NaNoWriMo 2008 Winner

Me! Suprisingly, despite all of my other projects and obligations this month, I managed to make it to the 50,000 word threshhold in the National Novel Writers Month competition. So far, less than 10,000 of the 117,000 entrants have crossed the finish line.

I would like to take this moment to thank the Academy, my family, my mom, my pastor, Carolina Men’s Basketball Team, Coach Williams, the entire Steelers organization…

My first app is for the NaNoWriMo competitors. It allows you to track your buddy list and get an update in real time of all of your buddies’ word counts. It’s actually a pretty cool little app. It stores all of the data locally, so if you open the app up when you are not connected to the internet you can see the most recently downloaded results. When you go online or hit the network, it will get the new numbers and update the database. All you need to do to add a buddy is put in their id number - it fetches their user name and all that jazz.

The app didn’t take me that long to build, which is a bonus. I did have to learn Objective-C and use Xcode and Interface Builder, but that was not really a problem for me. I have used many IDEs in the past and have a strong Java and Ruby background. Objective-C does take some getting used to, and I hate having to think about pointers, threads and memory, but that is another story.

When will this wonderful app be available to the NaNoWriMo faithful, you ask? Well, it will be out… next year. Sucks, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, I am in the part of the process over which I have no control.

I have submitted my application to Apple to become a certified iPhone App Developer. When they get done crawling up my butt to make sure I am not some hacker looney, they will approve me, give me my secure keys, then I get to submit my app to the App Store on iTunes. Then, I wait some more for them to approve the app.

Since NaNoWriMo officially ends on Sunday night at the stroke of midnight, I am guessing that no one besides myself will get to benefit from the joy and excitement as you pass your buddies in the great wordcount war. Then again, I only have one NaNo buddy, and that is my wife. And she has not had the time to participate, so I guess I really don’t get to have much fun with my app, either.

But NEXT YEAR, you will be able to download the app and have some fun keeping up with your buds. No doubt, I will have made some improvements to the initial app by then as well, perhaps allowing you to message your friends when you pass them or find others in your area or something. All depends on what they allow in the API. I will still release the initial version when I can, so if you want to carry the word counts with you for the next 11 months for posterity’s sake, by all means.

The app will be free initially, of course. I may try to sell a subtle ad on there next year in order to keep the app free and to allow for improvements. But I have nothing in there that accounts for that yet.

Man Tries to Pay Bill with Spider Drawing

I figured I had to write approximately 2100 words per day six days a week in order to get to the targeted 50,000. Wow, that is a lot more than the 1667 words per day I was targeting at the beginning of the competition.

My writing was going well; I was having no problem actually churning out a few pages when I sat down. But, I was getting to the point where the story in my head was getting more difficult to connect to where I was in the book. I had written nine chapters thus far, and was only scratching the surface.
So I decided to spend a night plotting out the rest of my book rather than actually writing a complete chapter.

I started at chapter 10, and wrote a little blurb about what I wanted that chapter to be about. I put it in brackets ([]) so I would not get confused later. When I finished that blurb, which was nothing more than a paragraph summarizing what I wanted to tell about next, I inserted a page break and did the same for chapter 11.

Fifty-nine chapters later, and I had the pleasure of writing, “The End.” Of course, what I really have right now is just a skeleton, but I think it is a GOOD skeleton. By thinking through each chapter one by one, I was able to direct the story towards what I had originally conceived, but without the pressure of making all the little details interesting. I now have a blueprint for success in the competition.

Sure, the book may still suck. But it will be 50,000 words of suck, which is really the point, now isn’t it?

Long story longer: I sat down today and wrote chapters 10 and 11 in one sitting. It took me about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I churned out more than 2100 words. The other night when I did my planning added over 2000 words of summary text, so I was already at 10,900 before the day began. I am now sitting at 13,175, and couldn’t feel more confident that I was going to get it done.

Wish me luck! I may post some of my glorious prose at some point when I feel the need to be held in an entirely new, if not unflattering, light in my circle of influence. Thankfully, no one I know actually reads this blog, so I might be safe sharing my secrets with you.

Here is one video I came across on a blog for a development company in Austria. No doubt the professionally made You Tube video was in wide circulation in the days leading up to the election. No matter which side you were on, this video is genius.

Last night, during halftime of the Steelers fantastic victory over the Redskins, Chris Berman interviewed Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. One of the questions he asked was, “If you could change one thing in sports, what would that be?”

Barack Obama stated, “I think it is about time that we had playoffs in college football.”

Now, first off, let me say this: I agree. And as far as I know, a lot of other people agree. Probably the only people who don’t agree, are those that have significant dollars investing in the current messed-up bowl system.

But isn’t it interesting that Obama would choose to address something that the president has ABSOLUTELY NO AUTHORITY to get involved in? The bowl pundits couldn’t give a crap what he thinks. They know we all hate the current system. Giving us the very flawed BCS was their way of throwing a bone our way. Let’s face it, there is just too much money involved to affect this change. If they could figure out a way to make MORE money doing it, they would jump in a heartbeat.

So, once again, Obama chooses to bring change to something he is not going to have an impact on whatsoever. Now, before you slam me, and I know some of you will, I want to mention that I am not a hater. I am not a democrat, either. But I don’t despise Obama or anything like that.

In the interest of fairness, I want to tell you what McCain said. He said, “I’d take significant action to prevent the spread and use of performance enhancing drugs.”

Now this is something the government can take action against. But admittedly, I am kinda sick of the whole thing. That doesn’t mean I think nothing should be done, but I have really heard enough on this issue from the politicians. I think the respective sports leagues should continue to police their players as they are doing now. Going a step further, I think the NFL under Roger Goodell is doing it right. Their punishments are swift, and expulsion for repeat offenders is a very real possibility.

McCain and Obama’s complete interviews are available on espn.com at the links below. I encourage you to check out the whole interview, because believe me, I am the LAST person you want to be getting your news from.

• John McCain’s Interview with Chris Berman
• Barack Obama’s Interview with Chris Berman

Happy voting!

Saturday begins the annual official National Novel Writers Month competition, or NaNoWriMo for short. Participants are tasked with writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That breaks down to about 1,667 words per day. No one in their right mind would participate in this competition - especially if they have anything else they need to do with their life. Good thing I am not in my right mind, or I might really be stressing about having signed up!

My participation decision started and ended about a month ago. I mentioned this elsewhere, but in case you were hammered and forgot, I quit drinking beer about four weeks ago. Needing something else to do with all of this new-found time on my hands (I drank a LOT of beer), I popped into the local Borders and was checking around for books that might inspire me to write. I had always wanted to write a book. Nothing too heavy - just some good fictional fluff. I really enjoy mysteries and thrillers, and always envisioned myself as someone who would thrive in an occupation where I was more or less able to make things up as I went along. I had been doing it in the “real world” for years anyway, so what’s the difference?

Anyway, long story longer:

As I was looking over the myriad of writing books, one in particular caught my eye. It was called, No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days. I was thinking as I read the cover, “that sounds about right!” I had no idea what I wanted to write, what kinds of characters would be in it, or why anyone else would give a crap. It is sort of like how I feel about this blog, but that’s a story for another day.

As I began to read the introduction from this hilarious book, I learned the history of NaNoWriMo and all about the contest. You are not judged on how well you write, how cool your characters are or even how few holes there are in your plot. It is understood you are going to have campy dialog, bad puns, and grammatical errors galore. All you have to do is finish. The idea is that if you can churn out 50,000 words in 30 days for a rough draft of a book, you have really done something that most people would never be able to do.

Additionally, it has been the experience of those that have participated that somewhere around the third week, you have put enough text on the page that the thing more or less begins to write itself. Your imagination takes over, and your characters start telling you what they will be doing next. Sounds like either a lot of fun, if not a little disturbing. In either case, I’m down!

So, I immediately decided that I was going to give it a shot. I can certainly throw down a lot of words quickly. As I am writing this, I am watching the little word counter go up. 552, 553, 554…. Sweet - almost a third of the way through with today’s quota and it hasn’t even been 10 minutes since I started this entry. My speed probably explains a lot about the content of my posts now. It’s obvious that the fingers are doing the talking here, because there is no way that any kind of filter or editor has the time to get in the way!

Actually, that is something that is supposed to be critical to success in the NaNoWriMo journey; you have to be able to turn off that pesky internal editor we all seem to have. I know he bugs the Hell out of me whenever I am designing a website or trying to code an app. Lately, in preparation for the contest, I have been telling him to stuff it more and more. Just today I was able to power out three new product logos for a new line of service offerings for my consulting company. There is NO WAY I would have been able to do that before I shit-canned Mr. KnowItAllEditorWhoConstantlyNitpicksEverythingIDo. Pardon my French. And while we are on the subject, what’s with those Frenchies cussin’ all the time? Anyway, I digress.

752, 753, 754…

If only my blogging would count towards my daily quota of words for my book. C’est la vie. So, starting tomorrow, you all have the right to ask, “how’s the book coming,” as well as, “did you hit your quota today?” I will actually post a word count widget on this blog as soon as their wheel-running hamsters get on the stick and generate enough electricity to fire up the server that supposedly is hosting the API that allows you to get such data.

To make matters even more interesting, my wife, Miz Fancy Pants, is also joining in on the writing fun. Of course she wrote her blog entry about it a few days ago, throwing down the gauntlet for our imminent word war. I hope she is ready, because I am going to bring a load of literary pain down on her… Then again, anyone who has read my blog would suggest that I bring a load of literary pain down on everyone else, so why should she be special?

Well, I am off to do many finger stretches and also to load up my fridge with delicious Diet Coke. Until we meet again, wish me luck!

C

PS - this entry is 993 words long. I still would have to write another 700 words to hit today’s quota. What was I thinking again? Perhaps I was still drunk from the night before…

This week, I have been busy, busy, busy between my day job and all of my side projects. My biggest accomplishment over the last two days been a complete revamp, replatform and redeployment of netphase.com.

Check it out if you get a chance a let me know what you think. We have a new look, and a new approach to marketing our business. Your input is greatly appreciated!

A little photoshop fun!

So late last night, I was trying to come up with an apple image for a new web project I am working on, when I stumbled upon a photoshop tutorial at PSDTuts that would help me create my own - from scratch! Being the geek that I am, it sounded like fun to me, so I gave it a shot.

The image to the left is the fruit of my labor (pun intended, sorry). It was a lot of fun, and in following the tutorial, my PS skills increased dramatically. It’s hard to believe, but that image has no photographic elements in it AT ALL. It was drawn from nothing on a blank slate. Very nice.

The site is very cool, and I expect I will be doing a lot more of the tutorials in the near future. Check them out, if you are into that sort of thing. And if not, what’s wrong with you? Just kidding (not really).