Matthew Supert

So, tied into my recent notebook acquisition I am now working to improve my handwriting. My cursive handwriting I have always felt was "OK", but my script has been terrible. Following the line with the Midori modification video, I found another video from the "Stuff and Things" Youtube channel in which the host talks about his efforts to improve his handwriting. That video brought me over to a great website called iampeth.com. It is an interesting repository of old handwriting and calligraphy styles. From there I began to drill down and found the Ames Guide to Self Instruction in Practical and Artistic Penmanship. I am using some of the worksheets and style phrasing in that book to practice. 

Megan is also practicing her handwriting using the guides in that book. 

This past Christmas just about everyone in my family received Midori Traveler's notebooks as gifts. The idea started out with me from my motorcycle trip this past summer to the smokey mountains. I had wished during that travel that I had a notebook to write a daily journal of the trip while i was on the ride. My idea originally began with the concept of utilizing a Moleskine notebook. As I continued my research though I found out about the Midori Traveler's notebook. 

Long story short, I ended up buying everyone notebooks since a lot of my family has either been traveling a lot this past year, or will be traveling this coming year. I found myself though coming out of the holidays with no book for myself, despite the idea sort of originally being for me. Megan bought me a notebook for Valentine's day and went a step further by making some custom paper booklets for the notebook. You can see one of them with some pantone paper pictured above. 

I also decided to modify the notebook by adding some addition spine strings to it following this video from the "Stuff and Things" youtube channel. 

People seem to keep asking me what my goals are for 2015. I guess I don't really have any specific goals laid out for this coming year, but after thinking about it for a while I think i do have a couple of objectives I want to achieve. 

• Write more
• Make more music

That's it. Two hobbies I enjoy that I didn't do enough of last year. 

Woot. I am proud to say that I once again completed Nanowrimo again this year. I actually finished on Friday, the 29th with a total of 50,053 words. I had a big day typing on Friday, a bit over 7,000 words since I got no writing in on the 27th or 28th. 

Most of that day was productive with some really good text put down, but I have to admit that the last 2,000 words or so was just a garbled mess as I tried to hit my word count. Now of course comes to the all important part of going back and editing and in some cases, completely rewriting the stories. I never finished my editing on last year's project, so it is time I get back into doing that. 

I am planning to have a much more productive time with my writing over this winter and planning out my editing in a much more controlled fashion. At this point, I think I am going to take a break from Apath and Spice and head back over to last year's novel to keep working on that. 

Well, we are getting down to the wire here. Just about a week left for Nano. The past week was a fairly difficult one and was more of me just sort of spilling words onto he page opposed to an actual story coming out. I literally had three or four story progressions occurring on a single idea before I was finally able to sort of solidify it into some comprehensible. That mash of ideas though is still just sitting in the document file as a complete mess. 

I started another segment over the weekend, which I like the idea of, but haven't figured out a way to fully flesh out. I was going to have my main character just walk through the city and just describe and characterize the city itself, exploring some of the different neighborhoods and locations. I want to keep it simple, nothing dangerous or violent happening to him. I got a good way in, but eventually hit a brick wall. It is an idea I like, but need to figure out a way to make more interesting. 

I started last night my revenge tale, which should be good for pumping out some words. I am sitting at 38,844 words as of yesterday, so I think I am in pretty good shape. It is going to probably be a good push though through this weekend. 

So today is the end of day 16. That means we are just past halfway and this past Saturday as the "write in" Saturday where writers are supposed to lock themselves in a room and dedicate the day to writing. I was proud to say that I once again had a productive write in by getting nearly 6,000 words completed. I needed it as I was behind a couple of days at the end of this week due to scheduling conflicts. 

I have three short stories completed now, two of which are solid ideas, but I can already see that they are in fairly rough shape. I already have taken some notes on how I would like to adjust those and tweak the tone and settings for future revisions. The current story that I am working on focusing on Apath, our main character being lost in the wilderness, due to a trade deal gone bad. He was left to die by a syndicate gang that refused to uphold their end of the delivery. Apath is then found by a hidden group of outlaws who are now living in a small city they have built outside of normal civilization. The question that remains now is are they going to let him leave for fear of them exposing them and potentially putting all of their lives in danger?

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So we have one full week of Nanowrimo under our belts and so starts week two. This is the tough week where most people feel the doldrums and I can tell that I am already feeling them myself. I knocked out the first short story last week fairly easily, but this second story is turning out to be a bit longer and more complicated than I anticipated. I was hoping to keep it under 10,000 words, but we are rapidly approaching that limit and I am hoping I can wrap it up here soon. 

This particular second story features Apath and Spice who get caught up in an animal burglary when an eco-terrorism entity steals animals from a research lab. These animals are more than these seem. APath gets caught in the middle of a trade deal gone bad and they end up transporting the thief and the stolen animal while being chased by another syndicate. Their only chance of coming out unscathed is to strike a deal with the same organization that the animal was stolen from and may be they can find out in the process what is just so special about this stolen animal. 

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So Nanowrimo 2014 has officially kicked off as of yesterday. As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't originally planning on doing Nanowrimo this year, but after having one of those "shower thoughts" moments, I decided to work on a collection of short stories. So far I have been doing really well. Last year my target word count for each day was 1,500 words. That is slightly below Nano's stated word count, but I felt it was a manageable goal for a new comer. This year I do still have that as my stated target daily word count, but after two days I am sitting comfortably at 3,396 words. 

To give you a quick synopsis of my story idea, my short stories are a collection of adventures for my characters Apath and Spice. They are a husband and wife rapid delivery team set in a sort of despotic sic-fi future. It is all very sci-fi tropish, but I am hoping that I can get some fun stories out of the two characters and their interactions. I am taking a lot of influence from "Cowboy Bebop" for this design. I always loved how that series balanced comedy, action and some remarkably heavy topics. 

Here is a quick list of my character profiles for both Apath and Spice. These were brainstormed with my wife and I one evening and truthfully the character profiles are loosely based upon the two of us. Of course, I have attached a little snippet and you can hit the "read more" button below to check that out. 

Apath

It is now October 7th and Nanowrimo starts on November 1st. Last year was the first year that I in earnest attempted (and successfully completed) Nanowrimo. It is an accomplishment that to this day I am extremely proud of. I wrote a book in a month. That book is still far from finished and is mostly scattered ideas, but there are about 65,000 words in that project file that I continue to slowly work on. 

I initially wasn't going to do Nanowrimo this year. My success of my book from last year was scuttled by little action in fine tuning and editing the story for the rest of the year. I went from cranking out the 50,000 words in a month to barely going back and editing the first few chapters the rest of the year. I suppose in some ways it was meant to just sit for a while. My original plan for Nano this year was to basically edit my book from last year. I spent approximately three months planning last year's story so when mid-September hit and I got those emails from Nano that it was approaching I figured I had no chance in planning something for this year. 

Nanowrimo though has this certain desire to it that I have felt creeping up in my mind the past couple of weeks. It is the same sort of creep that I have felt from other very tough events I have done in the past, like Tough Mudder. At the time of doing it, it is sometimes an incredibly painful process. There are moments of brilliance, but mostly extended periods of pain and frustration. If you successfully come out the end though there is this sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that is difficult to describe. 

I have been quietly talking about Nano on and off the past couple of weeks with Megan and she sort of encouraged me to just go ahead and try and do something. I think this is a habit of mine that I often do. I fester on topics or ideas for weeks at a time and then finally there is a tipping point where I do them. 

Up until about a week ago I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to write about. I have material from last year's book that certainly will most likely go into the second novel of that story so I could have started on phase 2 of that story arc. I didn't quite want to do that though. The fact that I don't have the first story completed has be a bit afraid of taking off in the second books arc. I did have an epiphany though. Last year when I was writing I accidentally misspelled a couple of words that resulted in two characters. I have a tendency with my typing and muscle memory to mistype common words. "The" for example almost always comes out at "teh" when I type. 

The words word "Apath and Spice" were the resulting words.  At the time I just threw them into my character notebook for last year's novel and figured I could incorporate them into the story at some point as a sort of Bauchelain and Broach type cameo seen in the Malazan novels. After looking at the names though heir style didn't fit with the other naming mechanisms I used for the rest of the book. That book borrowed heavily from a Persian influence so I didn't feel there was a way to fit those names in effectively. Instead I decided to take those characters for this year's novel and make them their own identities set in some sort of sci-fi universe. They are going to be a husband and wife team that are going to take a lot of influences from Cowboy Bebop. I don't think they will be bounty hunters, but they are going to have something that causes them to get into some over the top adventures. I like the idea of conflicting personalities that I can draw upon from my own relationship with my wife. We have these "events" in our daily routine that I sometimes find hilarious and I think could make for good material for a story. 

My structure this year is to actually write the novel as a collection of short stories. I think based upon the character structure and my influences from anime and other sci-fi that would make an ideal format for these two characters . I am taking some heavy influence from the Gotrek and Felix novels on this one since those are all essentially a collection of short stories placed into a novel. 

I am now rather excited to try and put this novel together over the next month. I have to spend the next few weeks fleshing out character profiles and also developing the 7-10 short story ideas that I have for the book. Hopefully I can once again complete a Nano.