back to disappearing
Nano starts in a few days. That means it’s about time to get back on the writing wagon (I’ve had a nice vacation from it, but I’m itching to start).
I’ve been outlining using a convenient tool called yWriter5, which I quite recommend. It’s effectively just a database tool, but one designed around the expectation that you’ll be writing a novel. So it’s got sections for chapters, characters, etc, and some neat organizational tools to help with continuity (one can specify, for instance, how long a scene is to take and build a timeline to ensure nothing’s in conflict). Useful stuff, and I recommend it.
In other news, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is absolutely enthralling. It’s a dark book at times, but rarely without a sense of gallows humour, and it’s both powerful and brilliantly written. It’s not an easy book (it reads a bit like Joyce at times), but neither is it entirely impenetrable, and a fine choice for the discerningly hoity-toity literature-as-art sort. I might have more to say about it once I’ve finished reading, but for now I must away.
