29 October 2008
NaNoWriMo
Posted by Ryan Anderson
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein
Starting on Saturday, I will be participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an annual activity in which insane writers attempt to complete a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. The rules are that you can plan as much (or as little) as you want beforehand, but the page must remain blank until 12:00 AM on November 1st. I’ve always wanted to write a novel, but I have the bad habit of editing as I write, which causes me to lose momentum pretty quickly. The point of NaNoWriMo is to get over that urge to edit meticulously and just get stuff written without turning back. Editing is for December!
In any case, I bring this up because I am a mere mortal, so time spent writing a novel means time that I won’t be able to spend here. I will continue to update the blog, but posts may be less frequent as I try to balance research, novel writing, blogging, and “real life”. I am sure you are greatly dismayed to hear that posting may be less frequent here, but there is something that you can do to help: Suggest blog topics!
If you suggest topics, then I don’t have to come up with them and can just focus on writing about them when I have the chance. So if there’s something that you’d like to know about Mars or space exploration (or anything else, really…) just post a comment or send me an email!
Also, fear not, because less writing time will likely mean more pretty pictures! A picture is worth a thousand words, after all. (hmm… can I use that to reach my 50k words for the novel?)
novel writing, eh? thats pretty awesome! have you been thinking of plots and what-nots or are you just going to wing it when Nov 1 comes?
question I have had recently concerning mars and have not researched on my own at all, may or may not be interesting to blog about…: teconics on mars? what is it like? is it similar to earth? does it have plates? a mantle? ect. also I am curious about the general topography of mars…where the rovers have had to land are probably the equivalent of Kansas on mars…what kinds of other features are out there? ( I’ve been told mars has the tallest planetary mountain we know of?)
also, side question: could we put a seismograph on mars to measure eruptions and such? is it physically possible or useful?
thanks!
good luck!
-Danielle
Cool, thanks for the ideas!
I have done a fair bit of research and planning for the novel. I have a setting, main characters, a culture to put them in, and a general idea of the plot.
is it in space?!
Nope, it’s a “realistic” (as in, little to no magic) fantasy, with the main culture based on the Incas. Because of course, I couldn’t choose to write something easy…
Thank you for all the great information and excitement you guys provide.
I’d love to learn more about Martian caves/lava tubes/skylights and what they might mean for habitable zones, as well what the possibilities are for exploring them, either from orbit or someday on the ground.
that is a very interesting set-up! all you need now is a love story and war!
ive been looking to some info about hawai’i and its volcanos and came across the presence of xenoliths! and then of course i came to wonder, have we found these on mars? they would be very telling!…
Bill, cool idea! I’ll think about it and see if I can come up with enough for a post.
Danielle, I don’t know much about xenoliths on Mars, but I have a nice chunk of mantle xenolith with pretty green olivine crystals in it that I picked up as a bomb on one of the cones on Mauna Kea. You can tell if they have xenoliths in them because they are more dense than the purely basalt bombs!
As for the story, there’s definitely a war of succession. Not sure about a love story, but nothing is finalized yet…