sirithduriel

First! A drawing done last week. This is a part of our room, drawn with a Staedtler pigment liner (0.3 mm) (I really need to find those somewhere, they are great for drawing). About 30 minutes.



Also, as you may have guessed, I have unfortunately not completed NaNoWriMo this year. I got to a little over 16000 words (which is still a nice amount of writing!). University and other things demanded too much time and attention this November, and when I did have the time, I couldn't find much motivation to sit down and kick that word count up. Or post anything to the LJ :).

One of my distractions was a conference about children's migraine, where I was one of the speakers! I talked about my experiences with migraine. It was an interesting day and interesting experience.
Another distraction is Borderlands, a recently released first person shooter. It's the first shooter I've played that I found honestly fun. I like so many things about it, not least of which is the art style and atmosphere. It's also the first game I would like to draw fan art of, at one point ;).

Finally, I have a Christmas/New Year's Card to paint!

Week two lays behind us. Without a staggering total of about 5000 words written. All yesterday. Yeah, I'm so very behind.

But I've got a plan! One that failed today completely, but I knew it would (meetings and stuff) but I'm sure I can write 10 000 words to catch up before Saturday starts. That should get me (somewhat) back on track. And then full steam ahead with a high-word weekend.

To be honest, I'm not really sure if I'll make it this year. But we'll see.

On the topic of what I'm writing, it utterly bores me at times. My characters seem flat, the world uninteresting, I block when trying to think up names or other places of my world. Perhaps my week 2 blues is delayed because of so little writing the last week...

I was travelling by train, during the evening. I couldn't see a lot outside of the train, so I decided to draw my reflection in the mirror of the train. The weird reflection on the lower third of the drawing is the actual reflection in the window (the window is curved at the middle).

What a week of disaster, considering the amount of writing I got done. I started out well, crossing the 8000 words border on Sunday already (record number of words for one day!).
But then, on Monday, I started a new course at uni, a tough one. It's considered something of a small thesis, and you're basically doing full-time practical work and associated activities. Comparing to lectures and the occasional practicals, this is a lot more intensive. Still, on Monday and Tuesday, I was able to write a little.
Then on Wednesday I got a migraine, which lasted until Friday morning. And instead of writing Friday night, I played Borderlands :P.

It seems this November will be the month of writing a lot during the weekends. I'm going to try to have a 10k weekend, hopefully more, just to write myself another cushion and hopefully I'll be able to keep up next week.

We'll see!

Due to all the exams and other things going on during the previous weeks, I haven't drawn much. And I noticed how much I missed it when I started doing some simple exercises. But, of course, NaNoWriMo is about writing, not about drawing ;).

It still served its purpose though. I think both in images and in words, but if I can't visualise something, it seems unreal to me. Then the words just hang in vacuum, with nothing to hold on to. Only until I visualise it, see it in my mind's eye, it becomes something I can use.
Since, in preparation for NaNo, I've focussed mostly on words, everything I came up with seemed flat and uninteresting. I couldn't think up a plot, because everything seemed to float around in that vacuum. It made me very anxious, I just couldn't put 1 and 1 together, and somehow come up with 2.

Today I noticed again how long I've not been drawing, like I have noticed during the past few days. A flash of insight later, and I decided to draw a bit. Just poses from Pose Maniacs to get back into the groove. It felt as if a load fell away from my brain. Something I had been dragging with me fell away, and I could finally relax.
Suddenly, having no plot for NaNo seemed like less of a problem. I had a much easier time visualising my characters, the possibilities my world provides and what I can add and leave out. It didn't really fall into place yet, but thinking about it has become a lot easier now.

It doesn't really come as a surprise, that drawing helps me relax and think more clearly. In preparation for exams, for example, just reading the books never works for me. I need to write it down myself, ideally make schemes and graphs that show me how stuff works. It helps me visualise, in a way.

In any case, I have no plot yet, but I am a lot more confident about just starting to write at midnight (or tomorrow) :)

Well, November 1st is drawing closer. I'm less confident than I was last year, a few moments during the past week I even thought of just not doing it, since my November will be really busy. But, I will at least give it a good shot, see how well I do. The excitement is slowly coming back again :).

I don't have many concrete ideas yet, but I hope to change that this week. I hope to write a few character bios, think of a couple of scenes I could write, and work out the world a bit more. Other than that, I'm just going to dive in like last year :).