For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, although it occurs all over the world. It’s like a writing marathon; the idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in just one month; that’s 1667 words a day, although many people do try and go over that.

Taken from the NaNoWriMo website:

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

In 2007, we had over 100,000 participants. More than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

So, as you can see, it’s popular to say the very least. I participated last year after someone on a forum I use suggested I give it a go, and I managed to complete it a day early. This year I’ll be aiming for 60k words rather than 50k, and I’m gonna be forcing myself to write even more.

As an incentive, I might try and persuade my mum to let me buy my netbook in time for November instead of having it as a birthday present. I’ll be able to put £100 or so towards it, and it’ll mean I can go off somewhere and write without the distracting properties of the internet.

For those of you who aren’t into novel writing, there’s always Script Frenzy. It’s run by the same people and next year will be its 4th, if I remember correctly. Instead of a 50k word novel, you have to write a 100-page script. It can be for anything; a TV show, a movie, a stage play, even a radio play. It’s in April, so you’ve got a fair bit of waiting to do, but it’s just as fun as NaNo and you don’t even need any experience in script writing to give it a go; I managed to get by, despite knowing absolutely nothing about how to write a script. There are plenty of free script writing programs around (my favourite being Celtx, although there are some more proffessional programs you have to pay for, and some online options if writing on the go is your thing), and they make it a hell of a lot easier. Additionally, Script Frenzy allows you to write with a partner, meaning you only really have to do half the work.

To take part in either of the events, you have to be 13 or over, although there are young writer’s versions of both programs for kids 12 and under, or for use by people taking part as a part of school lessons.

As you can see, I’ve stuck a NaNo participant badge on the left hand side, which will link to the NaNo website. I’ll probably post again about it nearer the time, and to any Wrimos planning on taking part this year, feel free to drop me a note – I’m writing as Icklepenguin this year, trying to stay in line with my blog and deviantART account names.

NaNoWriMo: Nanowrimo.org

Script Frenzy: Scriptfrenzy.org

Celtx: www.celtx.com

So I now have to go back and breed a load of houndours again. Fun.

If anyone reading this has a magby they wouldn’t mind trading, could they PLEASE put it on the GTS in search of a houndour above level 20? I’ll love you forever if you do, means I’ll be able to hatch the goddamn eggs twice as fast and replace all my lost work.

Yes, right now I’m slightly obsessed with Pokémon :/ I’ve spent well over 25 hours in total playing it over the last 5 days, and was up ’til 4am last night clicking Pokémon eggs on GPX+. Btw, if anyone could click these:

Especially the Regice and Gible eggs, I’d be grateful. The little bastards will take ages to hatch. :/

I’ve been playing on Battle Revolution on the Wii, and I gotta say… Floatzel and Luxray look freakin’ awesome, and not incredibly retarded when they move, although Floatzel looks like it’s trying to do a superman impression when it uses surf, but that’s more funny than retarded.

As well as that, I’ve uploaded some of the best pictures from my trip to the wildlife park onto deviantART.

Bearded Dragon by ~Icklepenguin on deviantART

That’s probably my favourite out of the one I posted, and some of the ones I didn’t post are being considered as entries to the RSPCA Young Photogropher’s Award, but I’ll make a final decision on which pictures I enter after my trip to the zoo in a week or so. Ideally I need to avoid having fences and the like in the pictures, as I’d rather give the impression that the animals have lots of space rather than being in a cage. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, provided there’s enough space and they have things to stop them from getting bored, but it’d just make a nicer picture overall, IMO.

Meerkats and tigers are on my list of things to take pictures of, and possibly the penguins too if we can get round to them in time for when they feed them; having the penguins right in front of you, pretty much close enough to reach out and touch, makes for some good photo opportunities, especially if I can get a good shot of one eating a fish. NOMS PLZ?

Also, my friend Rob decided to try an experiment: He’ll be doing EVERYTHING facebook tells him to do every day until the start of 2010. Should be good for lols, to make sure to check it out.

I went out today and took a load of pictures, will be posting them later when I can be bothered to upload the pics to my laptop.

UPDATE: Rob WILL be getting a tattoo of an ostrich on his foot. Good luck with that. XD

I can’t remember if I’ve actually posted this month, so I’m going to assume that I haven’t and just get on with this.

As usual, I’ve not been up to an awful lot. I got my hair done and it looks cool, but the fact that I tried to straighten it today and was met with the annoyance that is static electricity was kind annoying. *sigh*

My laptop’s been playing up a bit too, and I’m waiting on Mr. Microsoft Man to get back to me on some fixes. Hopefully, one of those will be installing SP2, but I don’t want to go installing stuff without being given the go-ahead first, seeing as we’re trying to fix it and not cause more problems. Still, only another 4 months until I can get a netbook and a smexy smexy desktop, and be rid of this bloody thing. If it were up to me, I’d have installed Linux long ago. Ubuntu ftw. A dad who won’t let me have Ubuntu ftl. I can’t wait til I’m 18 and I can move out. :/

Still, there are bigger things to be worrying about, like if it’s possible to get a pink hair dye stain out of a pillow, and whether or not I’ll stop sucking at drawing fur one day and I can give my dragons decent manes and crap. Oh, and if I’ll ever complete Pokémon Platinum. I got it in May and I still haven’t finished it. I restarted twice yesterday, and both times I got a female Piplup… not bad considering that starters only have a 12.5% chance of being female. I had the same thing on LeafGreen, apart from I’ve only ever started that game once and don’t plan on restarting any time soon. I have about two boxes of charmanders and bulbasaurs with random names that I need to get rid of, and I’m thinking about seeing if I can get a trade for a rare Pokémon *grins*

Oh, and my guitar amp is semi-broke. Just when I decided to move it up to my room so I could practise more, too. And just when I became obsessed with trock and planned on writing some songs…

OH.

MY.

GAWD.

Trock (Time Lord Rock for those of you who don’t know what it is) is, as the name suggests, songs based around Doctor Who. After watching some of LittleRadge‘s videos, I discovered Chameleon Circuit, and bought their album the next day. Just waiting on it arriving now, but I’m going slightly mad as I think my computer hates youtube so I can’t watch the videos and refuse to torrent the album. Still, it’s been dispatched, so only a few more days to wait, I reckon ^_^

I am still here, and I do have time to update, but I procrastinate wayyyyy too much. Right now I should probably be tidying my room up. Instead I’m updating this… way more fun.

So, uh… I discovered a doctor who book I never knew I had when I moved all my crap up to my new room. That lasted about 3/4 hours. I need more books, dammit :/

I might go out and see if I can get a load more of these Doc Who ones, I love ‘em.

Oh, I went shopping on Tuesday. I bought some new T shirts, a pair of kick-ass shorts which I saw just by chance (I’d actually wanted a pair like them before I went out, but I didn’t actually know they existed at the time. XD) and have been worn too much already, Howl’s Moving Castle on DVD (<3333, watch it if you haven’t already, it’s feckin’ awesome), a couple of new wii games ’cause they were doing a 2 for £20 deal on pre-owned games in Gamestation, and a new phone. I wuv my LG KS360 <3 And it’s only a £15/month contract too, I get unlimited texts, sooooo worth it ^_^

I saw Ice Age 3 on Friday, absolutely BRILLIANT. There’s actually a few slightly dirty jokes in there, yet it still manages to get a U rating… genius XD

Next Saturday is gonna be busy for me – guitar lesson 12-1, then I have to go straight from there to an outdoor education centre for a 3-hour archery course. Fun

Still, archery is awesome. Now I just need to go swimming, horse riding and to London and I’ll have done most of the stuff I wanted to this summer.

Failing that, I’ll just get a video of a ginger kid running into a shed (when I say that I mean slamming into it), falling on the floor, then have the “DUN DUN DUNNNN” noise and it just finishes. That would be pretty random.

I have the Great Yarmouth pics up on my deviantART account – there are some nice ones, but only one or two which came out good, and one of them was just perfect. ‘Tis set as the featured deviation on my page, and I love it, even if it does look a bit fake – which it’s not. All the pictures are uploaded exactly how I took them, apart from (obviously) the watermark you get on the full view versions.

Sorry for not updating… procrastination rears its ugly head once again.

Summer holidays are going pretty slow… seven weeks feels like a long longer than 6, though that could just be something to do with me preferring even numbers and how they divide equally.  I’m strange like that.

Had to go to the doctor on Monday to talk about low blood pressure… ’tis better than having high blood pressure but it can get bloody annoying when you get dizzy/see flashing lights every time you get out of bed or out of a car…

I have the next shop on AC:CF. Woo. New house too, I just need to get the furnitute I want to actually fill it. Although I’m thinking about just making the whole place a huge aquarium. No need for furniture that way, and if I get bored of it, I practically have a house full of bells.

On another note, I’ve been watching Niel Cicieriga’s videos on YouTube, and have been inspired/feel an urge to make some of my own, preferably of equal randomness. The one problem? I have no idea what to make a video about. I have no rats named Conrad or Housewife, nor do I have a cat that fears bananas (or any bananas, actually). What I will have this weekend (hopefully) is my friend, who should be able to help me come up with stuff.

Neil is just too cool for words.

Nope, not weird at all. Funny as hell though, same goes for PPP. If you don’t know who Neil Cicierega is, then you deserve a slap with a cuttlefish. Seriously. Him and his videos are made of weird and wacky win.

Oh, and I’m off to the beach tomorrow. Know what that means? Aside from sunburn and sand in my shoes? Means I can take my camera along and, hopefully, get some nice pictures. I shall be uploading to deviantART when I have them, so keep an eye out.

I’m Icklepenguin, A.K.A Sarah. I live in Norfolk in the UK (and have done so for 4 years now). I spent what is probably far too much time on my laptop (a dell inspiron 1525 which I plan on replacing very very soon with a smexy cube desktop and a Samsung netbook) and stuff. When I’m not at school, I have a really weird, almost non-existent sleep pattern. I own a cat, a goldfish and a guinea pig, who go by the names of Tiggi, BBQ Bob and Humbug respectively.

Basically I just felt like setting up a blog, one that I would actually remember to update rather than making it and just leaving it to die… hopefully I’ll be able to keep it updated if I have something to talk about, which I hopefully will.

I’ll probably mostly be posting about things like Animal Crossing (yeah I play the wii version), drawing and writing, though I actually do more procrastinating than doing the last two…

‘Tis the summer now though, so I should have more time for things like drawing and writing, though I’ll also have more time for playing AC:CF too, so who knows what’ll happen…

Anyway, I was bored so I took some pics of shit in my town >_>

From left to right: Fountain in the city, my character at the bus stop, fishing in town, the sea aquarium in the museum, and the two large freshwater auqariums in the museum

Apologies for the poor quality, Nintendo unfortunately made the camera system on AC:CF less than perfect… ’tis better than no camera at all, though. I’d love to see another, improved version of AC:CF with more new features and things to do, and some improvements on existing stuff (the city could be bigger and have more shops…)

On another note, I keep meaning to start writing something soon. I had an idea based off an idea which in turn was based off of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, but I only have a very very basic part of the plot. I should probably start planning in OneNote, but then I’d just lose it when I get my netbook (which probably won’t have OneNote), though I could just do it as a series of word files including things like plot, places and an individual file with details of each character. I’d like to do that, now that I think about it, but it would mean I have to be opening and closing files all the time… I guess if it means I can keep all my stuff though (I’ll get OpenOffice on the netbook) then it’ll be worth it.