NaNoWriMo ... Finished

Boo-yah!  I did it.  50,000 words of my novel Space Cadets is written.  All good feelings of success are belong to me!

Next up ... a little relaxing, and then an Actuarial Speculative Fiction short story.  Followed by getting Justice ready for publishing, and then back to this story sometime in 2015.

NaNoWriMo: The Penultimate Week

Don't you just love that word?  Penultimate?  It means next-to-last.  Now that this past week is over, I have only one week left to finish up NaNoWriMo.  And only at 38,069 words.  I basically have 12,000 words left to type.

Let's see: 2,500 words on Monday.  2,500 words on Tuesday.  Then 1,000 on Wednesday.  That would bring me down to 6,000 words split between Friday and Saturday.

Yeah, I can do it.

NaNoWriMo: Halfway Done

Here we are, one week later from my last report.  I had a productive week, but sickness keeps coming back.  I'm currently at 26,200 words, which is past the recommended 25,000, but below where I want to be at 28,500.  (I won't be writing during Thanksgiving, so I must make up for it before instead of after.)  So really, I'm 2,300 words behind schedule.

Here goes the next week.  If sickness holds off I should have no problem securing the "win."  Good luck on your own NaNo-ing!

NaNoWriMo: Recovering From Disaster

The last couple of days I've been sick.  So much that I got no writing done at all yesterday (Saturday).  After doing so well keeping to my schedule, I've fallen behind.  I came really close to giving up, but then I realized I could move my schedule around a little bit to make catching up reasonably possible. Also, my story keeps screaming, "I need to be written!"

Now if only I can get over this sickness.

If you're behind on your NaNo, don't give up.  There's still plenty of time.  Let's finish this together.

Interstellar: Inception in Space

On the most part, Interstellar was another Nolan movie that blew me away.  Most of the science was spot-on, and the story was incredible.  The music was the typical Zimmer awesomeness, and the acting was good.

In Interstellar, the Earth is dying, and Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey, is sent to find a new planet suitable to support human life.  I can't say too much more without spoiling it, but just like in Inception, my mind was blown.

The special effects were nearly perfect.  The journey through a wormhole and near a black hole look just like the simulations mathematicians and scientists provide.  The gigantic waves as you see in the trailer look remarkably real.  The dust storms on Earth are convincingly scary.  The spaceship mechanics all look to be correct.  In short, everything looks real and scientifically correct.

The music was amazing.  The use of organ adds a new instrument to the Hollywood orchestra, paying homage to Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, the main theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The organ also nearly quotes from Philip Glass's Koyaanisqatsi in some key emotional moments.  During the early scenes as the spaceship first launches and goes through docking procedures, the music echoes Johann Strauss's waltzes as used in 2001 in similar scenes.

I only have one complaint with the music.  Many times it was just TOO LOUD.  I found myself frustrated several times when a character was saying something dramatic or important, but I couldn't hear it over the music.

As I mentioned before, the science is mostly accurate.  I was impressed with their treatment of Relativity and not messing anything up.  The only thing that wasn't quite right was the whole idea of solving some equation.  That was nothing more than Hollywood drama, but considering they got a lot of everything else right, I'm not going to complain much.

One last complaint ... somewhere in the middle of the film, events unfolded on Earth in an unconvincing manner.  Several characters' motivations seemed to be in conflict and their development wasn't entirely convincing.  In one particular scene, I was thinking, "Why is everyone being so melodramatic?"  It was almost like a scene from Signs.

Then again, character consistency hasn't always been a Nolan specialty.  Once the film got past a particular point, each character seemed to settle and I could enjoy the ending.  Then the Nolan brothers more than redeemed themselves.

My suggestion: go watch this movie in IMAX and enjoy.

One last bit of trivia: Does that rectangular robot (in the trailer at 1:22) remind you of anything?  Its dimensions appear to be very close to 1 by 4 by 9.

NaNoWriMo 2014 Begins

At 12 Midnight, when October 31 turns into November 1, after saying "Rabbit!  Rabbit!", I conducted the ceremonial beginning of NaNoWriMo.  During the month of November, I will write 50,000 words of my upcoming novel "Space Cadets."

Just now, I wrote the first 441 words.  You can read the first snippet and see my profile here.

And if you're thinking about working on a novel, this could be a good chance for you to kickstart the effort.  Sign up at nanowrimo.org and start writing.

Good luck to all my writing friends and happy writing!