York

It's occurred to me again today just how weird and wonderful it is to live in York. I love the old buildings, with their twisted staircases and uneven floors. I love the Golden Fleece, the pub which is supposed to have a ghost in every room and where your drink slides off the slanted table. I love the cobbled streets and little alleyways which you suddenly realise hide a whole new row of shops or a huge church. I love the fact that you can walk down a boring concrete street and suddenly encounter a Tudor hall, or a big glass window behind which wax figures are frozen in a depiction of some aspect of old York life.
Most of all, I love the strangeness. It is not at all rare to encounter a Roman soldier or Viking in the streets, particularly near the big tourist attracts to lure people in. Then there's the man covered in purple paint who sits for hours on his purple bike on Stonegate. There's also the people who advertise the dungeon and the ghost walks, who lurk around the minster looking evil.
Today the Grim Reaper was walking innocently along Petergate. He seems to have been affected by the economic situation too, his scythe was only made of plastic and kept dragging sadly along the ground whenever he adjusted his hood.

So that's the wonderful world of York. It has it's faults, of course. You have to learn to be able to stop dead behind tourists who suddenly decide to look in a window. You have to learn to walk in the road too, since much of the city is sort of pedestrianised some of the time. Bit confusing really, but the most important bit is to remember to move out of the way when there's a car. People still like to ruin it by dropping their rubbish everywhere, but I suppose we'll have to live with that.

Although... I think I've got some bloody chewing gum on my shoe.

Busy Days

Well, I've had a busy few days... 

Started volunteering today in the hope of improving my CV, which was an interesting experience. Spent a lot of time identifying and labelling clothes. Surprising how difficult it is to tell the difference between a jumper and a jacket.

I was ill the other day too, so haven't had much time for NaNoWriMo preparation. Only about 5 days to go. Should make it interesting. 

We are currently watching Kiki's Delivery Service, which James has wanted to watch again for ages. He does love that cat. 

Also, the sink is now unblocked. Astonishing things, plungers. 

Coffee Shops and Pens

With a week to go until NaNoWriMo, I am plotless. Actually that's not true, I have plots, but none are very well developed. 

The most promising (as judged by my pet editor James) is probably about 1/3 plotted. I have the start of the outline, I have the characters, I just need to fill in the details. The trouble is, there are a couple of quite major plot flaws that need to be ironed out. The general opinion on the NaNoWriMo forums seems to be that it doesn't matter whether you have an outline, some people even start on the 1st November with nothing at all and see where it takes them. I thought about trying that, but I get the feeling it would go badly and I would just give up on the mess I created. 

So my solution was to get away from the computer. A text document doesn't allow me to mix ideas enough or reorder as I'd like. I've found a useful little piece of plotting software, but it's only really useful if you have the ideas to fill it. 

It's surprisingly tricky to find a decent place to think and write. My requirements weren't many: it had to be warm, it had to have coffee, it had to have a decent toilet with soap provided at the sink and it had to have something to eat. I went through two cafes before I found a good one. One was rejected due to lack of food, the second due to lack of soap (one of my pet hates).

Anyway, once I finally found one I spent over an hour nestled in a corner with a cup of coffee (that lasted me over an hour, I could only afford one), 5 new pens (of varying colours and types) and a new notebook. This approach worked surprisingly well actually, and the result was several scribbled pages of notes and solutions to a couple of the plot holes. 

Maybe I'll go back tomorrow. I wonder if they'll let me take my own coffee...

Also the sink is blocked, is immune to bleach and drain unblocker, and James didn't buy a plunger. 

New Blog and NaNoWriMo

So I've started a new blog. Seems like the ultimate act of arrogance to start a blog when you've not got much to talk about, but I'm hoping it'll encourage me to get more done so I have something to post about.
On that basis, I've decided (finally) to have a go at NaNoWriMo, the month long writing marathon where the sole aim is to write 50,000 words. As far as I can tell they consider it a mere bonus if those words actually form a coherent story.

The main problem now is that, with only a week to go, I've got no story. No plot, no characters, no ideas. I think I prefer it that way. Means I've got a (panicked) focus for the next week anyway.

Also I'm not so good with blogs so this could get updated anywhere from three times a day (procrastination) to once a week (desperation).