This book provides you with one taks per day, for a year. Some tasks are simple, some difficult. Some tasks are serious, while some are hilarious. Achieving all of them, the book claims, will change your life.

I have taken it upon myself to preform these tasks. And, as an added bonus (and incentive to do some more writing (which I never do enough of)) I will blog about each day, right here.

So, starting tomorrow (or rather, later on today), be prepared for a year-long journey that will (hopefully) change my life, and yours.

I’m dedicating this project to Ahuva Goldstand, who got me the book and will no doubt cheer me on from the sidelines.

This is my day. And by “my” day, I mean that I am slotted for that day on the3six5 blog.

The blog is a year-long project, from writers all around the world. Each day is post written by a different person, culminating for a year long exhibition of points of view.

I’m December 23rd. It’s a long way off, but I’m already getting psyched.

For those unfamiliar, which included myself up until two days ago, 750 Words is a site which is sort of an online, private journal. It really goes out of its way to encourage you to write everyday (you can guess how much you need to ride to be able to mark a day as “done”). It sends you e-mail reminders (well, you can set it to that), and it tracks your progress, giving you little trophies and a running score. The longer you maintain a streak, the higher your score goes in increments (kind of like bowling, where if you get a strike, it adds your previous scores). The interface is also really clean, there’s no fancy buttons or anything to distract you. Just white space and a blinking cursor. With a word count at the bottom.

Secondly, it’s private. Which means you won’t ever be able to see what I wrote (unless I share it) – there’s plenty of other places online you can go to see my writing (mainly, Writer’s Ink and Half a Picture, if you’re interested). This is for me, it’s a thought buffer, an emotional dump, anything I want to be without the fear of prying eyes.

Thirdly, and probably the best incentive to join is the funky stats they give you over time. The site uses all sorts of sophisticated text analysis tools to give you information about what you write. Besides typing speed, word count and time spent writing, which is standard, it tells you things like what themes you discuss most or what sense you make use of. Do you talk more about the past or the future? About yourself or other people. I’m sure that as the site develops (it’s still pretty new) these things will get even more sophisticated. If the explanation wasn’t clear, here’s an example of a statistic page for my writing yesterday (without the actual writing).

If you’re interested, check the website out. Sign up. It may take a few days, as the website is still fledgling.  Here is the link again, for those who don’t feel like scrolling.

The point is, “Half a Picture” is now back, with a facelift. The new fiction-blog will include flash fiction, as before, not exceeding 500 words. The twist is that this time, I am not alone. To start things off, the site will include fiction by myself (posted around the weekend) and the always wonderful Ahuva Goldstand (her stories will be posted around mid-week). We might be joined by others, we might not.

Anyways, my first story, entitled “Tap”, is now up. You are welcomed to check it out, leave a comment, tell your friends.

Enjoy.

You can find the short story by me, “On Matters of Corruption“, there, along with a plethora of other fantastic short stories and poems.

Writing a 50k novel in 30 days is difficult enough in its own right, but add to that a full month of school, homework and such as well as juggling 3 jobs… let’s just say sleep will be a rare commodity in the coming days. The plus side being, sleep deprivation makes for excellent, imaginative writing. Whether it will actually be relevant to the work at hand is a different matter, one I will only be able to suss out once November has come and gone.

As to novel I plan to write in the coming month – it’s an as yet unnamed steampunk crime novel. One complete with clockwork body parts, a con-man with a split personality (trying to, incidentally, con himself) and one flying city. Throw in a nice helping of zeppelins and zeppelin-riding pirates, and we’ll see what happens out of this ecelctic collection of characters.

The only bit of prep I’ve done is write up a short (page and a bit) outline, so that I don’t lose sight of the plot itself. I may have dug myself into a hole here, as its a very convoluted, twisty-turny plot. So that’s why I need a map. Aside from those two sheets of paper, I’ve got nothing – I plan on just sitting in front of the laptop every night and letting it rip.

If you want to cheer me on/find out how’s it going – I’ll update regularly on Twitter (linked to the right), semi-regularly on Facebook (ditto), and I will most definitely have a weekly NaNo update right here.

So, in the immortal words of the Joker, “Here… we… go.”

They encourage people to announce that, so that the embarrassment of having to admit to failure will drive us to actually finish the novel. So, this is me, announcing that I signed up to NaNoWriMo – hopefully I’ll make it all the way through. If I do, I’ll have a crap-tastic (that’s part of the NaNoWriMo attitude – quantity over quality) steampunk crime novel.

Let’s see how it goes.

You have a computer and on this computer runs a program, right? It can be any program – word processor, iTunes, a chat client or even Duke Nukem. Now, you start up another program. For the sake of the argument, these programs are not of the kind that can “talk” to each other. It’s not Photoshop and Flash or something like that. Let’s say it’s iTunes and a spreadsheet thing. These two programs are operating in the same confined space, that is – your computer. They, however, have no knowledge of each other. Each operates on its own, unaware of other programs which may be running right “next” to it.

This is much like our universe. We each run on our own “program” or planet, there may be other planets running next to us (“next” being a relative term, of course) and we will never know. Programs start being aware of each other either when you add some feature that enables them to do so, a plugin or something like that, or when they start competing for system (i.e. natural) resources. So that is how we’ll eventually become aware of other sentient beings – once we improve our capabilities to the point where we’re able to properly communicate with them, or once we start fighting for resources.

It doesn’t end there, however. Cause your tiny little computer is not the only computer out there. You have iTunes running on your machine, but your buddy also has it. As does that chick who works at the Starbucks. You all have your own, special copy of iTunes. Hell, you and the Starbucks chick may, by some weird coincidence, have the exact same songs in your music library. Hers, however, are arranged by album name, while yours are by artist. That’s a tiny difference that affects and amazingly huge list of things. This is what is known as alternate universe. The same program (or planet), with the same data (people), but something tiny that’s a little different. Your buddy’s iTunes may be completely different, he may listen to death metal while you’re a jazz type – that’s how we get an Earth where Hitler won the war.

If you want your computer, your little universe, to talk to other universes, you need to connect them, hook them up together somehow. What you need, is some sort of protocol. For computer we have one, we have several actually. For trans-universal communication we don’t. Or rather, we didn’t. Not until this thing I’m holding right here. TUCP – TransUnivsersal Communication Protocol. Let’s make a phone call, shall we?

So the question must be asked – should I just give up on a blog, as all my previous attempt at regularly maintaining one failed?

As I was contemplating this, the answer came to me in a flash of light and a crash of booming thunder (granted, that may have been the bus that swerved from running me over). I need to stop trying to fill some sort of niche with this blog. That is not the purpose of this thing. Forcing myself to write into a specific pattern is killing the will and need to write on this particular platform. This blog/website/what-have-you has my name blazoned across the top, so I do what I will with it, and not try to please others with my sharp-as-a-wed-blanket wit. That’ll come naturally, or it won’t.

So the new mission statement is thus: I will update this blog when I feel like, with what I fell like however often I feel like. It may 4 times a day, it may be once every 3 months. The bottom line is – if you enjoy listening to what I have to say, come by, check the blog, sign up for the RSS, do whatever you want. I may do another “Something Awesome/Something Terrible” if I feel like, I may never touch that particular idea ever again.

As of right now, this blog isn’t attempting to be a specialized blog, it’s just me, ranting and raving about whatever I see fit.

It’s sort of a back-to-basics approach really, as the blog always sported the tagline – “Plenty of fuss, no content”. Somewhere along the line, I made the mistake of trying to deliver content. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.

It is in the anthology FTL #2, published by Orang Utan Comics.

The art is by Gary Heaney, with inks by Nick Dismas and greyscales by Matt Santorelli. The letters are done by Richard Nelson.

You can pick up a copy at IndyPlanet.