For The Win

Sweeeet.

Grrr Buzzword, Grrr docs.google

I had a major fight with Buzzword last night wherein it informed that it could not save three minutes worth of furious typing and in my juggling to trying to rectify the half page or so it had just eaten it ended up removing all my indentation for some very, very odd reason.

However, jumping to docs.google is no longer an option as the text is now larger than the 512MB limit that it allows. I don't know if that means that the markup is denser off Buzzword or what - but it means it would have to be two documents instead of one, which with 8K left that's too much pain in the ass.

I love the concept of online editors for all the benefits they offer like author sharing, shifting computers, etc. But if they can't get around a few basics like not eating text and size limits (Wonderful in this mode is like 120 pages, which granted is probably longer than many documents is by no means a record setter).

In NaNo specific news, I wrote just over 7,000 words upon my return from Thanksgiving. I think I have just enough story to cover the spread to 50,000 and hopefully will be finished on Wednesday.

Broken Reflection

In the movie this would be about the time when the young girl would possibly throw her purse at them and then they would try and get away as quickly as possible. There would be no blood, knife wounds or tearing of clothes. Moe had been a cop for some time and he knew which version of the story was most likely to play out.


He half leapt, half fell, off the top of building - not unlike someone casually diving feet first into a pool. His instinct was perfectly balanced - he landed with a resounding thud in between the girl and the pair. The girl, already on the border of completely losing it, screamed. She was wearing nice jeans, a sweater and carrying a backpack. Probably a college student who thought the neighborhood offered cheap rent.


Moe stood straight and glared at the pair of assailants. They were like a broken reflection of her- dirty jeans, old sneakers and hoodie sweatshirts. They did not scream but stopped their sudden charge and held their ground.


"Just run," Moses said.


The one on the left was taking this as sound advice when the one on the right pulled out a streetlight special - a Glock he probably bought for about a carton of cigarettes - and pointed it at Moses. Moe the Boy raised an eyebrow - honestly unsure as to what was going happen next. His hand instictively dropped to his sidearm which wasn't actually there when the kid let off a shot. The crack rang through the alleyway and the girl started crying behind Moses.


He felt slight pinch and heard the jingle of metal. He looked down to see a small rip in his shirt and his skin showing the signs of becoming an irritated form of red. The shell was stilling bouncing off the ground. He had been paintballing once with some guys from the department. That hurt worse than this had.

I'm once caught up - but hopefully I'll get ahead some tonight. Thanksgiving promises to put behind at least two days instantly, so I'll want some padding there. I've generally tried to finish NaNo the weekend before the end of the month, but this time it might be close.

A note to anyone who might actually be reading the "novel in progess" with the link in the right. For one thing, I know there's contradictions and I mispell a few characters consistently. That latter part is just kind of a toy a keep playing with since I never really decided what that character's name is.

Also, this is the first year I've been going back and adding scenes that weren't previously there. For instance, I just added a bit about Josephine which occurs as Moe is going through his first round of testing, labelled oddly "2B Josephine gets a visitor".

Honestly, it's a work in progress of a rough draft of a notion - so it's so ragged it could cut is what I'm saying.

Undo Repurcussions

"Ma'am," he said nervous with a hint of some sort of European accent, "might you be Agent Morrison?"


She eyed him suspiciously, "I might."


"Look," he said slowly, "this is going to seem a bit odd. I would like to myself clear. An associate of mine would like to request that you take a brief ride with him."


"Oh you must be kidding," Sarah said, "and honestly I'm not in the mood."


"I assure you, ma'am, this is not joke. But it is just a request."


"You mean a request?"


"Yeah."


"Like an actual request."


"Absolutely ma'am. Just a request. There will be no undo repercussions to yourself, your family or friends, if you don't comply."


Sarah paused, "You know I'm rather inclined to just shoot you right now. I'm pretty certain I could get away with it."

Woot! 25K!

I'm Tall?

"Oh no," said a slight drawl, "this will simply not do."


Karl rotated his head towards the stairwell and pointed his key upward like a flashlight, "Sorry?"


The man who stepped from the shadow of the next floor flight was tall and thin, nearly gaunt. His hair was slick black. He was wearing a tight black suit and a tie and shoes that matched. His posture was immaculate. With one hand he unbuttoned the remaining two buttons on his jacket.


"No sport in this ahtall."


"I'm tall?" Karl asked.


"You're dull," came the response.

Rounding the 23K mark. I'm keeping pace and as I think I actually completely forget I had a scene in mind - the half way mark is in sight. Now I'm mostly worried about running out of story somewhere after 26K...

Cacophony

She pulled the two doors wide before feeling the wind suddenly pick up behind her. She lunged to the left, hoping to make it past the sidewalk on into the grass but failed. As pain flooded her shoulder and elbow she watched the rushing behemoth smash into the back of the van. It crumpled like paper with a dull and prolonged roar. The back of the van raised feet of the floor until the entire vehicle became aloft with the tail flipping over end. It became airborne for seconds and landed on its roof. A cacophony of shattered glass and the dying whines of electrical equipment filled the air. A human moan followed.


The man stood upright and examined his work. He grinned widely and then turned to Sarah.


"Hello again, Agent Morrison," he said. The scent of embers filled her nostrils.

Don't call it a comeback. Well, OK, it's a comeback. I was a week behind, pacewise, yesterday. Today:

Current word count: 20023 (40.05 %) with 19 days left, with current pace, expected to finish in 19 days.

Wootness.

Golden Egg

"Golden egg," he said.


"Yeah," Moe agreed, "that's what I thought."


"Is that some kind of odd cop lingo?" Sarah asked.


Karl smirked, "Two guys are talking about birds and stuff. One guy says to the other - golden gooses are real. The other guy says, no way. Golden gooses are fable. Don't exist. First guy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a golden egg. Second guy says - don't mean there's a golden goose. First agrees but says sure, but where did I get the egg from?"


Sarah looked blankly, "that's like the worst punch line ever."


"Not a joke," Moe said, "it's a concept of evidence."


"Sorry?"


"We can't prove any Faracil was stolen," Karl continued, "But we know something really, really odd happened to Moe here. He's the golden egg."


"Except Walther," Moe said, "didn't seem to see it that way."


"So he didn't really ask where the golden goose was," Sarah said.


"Right," Moe said, "he was saying there was no golden egg. And the only people who aren't interested in the question."


"Are the people," Karl finished, "who already know the answer."


"Plus no vinegar," Sarah added.


"OK," Karl said, "I thought the golden egg bit was an odd duck."

Hard push today, after getting bogged back down with some work stuff. I was 4,000 words behind and am now 300 - but I feel like I'm writing myself into a corner so it's probably best to stop and watch a little Robot Chicken.

Pretty much sums it up

From my progress report (link on the right):

Current word count: 15047 (30.09 %) with 20 days left, with current pace, expected to finish in 27 days.

Yikes. Gotta kick things up a notch. I now need to push for 2K days, not 1.6K ones.

Lactose Someting

"Less talk. More work," Moe said as he approached.


"These," Karl said, "I should warn you - are the words this man lives by. What's that word people keep calling you? Lactose ... something?"


"Laconic," Moe replied.


"Right," Karl said, "silent mofo at times."


"Sometimes less is better," Sarah chimed in, "so what do you two have in mind for the day? A little light opera maybe? Perhaps taking in a ballgame. I hear the Cubs have a real chance this year."


"Funny girl," Karl smirked.


"I get that a lot."


Moe chirped, "first - theories."


"None," Karl said, "how about you? Anyone want to kill you?"


"Well, I worked undercover with organized crime for about three years."


"Oh," Karl noted, "and you testified against them."


"There's that."

I'm getting some decent mileage out of Sarah's synesthesia - her ability to smell and see emotions as opposed to simply feeling them. For a change, I'd like to actually be ahead in NaNo not just in terms of word, but in story. That is, when I hit the 25K mark, I'd rather be less than half way through the story.

Course, I'll take what I can get.

Smells Like Oak

Moses took a sip of coffee and then stared at the cup again. She was right. He was barely even listening to her at the moment. He couldn't remember how long she had said her flight was - even though she had just said it. He had this worry that when he drank from the cup, he was going to snap it in half. Either with his grip, or his lips ... or teeth.


"That obvious, huh?"


"Well, Moses," Morrison said while drinking from her cup - much more casually and swiftly than Moe had just done, "I'm going to tell you something I don't tell everyone."


"OK," Moe replied.


"I'm a wonder too."


Moses put his cup down carefully. Very carefully. He stared for a while, unsure as to how to respond.


Sarah cut through the silence, "I can't throw cars or heat object up or anything. I'm an empath. I can tell what your feeling. Actually, I can smell it."


"You can smell my concentration."


"Yeah. And see it. A little."


"OK"


"It was a bit of an unexpected twist. Most empaths just mirror the emotions of people nearby. Everyone does this, a little at least. Nervous people make us a little afraid. Angry people piss us off. Sad people make us blue. There is a physiological component to sympathy. For me, though - I don't feel it like that."


"You smell it."


"Doctors say something got mixed up. I smell it. And see it, sometimes. Mostly smells though."


"So what does my concentration smell like to you."


"Oak. A deep, woodsy oak."


"And how do you know that's concentration and not, say, my cologne."


"Because your cologne is Drakken Number Seven and you didn't put any on this morning. Probably not yesterday morning too. And, well, I'm just wired to know it. It's like knowing Spanish."

Got a bit of flurry tonight and managed to pull ahead of the curve, word count wise, for the time being at least. I've found it's important to give you as much cushion as you can muster for the early stretches of month to cover you when the days get long.

I also forgot that docs.google was notoriously off last year in counting words. Like a couple thousand off, adding to my last minute freakout and basically adding a new premise in to finish. I'll have to find a more accurate meter soon to make sure I'm actually where I think I am.

Professional Instinct

Moses took a few steps back from the wall. He leaned inward. A professional instinct now took over the more catastrophic one. He poked at the damaged wall with a single finger and knew that his initial assumption was wrong. The interior of the wall was porous and rough in places ... not soft and chalky. The wall of the hospital room - for reasons which were quite clear to him now - were not made from drywall but poured concrete. His eyes skirted across the room, wondering where the hidden cameras would be and they had just recorded. He wondered just how damages were handled on the bill.


A buzz interrupted the room, followed by a soft mechanical hiccup. Moses looked up towards the center of the ceiling where the red LED light of a fire alarm blinked.


"Moses, the nurse will be entering the room soon," said the filtered tone of Johanssen's voice, "perhaps we should start those tests now."


At least Moe knew where one of the cameras probably was.

It was hard to catch up tonight - I was ahead Friday morning and then basically couldn't write anything for a while. Tired from driving and whatnot - hard to muster the energy to push through a couple thousand words, especially when Treehouse of Horror is on and Family Guy is celebrating their 100th.

No Livestock

His father wore what his father always wore when Moses imagined him - nearly ruined jeans which match a nearly ruined jean jacket. It was the lighter blue one with the ripped left elbow and padded inner flannel lining. He wore the Ford baseball cap - faded and soft in every imaginable sense - that had covered his brow every day Moe could remember him out working. And his father out working was an everyday fact. The farm was on the southlands of the city - rolling hills of wheat and corn as far as the eye could see. At least this was the image of the farm held frozen from Moe's boyhood - he had not laid true eyes to his old home in some two decades. He had no pictures of the place and nobody who could give him a proper recollection. For Moe it was a constant homage of sepia tones and blue skies, of an old red rusty tractor and a white farmhouse with red shutters. No livestock, no animals - nothing alive except his father who would drift through the scene like a watchful spirit. Moe dreamed of this often - anytime he could wrestle control of a daydream or flighting fantasy ... he arrived here.


His father never spoke. Moe knew why. Moe could no longer remember the sound of his voice. At times the ghost of his father would open his mouth expectantly, as if he had words of advice or some portent from the world beyond - but it would never take long before he simply pressed his lips firmly together and looked despondently to some point beyond the horizon of crops.

Well if you discount my early morning headstart, the first day would have been pretty bad - well lower than the 1666 daily requirement. I'm ahead for now, but we're out of town this weekend and I doubt it will stay that way for long.

Mechanical Parrot

Moe the Boy padded his way towards his balcony holding a hot coffee mug in one hand and feeling the cold tile against his feet. The sun was cracking over the crooked and slanted backdrop of the city, moving his small kitchen's spectrum into an off amber. Brisk air snuck through crack in the French doors separating his apartment from the disappearing fall. Josephine's message still played in the background; his errant answering machine behaving ever so much like a crazed mechanical parrot with a beeping problem.


It would soon be cold in the city. Cold in his apartment. Snow on the ground, even. Moses could never sleep well in the cold, but mostly he could not sleep with the voice of his soon to be ex-wife yelling at him repeatedly in perfect digital clarity. She wasn't yelling at him about anything particular, or certainly not terribly new or interesting. He had missed another meeting with the lawyers last night and her revenge was to wait until three in the morning to muster the courage to shout obscenities over the phone. He wasn't sure if this out of pure spite, a desire to avoid conflict or if somewhere along the path of their divorce Jo had either figured out the machine's plight or intentionally sabotaged it with some kind of witchcraft. Regardless, her forty two second rant was preserved with only slight loss from compression for all eternity - punctuated by a droll monotone male voice announcing that there were four messages, one new message, that the new message was forty two seconds long and that it was from Josephine DuBois.

I'll have the word count widget up and running soon.

Notes on tools

For the time being, I'm writing everything in Buzzword, an online word processor written with Adobe's Flex framework. This is in part because I've turned into something of a Flex nut but also because I like the way it lays text out more like a word processor would than docs.google does.

That said, Buzzword is missing a few key features. For one thing, it's a pain in the ass to share. In fact, near impossible unless you can email another Buzzword user. By comparison, docs.google allows you to publish a URL with a click and anyone can read it. Also, Buzzword has no word count tool and the spell checker is clunky at best.

Right now, actually, one of the reasons I'm sticking with Buzzword is that it organizes what you write into pages, which is somewhat helpful in trying to pace yourself for NaNo. I'm still a huge Flex fan, but Buzzword certainly needs some work.