That bloody pen

A few months ago, I'm in Paper Plus at the Johnsonville Mall and I asked for a reasonable priced pen that was really comfortable and wrote well.

This is the pen that the guy there suggested:


I have to say, I have been more than happy with this pen, it was pretty expensive for a plastic pen ($9), but as promised, it is super smooth and very comfortable.

So - why am I writing this? Is it because the pen is great and I want to talk all about my fantastic pen? No, unfortunately not.

The pen, as most pens do, is running out of ink. I've probably got about a week at most left in it.

So, I go back to the same Paper Plus and ask for a refill - no issues right? NO! They don't have refills for that pen, they don't know where I can get them! Why, why, why!!! would that guy recommend me a pen if they don't even sell refills? I have paid $9 for a throw-away pen. Any time I spend looking for a re-fill is going to be effort to save pennies. I am unimpressed!

I can't believe how annoyed I was with this. I haven't been that angry in some time. I know I am taking this too seriously, but I like my pens and it's something I've very fussy about. I can't believe that I'd actually have to ask, "Can I buy refills too?" on a $9 pen!

Have Faith in God

Downtown Wellington, Lambton Quay, there's this old guy handing out pamphlets. There were two pamphlets, one folded inside the other. The outside one was labeled "Have Faith in God" and the inside one was labeled "Specially for you!".

While Una was shopping, I read through every bit of it and every quote. I have been reading lots of biblical scholarship lately, preparing for my fictional bible during National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) next month.

"Have Faith in God" was just various quotes from the New Testament while "Specially for you!" was one quote plus description.

It described that it had a message for me, and said, "First of all, let me emphasize that this message is absolutely true, because it is God who said it."

It then quoted John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

The ridiculousness of the description sentence bowled me over. "... because it is God who said it."

Don't get me wrong, while I'm an atheist, I feel that the King James Version of John 3:16 is one of the most beautiful sentences in the English language. It's a lovely sentiment and there's a reason it's one of the most recognized passages from the bible.

However, to say that God said it means two things:
1) God speaks in the third person, which is unacceptable, since anyone who speaks of themselves in the third person is completely annoying
2) The guy who actually wrote it isn't getting any credit at all. Surely, God would want to give credit where credit is due.

Throughout the Old Testament, God speaks in first person all the time, "for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God" for example. So why would He switch all of a sudden? I think the most likely thing is that the pamphlet was wrong. Comments?

SoCNoC is over until next year

I hit 50,294 words by about 11PM on June 28th, a couple of days ahead of deadline!

This novel is about the far future in New Zealand. It's a dystopian sci-fi where different species of humans war with each other and live their difficult lives. The machines play an important role, and interact with the different species in mysterious ways that no one seems to understand.

I've enjoyed writing about the ruins of Wellington, the odd church in the wilds around Nelson, the b-mod city around Napier and the g-mod military installation in the bay of islands.

I still have a few thousand words to write to finish my story. Then, let it sit and edit it later, maybe sometime next month.

Thanks to everyone at kiwiwriters for the encouragement, and congratulations to all those other winners. It's been a great month to write a novel!

I'm looking forward to SoCNoC next year. I'm sure it will do nothing but grow each year.

SoCNoC day 21 and 22 - word wars

My best days so far this June for writing kiwiwriters's SoCNoC have been during word wars. You sit there for 10 minute spurts and get as many words in as you can. Having a group of crazy friends around usually helps. I do war with myself on occasion, but it's nowhere near as fun.

One thing is that you learn how fast that you can type, especially if you've got the scene you're going to write outlined in your head already. You also get lots of words out for completing the challenge, which is 50,000 words in one month.

Here are my word amounts - all are in 10 minute increments except where noted:
21st June:
736 (15 min)
828 (15 min)
531
548
551
489

- my goal that entire night was to hit 600 (in 10 minutes) at least once. Never happened.

I joined up with Andy and Kerryn tonight and got a couple of ten minute word wars going before I had to leave and watch a movie. Here are my word counts for tonight:

22nd June

612
573

Got my 600 in 10 minutes! I was very pleased. My fingers were relaxed and finding the keys. It was also lovely in the room, since I moved to the back room and blocked every route for the heat to escape, turned on a heater and loved every minute.

Oh - found an ok timer on sourceforge. It's called tea timer. It was useful and has a lot of features. It pops up while I'm typing and that gives me accurate measurements of how fast I'm typing. It's gotten faster over June actually. :)

SoCNoC, the drama!

I know, I know, backup your work. I can't tell you how often I've heard this in the past.

I did back up my work, I did, I did, I did. Unfortunately, I backed up an older copy over my newer copy and lost about two thousand words of my SoCNoC entry. I did it last night and stubbornly stayed up late tonight to correct it. I went from about 31, 000 down to about 29,000 in one stupid mistake. I wrote about 3000 words tonight, not quite catching where I could be, but at least I made my quota (19 * 1667 - the number of words you should have on the 19th to meet your 50k by the end of 30 days).

It isn't just backing up your work, it's about not being stupid about it! Geeze, I've been around computers long enough now, you'd think I'd figure out how to drag and drop.

Still, the worst thing is that my re-written scenes felt awkward and not as good as the ones that I wrote last night.

Anyway. I'm off to bed now (2AM). Bummer of a night.

Novel writing: SocNoC day 19th - nothing so far

SocNoC, Kiwiwriters own novel writing challenge has been going on all of June.

I thought that I'd breeze through it and be done by now (or close), and here I sit at about 31,000 words. 50,000 is the goal, so I'm pretty close to pace, but it's 10 to midnight, and I know that I should go and write a bit and at least get to my daily word count.

I know that I'll get through it, but I really have to put aside a few nights where I can really push the word count up. I had a word count over 4,000 one day... I need a few more like that!

Anyway - off to write a thousand words or so.

First day of SoCNoC completed!

If you're been following my blog, you are aware that it's Kiwiwriters SoCNoC novel challenge time. I started at midnight and here I am 24 hours later sitting at about 3500 words (about 7% finished). I spent about 3 hours of writing total, although there was a lot of unfocused sitting around picking at my writing.

The television is such a distraction, and I write in the same room as the TV, since otherwise, it's somewhat anti-social. The mp3 player doesn't seem to help. I might have to go back to Avril Lavigne songs, since that is all I could write to during Nanowrimo last November.

On the plus side, I got some good writing food from the grocery store. While I tell myself that it is stock-piling for the month, I'm just kidding myself and it will be gone in a week. Chips and dip, tim-tams, macaroons, trail mix, juice... I think I sampled one of each today - no way, it won't last long.

I also went to the gym for the first time on my new membership which I got on trademe just the other day. With winter coming, and it's pretty nasty today, it will be nice to have a way to exercise without getting myself cold and wet. It also helps me focus with the writing, and I'll be spending lots of time at the gym throughout June.

Good luck to the rest of you kiwiwriters!