Tony Noland's Blog, page 2

#NaNoWriMo 2019: At Least I Tried

Final word count for NaNoWriMo 2019 is 26,300. This is far from the winning goal of 50,000 words, which I've hit with satisfactory regularity in the 12 (13?) years I've been doing NaNoWriMo. But it's OK, and I'll take it.

I knew as far back as the spring that this was going to be an exceptionally difficult November, schedule-wise. That, I can handle. Finding time to write in airports and hotels, on airplanes and trains, up early and up late... that I can do, and have done.

But I didn't anticipate that there would be emotional trauma that distracted and derailed everything. I sank low this month, and things that should have been fun... weren't. Although I have plenty of supporters to offset the haters, the calculus of emotional leverage is such that just the effort of seesawing one against the other is exhausting.

In writing my NaNoWriMo for 2019, I originally wanted to do something light and fun and silly, something diversionary. Without my wanting it to, it took a dark, bleak turn, and went to places that were far sadder than I expected. It became real work, and I avoided it. My repeated efforts to turn away from the dark and force the prose into the light were, paradoxically, not helpful, because the book felt - you guessed it - forced.

So I think I need to go into this effort, pull out the sad stuff and set it aside.

"Yes, I WILL write that book," I'll tell myself, "but not now. That is not THIS book. THIS book will be silly and fun and ridiculous. The serious book will wait. I will pack a lunch and some extra batteries for the headlamp and head back into that cave later, explore it some other time. But for now, here on this sunny beach, somebody needs to build a sandcastle. And that somebody is me."

Stay tuned. Or don't. Your call.


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Review: Rocketbook reusable notebook

For a few months, I've been using a Rocketbook reusable notebook. It works a lot like a regular notebook for writing, drawing, etc., except that it's got a special reusable paper. The sheets are coated with a kind of plastic (or maybe they're made of that plastic - IDK, I'm neither a paperologist nor a plasticologist) such that the writing stays on the page until you're ready to reuse it. Then you wipe it with a damp cloth and *poof*, the ink is gone. The sheet is blank again, ready to be reused.

By itself, that's no better than a pad of throwaway paper which reduces all of your deathless prose to transitory ephemera. But the real trick is in the app that comes with the notebook. You point your phone at the screen, and it will automatically line up the shot, take a picture of your page, and assemble all of your pages into a single document. Then it will automatically send that to you wherever you want: email, Google docs, Instagram, Twitter, Dropbox, etc. It'll send the pages as a PDF, or (and this is a snazzy touch) it will do OCR of your handwriting, convert it to text, and send along the transcription as a Word doc, Google doc, etc. Every page, every line, every word, captured for the ages.


What I like: I like the reusable pages, the ease of wiping away the old to make way for the new, the auto-send to wherever I designate, and the OCR/transcription of my handwriting is lovely black magic. My handwriting is pretty crap, but the OCR has done a decent job of making sense of it.

I also like how I can can carry a very light notebook (only 40 pages!) instead of a thicker, heavier notebook, or a really heavy laptop.

What I don't like: The Rocketbook will only work with pens from the Pilot FriXion line. These are erasable, and use a special kind of ink. It's a pity I can't use any of my own pens. Also, I wonder how limiting this will be, since I can't just grab any old writing implement that's close to hand if my pen runs out.

The FriXion ink comes out quite wet and although it dries instantly on regular paper, it takes 10-20 seconds to dry on the special plastic pages. This probably isn't a problem for most use cases, but if you're steadily writing page after page of prose, racking up words by the thousands (as I've done with mine), you run into a situation where you have to wait a few seconds before turning the page and continuing to write. If you turn it while the ink is wet, it will blotch all over the facing page. A kludgy solution is to use a blotting sheet - a sheet of regular paper - to blot the fresh, wet ink at the bottom of the page before turning to the next sheet. However, that tends to gray out your writing, since you're soaking up ink. The pause to let the ink dry interrupts my writing flow. Fussy me, I guess, but there it is.

I was planning to use my Rocketbook for NaNoWriMo 2019, but that pause in turning the pages is, well, giving me pause. I've done the last couple of NaNos longhand, and once I'm in the flow, I'd like to not be interrupted. FYI, each page holds ~275 words of my longhand, so 182 pages of prose will give me the 50,000 words of a NaNoWriMo. I'll have to fill, erase, and reuse the notebook four times, hitting 50K on the fifth time through the book.

What I don't like that isn't the Rocketbook's fault: The FriXion pens feel kinda cheapo. Since I've got a lot of really great pens, and I'm used to writing on pretty good paper, I wonder what kind of issues I'll have with fatigue after using these FriXions on the Rocketbook for hour after hour after hour of longhand. You can swap the FriXion cartridge into a Pilot G2 body, though. Since the G2 is a lovely pen, and far more comfortable to write with than the price might suggest, that's what I'll probably do for a Rocketbook NaNoWriMo. I'll just have to be sure to NOT mistake a regular G2 for the FriXion-enabled one, since a regular ballpoint would ruin the special Rocketbook pages.

Also, the FriXion inks aren't uniformly great. The blue is a nice, solid blue, but the black is more of a darkish gray. Red is blotchy. (I haven't tried the teal, green, purple, or pink because I am a Serious Writer.) Yes, I know complaining about the quality of the ink is picky, picky, picky, but if I'm limited to this kind of pen for use with the Rocketbook, I think it's fair to identify the limitations that will face you should you want to give this thing a try.

Yet another semi-serious concern is that the FriXion pens run out pretty quickly. In my experience over the last few months, each pen will only last for about 4300 words, max. As the folks at Rocketbook noted, this is a pen thing, not a notebook thing:
(Not part of the review, but I rather appreciate the "Sir, this is a Wendy's" quality of that response.)

To do a NaNo will take about a dozen FriXion refills. That's not a huge problem, but it's something I'll have to consider and prepare for, if I commit to doing it this way.

Conclusion: the Rocketbook is pretty cool, and its technology works exactly as advertised. Worth considering if you do a lot of longhand.


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Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.

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Nothing to announce

Nothing to announce, but when anything happens, I'll be sure to let you know.

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R.I.P. Stan Lee, 1922-2018

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A new review: "as smooth as grandma’s turkey gravy"

There's a new 5-star review up for "Verbosity's Vengeance":

I laughed so hard at this, I spit coffee out my nose.

To understand why this is funny, you'd have to be following me on Twitter. If you're not... well, all the explanation in the world won't help.

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"Why didn't you call her?"

Recently, on a whim, I asked a successful TV writer on Twitter if she'd be willing to read my novel WIP and offer any comments. She kindly agreed, although she said she didn't know when she'd be able to get to it. I gave her my email address and asked her to send me an address that would be good to send the file to.

I could have just gone to her website, located an address, and sent the file. But this is an easy way to leave the ball in her court, and for her to decide if she actually wants to follow through on a spur-of-the-moment thing she agreed to do for a nobody she doesn't know. A successful writer's impulse to help out an aspiring writer is a real one, and it's a generous, admirable one, too. But it's also something that will drown you in extra work if you give in to it too much.

Whether she was serious about accepting my request, or if she was just being polite to some random guy on Twitter, then this is a minimally invasive way to either continue the interaction (if she's truly interested) or to nip it in the bud (if she's not).

The alternative is for me to send her the file without really knowing if she actually wants it or has any time or inclination to do anything with it. Then I'm in a position of either forgetting about it and going on with my life, or sending her that dreaded email two months from now: "So, did you get it? What did you think?" Guilt, irritation, and obligation all around.

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How's the WIP coming?

My WIP first draft is now at 64K. Probably another ~20K to finish the story. Much of it crap that I'll have to delete and replace, but it's a first draft.

I've heard it said that a first draft is just you telling the story to yourself. I must admit, I'd like to finish this, so I can find out what happens.

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Condolences

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October frosts

It's that time of the year when autumn is undeniable. Chill nights, shorter days, pumpkin spice and the wretched scourge of eternally-disgusting candy corn... these are the hallmarks of the season.

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