Things I learned from NaNoWriMo that I’m using at work:
* Ignoring (finally) distractions.
* Sticking to it until the work is done rather than flitting between tasks.

Both are terribly bad for my shoulders and arms though.

I was irritable and unable to focus on Monday. I eat constantly if food’s in front of me (breakfast included chocolate) - if not, I can’t be bothered to fetch it or prepare it.

Yep, looks like seasonal depression is hitting me early this year. I’d better hit the Vitamin D, hard.

Evening Update: Strangely, this does not affect productivity at work - in fact, I’ve been unusually focused and productive all day, producing over 4000 words of new translations. I’ve also been much more organized; organization has been a known weak spot in my work performance but today and yesterday I’ve done fine at it. Just maybe the extra sleep has helped me after all.

Also, I’ve gone back to working on my NaNoWriMo project. It’s not easy but I will make quota and maybe a little more.

Second, here are my latest original scans for Invasion:

It’s slow going… it’s not so much a question of time as of motivation and priorities. For the weekends, my number one priority now is catching up on sleep. After that follow some time talking to Aggie online, grocery shopping, household and administrative chores, NaNoWrimo (during November only), and then working on ROCR if I still have time and energy. I find writing Feral particularly hard at that point so I work on Invasion first as that’s already scripted. The reason Feral is hard to write is because the original outline has been superceded by the shape the story ended up taking in execution. This means that I can’t end it on a cheap gag as originally planned and have to rethink in mid-story. This takes effort and concentration which I may not necessarily have in me. I do hope that the discipline of NaNoWriMo will help me improve in this area.

Because I sleep very little during the working week, I give my body as much time as it needs to catch up during the weekends. I turn off all external wake-up cues. So today I slept until half past one, PM! Admittedly, it had been a late night as I’d been up writing until past 2 AM, but that’s still a long time to spend in bed.

So for ROCR outside of the NaNoWriMO novel-in-progress, this weekend is once again a bust; I know I’ve been racking up a lot of busts in the past six months, and I do want readers to know that despite appearances to the contrary, I am still engaged in my work on the series as a whole, just at my own pace and in the media that I can work with the most easily, which right now is the written word.

What does this mean in practice?
One way or another, the King Groy story will make it to the ROCR website, resulting in a complete archive by the time I finish off the series. What I think will happen is that the second draft of the novel will go on the blog. The final draft will then be posted to the website proper, with illustrations. Historically, putting prose based stories into a webcomic archive has not been a successful move for those who have tried it, because readers tend to get stuck on their expectations and can’t get over the work not being a comic anymore. However, I’m willing to give it another shot, provided I am convinced that the finished product is really, really good. It’s going to take a lot of work to get from what is on the DeviantArt site to the quality I’m looking for. So it won’t be any time soon.

Retailers feel Pinch of Returns at the New York Times. What strikes me about this is that consumers still aren’t getting it even when they believe they do:

More forgiving policies may be good news for Ms. Kakouris, the real estate agent in Miami. From time to time, pangs of conscience have caused her to regret a purchase before she has even stepped out of the store. “I’ll be on the escalator, and already I’m thinking, ‘I can’t do this,’ ” she said.

Returning such items is a matter of principle, and also a matter of pride, she said. “It’s self-control — that’s a positive thing, isn’t it?” Ms. Kakouris added. “At any rate, I’m clearing off my
guilt.”

Impulse-buying items and then returning it is not self-control. If you can’t afford to buy stuff, keep your money in your pocket, instead of shafting the retailer with the extra cost of dealing with the return. Buyer-protection laws are for when an item is defective or you’ve been pressured into buying it, not for when you want the thrill of shopping without the consequences.

And the practice of “Wardrobing” mentioned in the article? Just don’t get me started. (via)

Michael Lewis on the End of Wall Street’s Boom. This long article by Michael Lewis, writer of Liar’s Poker is financial porn: It explains in lurid detail just how complex some of the financial instruments used on Wall Street are, and just how poorly the financiers themselves understood them. You’ll be amused and outraged at the same time. (via Naked Capitalism, but I can’t find the link anymore)

So… I hope some of you will enjoy reading the draft of King Groy on My DeviantArt site and I’ll have new comics as soon as I can manage!

It’s affecting my day job too. At work, I crank out words for a living, and knowing that I can crank the mout much, much faster than I’ve done so far is very motivational.

It’s not so good for my physical fitness as I’m skipping gym time to work on it. It’s also costing me sleep.

I am learning a lot about my strengths and weakness as a writer. The tone and humour of my work in progress are derivative, and I need to work on description and characterization - one of which I never needed to learn for my comics as I could draw what I needed, and the other I didn’t always have as much space for in the panels as I now have in prose writing.

Drivel-in-progress is posted daily on my DeviantArt site. It’s bad - it’s a first draft that I’m cranking out in my spare time, working from a comic script that I never finished. But I hope it’s bad in interesting and illuminating ways, and that by the time I’m done, I’ll know what I need to know in order to make the second draft work properly as a novel.

I was going to leave it at that, but I got this message in from the Union of Concerned Scientists that I thought I’d share:

Dear UCS supporter,

What a night! On so many levels, this is a historic moment. President-elect Barack Obama promises positive, productive leadership on many issues members of the Union of Concerned Scientists care deeply about—building a clean energy economy; reengaging in international negotiations on global warming and nuclear weapons; and restoring the integrity of science in federal policy making.

With your continued support, UCS is poised and ready to do what we do best: use top notch science and analysis to help Congress and the new administration craft the most effective policy solutions—actions that will make our world cleaner and safer while strengthening our economy and enhancing our national security.

With your help we will:

* Take bold action to put the brakes on global warming by working with President-elect Obama and the new Congress to implement strong emissions reductions that are in line with what the scientific community has deemed necessary to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. We’ll also work to realize the new administration’s commitments to invest $150 billion in alternative energy over 10 years—revitalizing our economy and strengthening our national security; further increase vehicle fuel economy standards; and reengage the United States in international climate negotiations.

* Work toward a world free of nuclear weapons by working to extend the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia before it expires next year, finally end the Pentagon’s wrong-headed plans for a new generation of nuclear weapons, build Congressional support for long-overdue ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and halt further development of an unproven missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

* Restore scientific integrity in government by working with the new administration and Congress to guarantee federal scientists’ freedom to publicly communicate their findings, publish their work, disclose misrepresentation and censorship, and have their work evaluated by peers—all without fear of retribution.

Even with a supportive president, we still have our work cut out for us. With uncertainty on Wall Street, automakers and those in the oil and coal industries are already playing the politics of fear, hoping to delay action on many fronts. We know from experience that we cannot underestimate the power of entrenched corporate interests and the legislators who support them. This is a moment of enormous opportunity, but real change doesn’t just happen. We must work hard to ensure the important groundwork we have laid becomes reality.

Together with your support, we are ready to make real change. Let’s get to it.

Sincerely,
Kevin Knobloch

President

The effort to reconstruct the United States after eight years of Republican misrule will be long and arduous and will necessarily have to focus on fixing the economy and the United States’ ruined international reputation. But scientific integrity in government is an important issue and one in which change can happen very very quickly (hint: fire the creationists).

At this rate, it’ll take me years to get around to doing the other storyline that I need to fill up the overall continuity. There’s a long story originally from 1996/1997 missing from the archives. I hate how that one turned out but have been meaning for the past few years to fill the gap with a re-written, re-drawn version of that story. Well, it seems like drawing is out of the question, but Aggie actually handed me the solution to this problem the other day when she started talking about her project for National Novel Writing Month which is a sequel to the comic American Gothic Daily. For me to write the new version of King Groy as a 50,000-word novel would be good writing practice and a good way to fulfill a years-old commitment that has always been at the back of my mind.

My Nanowrimo profile is here here and I’ll try to post word count updates daily. Updates of the first draft will appear on my DeviantArt account before they’ll appear on the ROCR website… so I can polish them up if they suck.

Aggie’s new novel is on her DeviantArt account. It’s rough, as mine will be, but that’s what you get when you just push out the words and post your first draft.