Monday, November 1, 2010

v40.4: NaNoWriMo Begins!

Howdy folks,

-slurp-

The long awaited month of November is finally here and with it, NaNoWriMo!  I've been anxiously awaiting this to start and have been brainstorming ideas on what I want to write during the month of November.  For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, NaNoWriMo simply stands for "National Novel Writing Month" where every November, writers from all over the world take the time to write a novel of their own choosing and upload their progress to the NaNoWriMo site.  The goal this year is 50,000 words and I fully plan on making it this year.

Last year I was a bit disappointed in myself because I was only able to achieve approximately 20,000 words, but I was pleased with what I was able to accomplish and some of that novel I wrote has been posted here for others to read and enjoy.  It is still unfinished and perhaps some day I'll return to it and finish it off but this year I've decided to do a completely new novel.  I'm taking some advice from my sister and I'm writing about something I really know and enjoy, World of Warcraft.  I'm not going to write a strategy guide or anything crazy like that.  I'm simply taking a single adventure with my friends who play WoW and I'm writing about it.  I'm really excited about this year's NaNoWriMo project as it is something I really know a lot about and think it will be a  lot of fun writing about it.  I'm not going to bother changing the names or places, the goal here is to write as much as possible in 30 days and hopefully have something that vaguely resembles a novel by the end of it.  Proofreading and editing will come later.

-slurp-

Speaking of gaming, the gang and I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of Cataclysm, the newest expansion to the World of Warcraft collection.  To help bring in the new game and the new content we've all decided to start fresh on a new server.  As if that wasn't challenging enough, we've also decided to play the other faction to add even more "newness" to the game.  For those who are not into WoW or understand what I'm talking about: World of Warcraft is a massive game.  Approximately 11 million active subscribers spread across hundreds of servers.  A server is basically a copy of the same game which houses thousands of players.  Since each server is virtually identical, it doesn't really matter which server you play on to experience the game.  Having multiple servers is a way to help spread the population out to avoid latency so you can have hundreds of thousands of players playing at the exact same time.  You can't communicate with other players on other servers and if you were playing on a different server than I and standing in the same place I was, you wouldn't see me.  It's a tricky concept to explain to someone who has ever played.

This coming February will mark approximately 6 years of playing World of Warcraft for me.  I still find it hard to believe that I've been playing the same game for so long but WoW has "something" that keeps me hooked and as long as Blizzard keeps doing what they're doing, they'll most likely keep me for years to come.  I've met a lot of friends through WoW and made just as many enemies.  I've even met people in real life that I've played with which is strange and cool at the same time.  World of Warcraft isn't just another game, it is an experience and no, Blizzard isn't paying me for saying that.

-slurp-

Anyway folks, just a quick post and quick update so you know I'm still here and alive.  I'm taking the two things I like to do the most and I'm combining them into a fun and awesome project; World of Warcraft and Writing.  Wish me luck and hopefully during the progress I can keep you all up-to-date on how things are going.  Maybe I'll create a little site widget and update my total word count each day so you can see how far I've progressed.  We'll see.

Until next time.

Cheers,

Al

3 comments:

  1. Has it only been 6 years? Feels like you guys have been playing forever. Or maybe that's just because every time I see any of my siblings, all I hear about is WOW. stupid game...consumes my family. :(

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  2. good luck with the novel writing by the way. Can't wait to read it.

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  3. Yayyy!! I'm so happy to hear that you are going to write about WoW, finally!! I have a feeling this will prove more successful for you because you are more passionate about this! I can't wait to read what you get done (whenever you will allow others to read it :P). I would also be very interested to see the word count progress if you have time to set that up? Good luck with the novel and I will see you guys tonight!!

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