It’s done, one day ahead of schedule – I “won” NaNoWriMo 2009.

This year, it was particularly hard. Not only do I have a new job which kept me quite occupied, I also did not have any furniture at home, having just moved into a new apartment. Like last year, I encountered mental resistance to the project after some time, and just like last year I asked myself, “why the hell am I doing this?”

I am doing this, of course, to teach myself to be “creative” to a schedule. I did a better job of this than last year. I wrote on fewer days of the month than last year, and got much more done on those days. And while I did not complete the story yet, I am quite close.

What made all the difference is that I followed one of the lessons learned from last year: This time I created an outline ahead of time. Some adjustments were necessary, as I moved the story form one of my worlds to another, but these were relatively minor. I did not complete the story yet, but I am very close; another 2-3 days will get me there so unlike last year, I will get to “The End”. It’s still a crappy story, so unless I edit it into something fairly nice I won’t be posting it. ;)

I am not sure whether I will do NaNoWriMo 2010, but unless some other big project interferes, I probably will. I’ll try to take some days off of work next year, though: If I have an outline and write every day, I should be able to easily complete a story in the 30 days.

Today was an art day:

Milky Way Galaxy

Milky way Galaxy II

Here’s an assortment of links you might find useful.

How-To’s

• Map-making tutorial using The Gimp.

Inspiration, Locations

• Photos from Paris Exhibition, 1900. In color.
• Abandoned subway stations in New York City
• The Uros people of the Titicaca lake live on floating islands, which is a cool style of living for a conpeople.

Science Fiction Stuff

• Tests have shown that it is possible to protect long-duration missions from solar wind using a magnetic shield.
• Scientists figured out that Mars’ loss of atmosphere to the pressure from solar wind isn’t a slow, gentle process; instead it is quite violent: Solar Wind Rips Up Martian Atmosphere.

NaNoWriMo 2008 Research

• Wikipedia on radioactive fallout
• Wikipedia on fallout shelters and blast shelters
• Mount Weather government bunker
• Gas masks vs bad smells: Gas masks do not filter out odors, unless they are designed for the job, but vick vapor rub is a work-around used by law enforcement and emergency workers.
• Geiger counters
• Compound bows – bow hunting is done in the US

I am still experimenting with drawing planets. This time, with Inkscape instead of The Gimp.

Planet drawn with Inkscape

This was a really quick design, and for that I think it works rather well.

I found a nice tutorial on creating very basic planets with The Gimp. My first attempt:

Planet

Well… it’s a start, but this isn’t really too useful yet.

NaNoWriMo 2008 is almost upon us and I am starting to wonder what the hell I got myself into. Will I really manage to write 1667 words on average each and every day in November? Well we will surely find out… It’ll be interesting, as I am having trouble being creative the last few days, for various reasons that shan’t be discussed on the blog.

Back when I was a teenager, I used to actually write. A lot. Unfortunately twenty years and several problems with my computers mean that I have almost nothing left from those days. Even so, I don’t need to read it again to know that it was pretty much garbage. The difference is that today I recognize the drivel when I put it in a file, and I automatically try to rework it as I do so.

NaNoWriMo forces me to stop doing that. If I don’t, I’ll never complete 50k words. As I spend many hours outlining, I still think “this is nonsense, this wouldn’t happen, this is bad”. But then, after torturing myself for some time over the last three bullet points, I finally tell myself: “It doesn’t have to be good, that is what revisions are for, it just has to get done.”

I had never imagined just how difficult it is to deal with that inner critic. It’s a great lesson, though. After all, isn’t the inner critic also what keeps us from taking chances in other situations?

“Oh, I shouldn’t apply for that job. I doubt I could make it.” And maybe miss out on a good job.

“I shouldn’t talk to that stranger, even though there is a reason to do so. I shouldn’t bother him.” And maybe miss out on an interesting conversation or possibly even a new friend.

“I shouldn’t bother approaching that girl, she’s way out my league.” And maybe miss out on, hey, a whole lot.

I am not saying taking part in NaNoWriMo will make me bother strangers, women, and potential employers afterwards, but in my opinion everything that lets you look at yourself and think about how you deal with the world is a fairly good thing.

As a bonus, I may call myself an “unpublished writer” afterwards.

Now… if you’ll excuse me, I have half a novel to outline, and three and a half days to do it.

Alex posted a science fiction teaser in what looks like it could be one of those Internet memes, except this one is of course for writers and would-be writers.

Since I am not a writer, not really anyway, and I don’t have any completed works to tease from, I decided to create a teaser from scratch. It is about a new setting I am working on and that I may explore in my NaNoWriMo novel instead of what I had originally intended. (It is really an extension of the same theme rather than something completely new, sometimes those ideas that pop up in my mind happen to complement each other rather than compete for attention.)

The atmosphere in the shelter was a mix of tense anticipation and quiet resignation. Some occupants stoically awaited their fate, others whimpered or cried. Luckily nobody had panicked – yet. I kept to myself, sitting on a chair staring at the heavy blast door, wondering what I would experience had I been on the other side.

The radio played music that was decades out of date. It sounded like an automatic transmission that had been designed decades ago during the height of the cold war. There had been no messages after the initial emergency broadcast. Somehow the absence of any human announcer was much spookier than news of the world’s destruction could possibly have been. At least it meant that there was still a radio station, somewhere out there, that had not yet been hit.

Max, the shelter’s owner, kept things organized. He talked to people, introduced himself to those he didn’t know – most of those in the shelter, including me. Max was an older man, at least fifty, and his graying hair and beard gave him a bit of a grandfatherly appearance. He smiled and talked in a calm voice. I don’t know how he managed to be so serene, but then again he was the one who had had the foresight to build a bomb shelter. Even a few hours ago people probably thought of him as “one of those survivalist nuts” and while I am sure he was as devastated as everybody else, a small part of him may have been gleeful that he had been right after all. A kind of Noah, except Max had not hesitated to rescue strangers.

“You doing alright,” a woman to my left asked. I turned around startled. I had been so lost in my thoughts that I had not even noticed that she had pulled up a chair and sat down. She, too, looked straight at the blast door as I had done, imitating me. I studied her for a moment. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin. Pretty.

I looked back at the door.

“All things considered.” It sounded not quite as positive as I had hoped.

For a moment neither of us spoke.

“Listen,” she broke the silence. “I am helping Max by making a list of everybody here, so we know who’s who, what jobs they have, and any medical conditions we should know about. Would you please tell me about yourself?”

I couldn’t help but smile because of the unexpected attention. Under other circumstances…

“Sure. Name’s John Sanders. I… don’t have a job right now.” There seemed to be no reason to tell her about my recent legal troubles. It didn’t concern anybody in the shelter, and quite honestly, how could a little theft matter now?

“But what is your training? Maybe we must rely on your skills at some point.”

“I see.” I hadn’t thought her question through. There was too much on my mind. “I am a programmer. Not much help after the EMP fries every bit of electronics out there, I am afraid. Had first aid training, but that was a long, long time ago.”

I turned again, this time to find her looking at me. Yes, she was beautiful.

“I have two hands,” I shrugged. “Tell me how I can help, and I will. I can carry things, cook without poisoning us, and clean the bathroom. Whatever.”

She made some notes on her clipboard while I spoke.

“Thanks,” she said and stood up.

“Could I ask you something?”

“Yes?”

“What is your name?”

“Artemis.”

I didn’t have a chance to follow up on that. The radio stopped playing that very moment. Then the lights went out, except for the reddish emergency lighting.

Two minutes later a pattern of tiny cracks in the walls began to glow a brilliant blue.

I am not sure I am eligible to join the evil writers’ club just yet but were I a writer, that is something I’d strive for.

We get better at what we do with lots of practice so feedback is, as always, appreciated – this explicitly includes corrections on spelling and grammar, as I am not a native English speaker.

Two days ago, I had an idea for a new setting. Something that at least I think would be fairly cool, and it would tie up one loose end of something I have been working on for some time. But there are also some downsides. Specifically, I should really work on this new idea before the story I was outlining for NaNoWriMo because it serves as a “genesis” for the setting used in that story. I’ll have to start over from scratch with a new story arc, new characters, a new outline.

I am fairly sure that, once I post specifics, you’ll go “well, meh, that isn’t that original or exciting”. For the moment, however, this new idea is quite an obsession. Something I want to work on, and in the end I do all of this for myself so that’s okay.

I still wonder: Do you guys ever get that type of idea you feel absolutely compelled to work on? And what does it say about myself that doing something terrible to an imagined city then throwing some non-existing people into that situation makes me all excited and gleeful?

While I was torturing my mind for more words, it began to seek an escape route and thus wandered about a little. I thought about the fact that I really don’t want to work on science fiction right now and began to examine my worlds for “genre”. Turns out, science fiction is almost everywhere. Or more correctly, science fiction elements.

These are the worlds I worked on recently, say in the last half year or so:

• Arnâron is a dying world that used to be ultra-high tech, and some remnants of it will be found here and there. I guess that counts as borderling sci-fi, or doesn’t it?
• Gaia Ringworld is a world where (most) of mankind lives in tribal structures in harmony with a seemingly sentient natural world. But that world is a giant ring, a Banks Orbtial, and if that isn’t sci-fi then I don’t know what is.
• Thraeton: An untamed, undeveloped world where much of “native” civilization is in the stone age. Again I included science fiction elements: Over the past centuries, humans from alternate worlds arrived on Thraeton. Most of them involuntarily, whisked away by that old stereotype, the storm that opens gateways between worlds; but others chose this world as a destination and it is they who built high-tech cities with nanotechnology and robots. Sounds Science Fictiony to me.
• Voyagers: My take on a Foundation style galactic society. It doesn’t get more classical than this in science fiction.
• Terra: An alternate history setting… at first glance this may not sound very science fictional, except that at some the Terrans discover the technology to travel between parallel universes – this is sort of my “meta setting” that connects everything. And I think travelling to other universes is quite sci-fi.

Looking through my other worlds, there’s a lot of stuff there that isn’t science fiction at all. Like Enderra, which is yet another sword and sorcery world. But I guess that there is some kind of science fiction in many of them – I guess I just like to explain things pseudo-scientifically when I can instead of resorting to “magic”.

Mh, I should probably introduce some of my settings in more detail on the blog… but first, I shall return to making up words for the Arnâronian language.

More resources:

• How to design a good flag
• Flag generator
• Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds
• Inkscape – A Guide to a Vector Drawing Program

Found more interesting world building links:

• Thud and Blunder: Article by Poul Anderson about worldbuilding.
• 3D-Starmaps is dedicated to star maps.
• Atomic Rockets contains a lot of information about real and fictional rocketships.

If you’re serious about world building, this one might be something for you: The California State University is/was offering a course in World Building. The course is offered both on-campus and as a distance learning course. It focuses on realistic, scientific world-building. I am not sure if the course is still actively offered; the Open University does not seem to list it. I’m actually interested in this course, but unfortunately the professor who taught it does not reply to email at the moment. A pity.

I’ve added a few links – and since I can’t really expect anyone to do a mental diff on the two link lists, I decided to quickly post what I’ve added since I initially started the link lists.

World Building Resources:

• Climatology for Worldbuilders
• Language Construction Kit
• A Way with Worlds

Worlds on the Web:

• Planetocopia
• Life on the Planet Furaha

Worlds do not always have to be plain old balls of dirt speeding through space, it’s also possible to have artificial constructs as your worlds. One such design was created by Arthur C. Clarke for his book Rendezvous with Rama. Rama is a space ship in the shape of a hollow cylinder; such designs have been created by NASA as hypothetical future space stations.

Anyway, the Rama spaceship is quite large, and a Frenchman, Eric Bruneton, sought a way to render this huge scenery. He developed methods for this that are quite interesting, and you can visit his website about Rendering Rama to see the resulting art and read a very interesting article on how he accomplished the feat.

As you can see, he succeeded beautifully.

I must say that I always pictured Rama’s interior as more artificial-looking, but that could have been my misreading of the story. Of course Eric’s rendering is more a demonstration of technology rather than a faithful rendering. Either way, I thought that this was a great little gem that people interested in world building or constructed worlds might be interested in.

Alien Planet is another example of “professional” world building, similar to The Future is Wild. However, unlike that show, Alien Planet is set on a world in another star system. It depicts a robotic mission of exploration to this planet.

Someone actually uploaded the thing to Google Video. Enjoy:

Personally, I feel that a lot of the creatures showing here seem a little far-fetched… however, I am still not a zoologist or botanist and thus can’t really say. Anyway, it makes for an entertaining 90 minutes.

Additional links:

• Alien Planets official homepage.