Deadlines!!

I hate and love them!

Write Like You Mean It

You know that feeling of having about three or four of them breathing down your neck thinking the same darn thing: "tick-tock"? Well, that's my life in a box right now.

Of course there are positive sides to this. I only have 8 chapters left from a 14 chapter manuscript go go over. I have just over a month to do that. I have about 4 pictures drawn from final target of 40-60. I have about a month and a half for that.
And of course there's Camp NaNoWriMo coming up. Of course I've lost my plot notes for my novel.

Deadlines seem like one of those Marmite kinds of things, you have to hate or love them, there is no middle ground. But I wonder what it's like for other writers.
I don't seem to be able to get much done without a deadline. I say I will go to the library to write, or the café on wealthier days, and then I find a funny video on YouTube and off we are. Next I look at the clock, it's six and everywhere is closed.

X Days, Y Hours and Z Minutes
Until You're DOOMED!

Now if there is a deadline pressing on me, it's a bit different.
I think about wasting away on YouTube and suddenly it's like this angry old lady appears over my shoulder and screams, "What!! Don't you realise you've only got X days Y hours and Z minutes before you're DOOMED!?"
And like magic I find that extra bit of motivation to actually go to the library.

Then again there is also the evil side. Like when that old lady tells you that you only have so many days, and you realise that a week factually isn't long enough to paint a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa while blindfolded. Yet you can't very well do nothing.
So begins what can only be adequately described as the death trek of the "next best thing". That commendable yet inevitably slightly sad effort to save yourself which results in staying up until 3 AM almost every night and excessive consumption of coffee.

Then, about three days before the deadline, you take a look at what you have and get a reassuring sense of confidence. You are almost there. Even with only so much time you will certainly make it. You relax a little, take some well deserved time off to recharge.When you go back to your project, feeling refreshed reassures you that little R&R was definitely justified.

One day before your deadline, you take a look at what you have and want to chew your own arm off. You're not even close. You'll never make it. In fact the half-finished piece of junk that you will most likely be forced to turn in has the semblance of the brilliant idea you had when you started. An idea which you could have finished if only you'd not taken that R&R time a few days earlier. This phase is called 'regret the R&R' also known as 'panic'. This is the night you stay up as long as humanly possible, if indeed you choose to sleep at all, using every precious minute to complete your project.

The moment of presentation draws close. You're nervous, near terror. In truth if you ran right now and moved far away somewhere nice like India or Hawaii, and changed your name, surely things would be made right. Then the moment comes, and you stand in front of actual people and actually show your actual work, and suddenly come to realise, it's not quite as catastrophic as you first thought. Considering you spent only 7 days on it, it really does have the semblance of a masterpiece.
People hum and nod and after the day is over, you go home, much more relieved, with much fewer brain cells and higher blood pressure, and acknowledge that indeed it was work you'd never have done that fast if it wasn't for the deadline.

Although I'm not exactly hoping it will turn out like this, somehow it always tends to with me.

Sound familiar?

Simian City News! A Rare Species Spotted

'About time we heard
something from this Writer Monkey'

And now it's time for the latest news from your favourite...

SIMIAN CITY NEWS!

I'm your host, Fun. E. Chimp.

   Today there has been an incredibly rare sighting of the Writer Monkey said to have lived in the cave just south of our jungle broadcasting station. Eyewitnesses have confirmed from this that the Writer Monkey is in fact not dead and has neither been abducted by chocolate. Our on site news reporter Monkey Gone Wild is with professor What's His Name as we speak who has offered to comment on this event. Over to you Monkey.

   ~Well thank you Fun. Yes right now I'm here at the professor's study enjoying a cooling banana smoothie and speaking with him about what exactly can make a Writer Monkey disappear besides easily suspected chocolate abductions. Professor, what exactly is your opinion?

   >Well Monkey, as I see it the thing which young writer monkeys are easily prone to suffer from but which isn't as easily obvious to the casual observer are laziness attacks, the I-Can't-Think-Of-What-To-Say Syndrome and a very infectious disease known in layman's terms as "But The Game Is Just So Fun." Once contracted this horrible infection almost forces the potential writer to re-focus all of his or her attention onto a video game or other similar activity, denying them the time to focus on their writing. It's really quite tragic.

   ~And you believe the Writer Monkey might have contracted this illness?

   >I really can't say, but so far I've only found one cure for the condition, and let's just say it involves a pair of pliers, barbed wire, a sack of feathers, a rocking horse and super glue.

   ~I can't honestly say I want to hear you put all that together, professor.

   >That's strange. A lot of people say that...

   ~Anyway, now back to the studio.

   In related news there is evidence that Electrostatic Fantasy is in fact nearing completion. These statements, although deemed incredulous by some, bear out in the sense that nearly half of the novel now stands in a final form of editing.

   Our efforts to contact the Monkey have also *cough*finally*cough cough* succeeded and there is news of upcoming regular updates and an updating schedule.

   Please stay tuned for the next broadcast of SIMIAN CITY NEWS!!

Lyrics And Updates!

Yikes!

Alright, kudos to me for posting again with less than 3 months in between. Yay. But still, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Hmm...let see. Shall we go with bullet points? What, too short?

Firstly, I would like to draw your attention to the top line of links. Yes that one up there. Yes...up a little further. A little further...okay, come back down you missed it. No, not that far! (Let us take a moment to honour the brave souls who dare ask me for driving directions! :D )

YES! You got it. I've added a new Poetry page to the site. :3

I don't like to call myself a poet, because unlike some who can scratch up a poem very easily, I can only do it when the mood is right. That mood often comes very seldom. If I force it I feel like it sounds...well...quite forced. Haha. Funny. I made a joke. Laugh. I command you. -.-

But anyway, please feel free to wander in and have a look about! ;)

On another note I've done a general maintenance on the site. By maintenance I mean I've gone through most of the links and just made sure they all work, deleted any that don't. :)

If you guys do spy a link that's broken, please contact me by e-mail (nanakafka@aim.com) or comment on any of the posts on the main page! Thank you! :)

And one more thing:

I won NaNoWriMo! :D

That's right! The Monkey of the Cave has crossed the threshold of 50,000 words once more and is now dragging herself to the end of her plot! :D

A huge thanks to all the staff at NaNoWriMo for keeping the awesome event there and doing everything you guys do each year! And to my Number 1 rival in the competition Jay! It was thanks to our wild word wars that I was able to push a win out so quickly.

Yesterday I literally wrote 11,604 words.

Yeah...it was quite a lot to do. -.-

Monkey Dance Time!

*does a little monkey jig*

Blue Is For Boys by Jack Thompson

Review time!

I do this so seldom that I thought it was high time for a book review. :-3 I had to do a double post today because I know if I leave it until tomorrow I'm just not going to get this post done at all. Or it'll get shoved back until Christmas. T__T *sniff*

Okay, so now onto the review!

Sure it was a weekend of fun and excess, even if he might not remember anything of that 72 hours of fun and excess, but for Ravi it's quite sure that if it were anything important it would come back to him in due time. And why should he have a reason for concern? Until of course he realises his amnesia has brought along with it a new and strange tattoo and turned his pee bright blue. That perhaps isn't as normal.

But Ravi's nightmare has only begun and we will be sharing in the horrors and humours of the repercussions in store for him. And as we will find, this is one weekend that will change his life forever.

The Monkey Speaks!

This is a short story which I thoroughly enjoyed because of the great prose and the hilarious jokes. It's fresh and witty. Moreover the story also takes a new outlook on modern society as a sort of side product. But it never interrupts the flow of the story and this is one story easy to get hooked onto. If there were any negatives to point out, I'd have to say it's a shame it's so short. I could gladly read 15,000 more words about Ravi. Although I really liked the ending, which was good and left me satisfied about the story (not one of those that make the whole book sound like it was cut off in the middle of the sentence. Did I drop some pages on the way home from the store?)

I give this story 5 stars out of 5!

Highly recommended!

If you'd like to buy the story, there is a link on Jack Thompson's webpage.

Mid-NaNoWriMo 2011 -- ELDA

Okay, so have to get out of the habit of having three month breaks between posts! -_-

Oh well, New Years coming up. Suppose we know one of my resolutions already.

Ok! Sitting here sipping my home-made latte, listening to a Japanese internet radio station and trying to concentrate enough to get something done worth calling 'production.' What else to do but to update my long-forgotten, no scratch that, just partially left unattended, blog.

I'm finally going to post that summary of Elda that I've been promising, and here it is!

"It's been thirty years now. Thirty years since the hundred-year rule of the wicked witch Elda ended. And peace has returned to The Land, her cruelty being all but a lingering memory. Those memories, legends speak of her evil and her power. Yet not a one tell of how it all ended. In all accounts, she simply vanished.
But this cannot be so. For one so horrible and god-like cannot simply disappear.

Ikkoris, a young boy from an IroKai tribe, is obsessed with stories of her. Though his curiosity and mischief are but the pain of the village. Until one day he finds a mysterious young girl in the mists known only as White Wolf. And she seems to know something of Elda.
Along with his new friend, Ikkoris sets off to find the past. But with a strange white knight out to resurrect Elda and these two trouble, and the village people wishing to silence him, a journey of intrigue soon turns into a battle to keep the evil and good at balance in the world around them. And now it is a race against time between truth and lies. They must succeed, or risk plunging the world back under Elda's control."

So there we go! Three agonising weeks but I finally managed to type one out. ^_^ My progress so far is about 28 thousand words, meaning a little above target. I'm quite pleased with the way it's turning out as well. Needs editing for sure, but it's not a bunch of gobbledy-goop.

I haven't had a chance to go back and read over any of it yet. But soon as I do I'll post an excerpt onto the Novel Info page!

How are my fellow NaNoWriMo participants doing?