We can share multiple videos at once and more
Using this plugin is a pleasure because everything you do is context sensitive. When you create a block you see what options you have. The tools you need appear when you need them as a result of which the experience is much cleaner. You can see the content you’re working on, rather than the tools. Writing software push that as a feature and now it will become a feature of Wordpress as standard.
I look forward to Writing many more posts with this plugin.