Hiddennode

Just a quickie.

I am participating in NaNoWriMo this year. Going to use the drive of NaNo to kick start the reboot of my novel. Work will start this evening once Trish and I are home from our outing. I need to finish up draft one of the outline then get to work on chapter 1.

If anyone is interested in becoming writer buddies with me, my profile is here.

For those who don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, here’s a description from their site:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

For a full description, click here.

Okay, that said, I’m off.

nulloperations

The last two weeks have been… fun. Spent time with 1) the flu, 2) bronchitis, 3) a bruised rib. This all started as soon as I begun an exercise walking schedule. Going to restart that in November once the rib is healed. In the midst of this, I’ve been trying to kick start my writing again.

I’m (obviously) started to blog again, looking at focusing on thegreyfedora.com site again, and I’m trying to focus more on my novel. I actually printed up the 30K words this weekend in order to read it and kick start my interest. There’s a lot of

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work to do actually. It starts in the wrong spot, the focus isn’t on the right character, and generally I need to recreate the foundation. What I’ve written so far isn’t wasted, but it’s also not fully useful in its current format.

Let me put it into simple terms. I’m effectively reseting again but using what I’ve written as the new writer’s bible. At this rate, this being reset three on this novel, I’ll reach 60K words before reseting again. And then, after reset four, I’ll reach 120k words, effectively letting me finish the novel. Yay?

Okay, so post’s over for now. I’m going to try to do this weekly again.

Yeah I know, I say that every time.

Jdiehl

More realizations are coming to me as I focus on my writing. It’s not that’s too surprising but I’m finding that the days I’m working out I have a greater drive to create. Fresh oxygen, adrenaline, and endorphins pour into my brain and kick start my creative engine. Further, I’m also finding a desire to exercise. The idea of looking forward to exercising is such a bizarre and amazing experience. Granted, I realize the three reasons above that are kick starting my mind are probably giving me a bit of a happy buzz in terms of chemical release. Such movement based bliss might even become addictive.

Guess I’ll have to suffer with an addiction to having a healthy body then, eh?

How about the rest of you? Do you get a buzz from working out? It’s exhausting I know, but do you feel good afterwards? I’m interested in hearing what any of you have to say about living a healthier and active lifestyle?

nulloperations

Getting into further development of myself, I’m about to embark in a new process. I’ve started to think along the ideology that my personal self and my writer self are two separate people. By that I mean who I am as my web persona, nulloperations, is a different being than the brand I present for J. Samuel Diehl, my writer self. Both are me, yet at the same time not. Nulloperations is about expressing my interests, my joys, and my fun. J. Samuel Diehl is about presenting a specific part of that life: my writing, the business around my writing, and the brand that is my author name.

That said, I’m going to start separating the two entities going forward; at least here on the site. I’m setting up jsamueldiehl.com and justindiehl.com (same site, different URL’s). Hiddennode.com will not be going away. In fact, it will pretty much remain the same (although expect a visual change sometime in the future). Jsamueldiehl.com will just become where my writing home is located. You’ll find information about my current projects, past projects, links to where you can find my writing, and any part of that which is my brand. Hiddennode.com will remain home to my personal blog, with maybe a few tidbits of my writing ending up here.

I’m promising myself that I will have the other site at least functional as a blog with some plug-ins within the next 30 days. The graphical upgrade should arrive later this year. Jsamueldiehl.com won’t be fully functional for several months as I’m not where I need to be to take full advantage of the site. This time next year that will be a different story.

nulloperations

So a year or so ago, back when this blog originally saw the light of day, I had wanted to take the time to post about some things I enjoyed. I wanted to post about podcasts, software, games, books, everything I was enjoying I wanted to share. I did manage a few back then. Looking at the old locked up archive posts, I see I posted about just those things. Did a decent job of reviewing them (at least that’s what I’ll claim and you’ll never know without breaking into my admin panel). Quickly though, they subsided as I just got tired of posting daily too quickly. A while after that, I just gave up, slapped together a rather poorly generated podcasts page and dropped it at the top of the website and said screw it. Occasionally I dropped a game review every now and then, but mostly I just let it slide.

Well, it’s time to bring back that good old spirit of writing about the things I enjoy; Only this time, I’m not going to be so heavy handed in getting posts out daily. I’ll just create them as they come to me, and as they come to exist, I’ll also add them to the Interests Page at the top of this blog. Even better, I’ll have the interests page link the brief descriptions I post there back to the big descriptions that appear in the blog.

Good idea right?

Okay, I admit, it’ll take some extra work and that might put me off, but hear me out. I think it’ll actually work for keeping me doing that sharing the love thing for things I enjoy. Trust me. It’ll come to pass. You’ll see.

jdiehl

Once Again, I’m in a “edit the site” mood.

Changes made for now:

• Removed Podcasts Page
• Added Interests Page Placeholder
• Removed Content of About Page

Changes coming soon:

• New About Page Content – To reflect subject matter of the blog
• New Author Page – To reflect the old content of the about page, basically information about me
• New Interests Page Content – To reflect links and posts I make about things I enjoy

Detail about the changes:

The changes I’m making reflect a desire to give a more in depth look at who I am and what I do here for this blog. For one thing, the old podcasts page was very vanilla in how it approached my enjoyable of a podcast. I’m changing it now that whenever I post about a given podcast, I’ll add it to the interests section. This will also reflect other things I’ve been enjoying, such as apps on my iPod touch, books I’m reading, and games I’m playing. The last three will probably fluctuate a bit as I move through different books, games, and etc. Ideally, I’ll update this once a week with new content and removal of old content.

The about section will also get a revision shortly. It will contain a breif detail on the various things I post about here, as well as link to things I use on the blog (namely what plug-ins I have tied into wordpress, and where else you can get the blog feed).

The Author page will become a static bio page. I doubt I’ll change it much except when a project receives fruition. Eventually, this will contain a list of everything project I have out there that folks can get their hands on to see.

So that is what is coming. I’ll be doing most of the changes this evening. Maybe even might get a new theme and new plug-ins to make the site strong. Maybe even *gasp* sign up for google analytics that I’ve been asked to do a few times for Raven’s site. If I can get a handle on them here, might have an easier time working on them there.

Okay, enough babble for now,

jdiehl

Oh, PS, www.cylys.com is no longer part of the hiddennode.com network. Dakota finally got off his ass and got his webspace. Congrats man! Now I don’t have to fix your site anymore! (forks is gonna love that).

So I found an interesting site: http://www.wesleychapelforums.com/. Don’t recall if I’ve mentioned the city I live in, Wesley Chapel, but yeah that’s where I live, and this morning I found a website dedicated to that city. From what I’ve read, this isn’t the first version of the site, but it is the most recent. They are just getting started out so I’m going to do what I can to be involved. Who knows, I might just make a friend.

So my sister-in-law found out there’s going to be a writer’s workship/meeting thing at a nearby Barnes and Nobles. As nervous as I am about being around folks I don’t know, I might give it a shot. I believe it’s part of the Florida Writer’s Association, but I’m not positive. I also believe it’s tomorrow but it might be next weekend. I know she said it’s the first Saturday each month, but this is the first one… I think. I admit, my information is shotty at best, but I can verify it when I get home later tonight. Actually, later in like an hour.

Leaving work early today for a doctor’s appointment. My cardiologist isn’t going to be happy with the weight, but eh, I’ve failed to lose it in the last year. Going to talk to him about special diets. No, I’m not interested in weight loss surgery. I’ll pass on that as it’s really only a temporary fix at best. Raven has been talking about maybe a liquid diet. Frightens me but if it must be…

I caught up 2000 words this week already. I have some more to do which I will do tonight after I get home from the doctor’s but before I head out to pick up Raven from the airport at 10pm. Want to get at least 5000 words out by tonight. Maybe more this weekend.

Okay, there, a real life update for once. Need to work some more of those in.

jdiehl

My personal productivity has taken a nose dive in the past week. The novel currently hasn’t been started yet (since I scrapped those 10,000 words), mostly because the time I normal would be writing has actually been taken up by the day job. This means I need to stop depending on the free time at work and start making time at home. Not going to be easy but it will be done.

As I’ve said, the Novel is at a standstill. I still have plans for completion by the end of summer for the first draft, so each day I delay means I’m just making it harder on myself. I’m still excited about the direction the story is aimed at so that’s not the issue. It’s just a matter of realizing I need to sacrifice free time for writing time if I’m ever going to become something more than a wanna-be writer. I’m not a novelist yet. Not until I actually finish a novel.
In other but related news, I’ve found some new Crack. Inside of the game City of Heroes, there exists the ability to customize the base of your super group. In terms of most MMO’s, think of super groups as the guild or clan. As your members fight as representatives of your SG, they will earn prestige that can be used to purchase useful items like storage racks and teleporters, to less useful but prettier items like technical looking toys or magical artifacts. In the game, various players have discovered you can “stack” certain items to allow an SG to build up an area in a normally impossible way. This has lead to a portion of SG’s into the habit of creating extravagant structures and designs. Within my Super Group, I am this designer. Namely because I’m the only active leader, but anyway… I’ve come to really enjoy making custom looking areas and chambers in rooms for the base. The only major problem is that I may be making too many items and such as I’m really starting to eat into the prestige. Most likely I will actually curtail this development until the base is at a more complete level. Besides… I need to start inviting more members to gather more prestige.

Looks like this is going to be a brief one. Odd that I both don’t feel like writing fiction or blogging. Gotta get myself out of this artificial funk and start writing again full time.

jdiehl

So after a month of feeling sick, I’ve finally reached a point of feeling okay. My teeth are reasonably well (mind you, the tooth still hurts where I had my surgery but not as much as it did prior to the removal), I don’t feel as achy as I had for the past two-three weeks, and I dare say I’m okay with the weather. April is starting to look good health-wise.

In writing news… Okay, I’ve changed some things. A number of things actually. I had reached over 10,000 words on the Novel but I’ve come to a conclusion: I’ve scrapped those chapters, found what I loved from it, and got rid of what was boring me to tears. A few characters are either toast or now secondary characters at best, and our protagonist has changed, but she’s just so darn cool I’m very happy with the change. Still the same world, a bit though it’s more developed. Maybe this will be my pattern with writing a novel. I get several chapters in, realize where I’m going, what I like, scrap what I have and get rolling from the beginning with a deeper understanding of everything I have and where I want to go. It’s not a bad idea so long as I don’t get much further than 10,000 words. Anything more and I’m now really wasting time.

Oh yeah, the goal of the end of summer is still in effect. Meaning I have about 21 weeks to write 90-120,000 words. That’s still between 5-7,500 words a week, which so far is easily doable. So here’s the plan: Write around 5-7,500 a week for the next 21 weeks. Complete the Novel by August 31st, 2009. Take September off from writing that novel (and start developing the next novel). Start editing the first novel once October rolls around and be finished with the first full edit of the novel by 2010. Once that happens, I’ll be trying to shop around with the novel, both for an editor/publisher and an Agent. Meanwhile, I’ll be getting to work on the next novel.

One key note is that I’m not going to work on two novels at once. It’s a bad idea for me, as I’ll tend to favor one over the other that will eventually lead to one of the novels being abandoned. I can plan out other novels, but I don’t want to start another novel until I’m done at least writing the first one. I’m not sure if I can write one while editing another one. I haven’t tried yet so I guess I’ll find out at the end of this year. I’m excited though, to think I’m actually going to finish a novel. I’ve crafted so many interesting worlds, to actually have a story in one would be a dream come true.

Other news… City of Heroes Issue 14 came out today and I’m already eager to play it tonight. Only 7 more hours to go! Gah!

jdiehl

PS. Stackpole is right. Align Full/Justify is soooo much nicer on the eyes, even on this blog.

Cross posted from dipsg.

Well, we’ve had this website for over a month now. In that time we’ve had a few new folks show up and sign up, but sadly, there isn’t a great deal of development within the site itself. This is disappointing but not entirely unexpected. Sadly, the $20.00 a month going into keeping this forum alive isn’t looking to be as worth the price. Frankly, with my pay cut and other finical needs, I could use that $20.00 for other important matters. With that in mind, www.dipsg.com  running IBP is going goodbye.

This is not the end of the website or the forums though. My primary website has the ability to host a forum for free and we will be able to handle our needs. I don’t like losing the great tools from Invision Power Boards but frankly as I’ve said, it’s not worth it with the activity.

That said and done, here’s what’s going to happen. The IBP board is going poof. I will be setting up a new board under the hiddennode web server that will still be accessible via www.dipsg.com. This should happen this weekend. Please take the time to setup your account on the other server. I’ll be setting up the board soon. The Layout will be different, by the way. The site will no longer be focused specifically on the dynamic ip super group. Instead, I’m going to focus the site on being a general gaming community site. There will be a section for CoH and the SG specifically.

If you have any questions, please contact me on ventrilo or send me an email at admin(at)hiddennode.com.

Thanks,

jdiehl