It Could Only Happen To A Writer

Posted September 16th, 2006 at 08:17 in Old Writing Blog by Jarsto

I just had one of those moments. I was looking at some of the background I’m preparing for NaNoWriMo and I noticed my MC was born June 22nd 2604. This happens to lots of people in Sci-Fi universes so it wasn’t that big of a deal. Then I suddenly thought “probably a Friday”.

This was one of those times to be glad I use Linux because the “cal” commandline utility can give a calendar for any year from 1 to 9999. I’m not sure how dependable it is before october 1582, but for the future it certainly works well. So I just ran “cal 2604″ and wouldn’t you know it: June 22nd 2604 is going to be a Friday.

Now I’m going to try to figure out how the heck my first instinct was right with only one chance in seven. Maybe it’s because June 22nd 2317 is also a Friday, and I have a calendar from 2317 close at hand right now, for the edit of Gordian Knot.

Update: I did a little checking and cal is mainly questionable between October 1582 and September 1752. If follows the British Empire’s dates for switching from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar.

Figured Out The Problem

Posted September 4th, 2006 at 21:16 in Old Writing Blog by Jarsto

I just figured out and broke through a problem I’ve been having with writing the last several days. I’m writing new material now, but my mindset was still “this is the second draft, it has to be good” rather than “first drafts are allowed to suck”. I’ve now gotten back into the latter mindset and the words are flowing again.

I’d always planned to do an extra edit on the newly written parts of this second draft, but somehow my mindset didn’t follow quite the right way. Hopefully I can cover some ground and make up for lost time now that I’ve broken through.

In other news however I’ve found something else to distract me from writing. The Dutch NaNo Podcast (working title). It’ll be a podcast, in English, centred around NaNoWriMo and the people from the (Dutch language) Holland & Belgium regional lounge. It’s going to be aimed at all NaNo participants, which is one reason I’m still a bit hesitant about using “Dutch” in the title. It’s going to be in English, not in Dutch, for one thing. Since I hope to have episode zero by Wednesday I guess I’ll have to decide pretty soon though.