Posts tagged with “writing” and “NaNoWriMo”

November 07

Greetings from Fehrnzeit

Hello World!  I am sure many of you reading this will know me , or know of me.  I am Anton Ferhnzeit and of course with a name like that if you have met me you will not have forgotten me!  But then, you would not forget me anyway, would you?  I have such a lively, engaging, and frankly quite brilliant mind and such charm and wit combined with my devilish good looks.  I know modesty does not become me, you would only detect the false misplaced sentiment behind it if you knew me.

So - to those that know me - "Felicitations! You know what to expect and can enjoy my presence in the Blogosphere just as you have in my more mundane, everyday circles"

And to those that do not "Greetings!  You have come to the right place to be stimulated and amused! I intend to lift the quality of the blogosphere to new heights"

How much further should I introduce myself - well I have given this some thought.  A picture could be misleading and make you judge me to be vain, so you shall find none.  A lengthy description is unlikely to do me justice either.  My reputation precedes me if you know me already, making such a thing unnecessary.  If you do not know me, then with my charming wit and repartée you soon shall and will be a richer person for it!

On to matters more interesting than myself then!  Yes there are some, even to me!  Of course now that I have deployed my not inconsiderable intellect here I need a subject and a blog post to start this blog rolling.  Speaking of which - impress me sufficiently and I shall award you the honour of a space on my blogroll - but for now it is gloriously empty.

The subject of the moment is POSSESSION.  You may find that a little odd for me, you may have noticed my generous nature.  But there is more to possession than that.  For example I possess a great deal of self-composure.  I believe the Devil posesses the souls of those that do not hold on to their own.  And last but not least I have found that when I meet a member of the so called "gentler" sex they invariably seek to "possess" me!  Incidentally there is an excellent book of that name by A.S Byatt.  I commend it to those readers who have not already enjoyed it.

They say that possession is nine tenths of the law, and there's good reason for that.  I say that if we took the observation that "the love of money is the root of all evil" and changed it to the "desire to possess" (for surely if money is anything it is a tool for the purposes of mans' possession?

Of course, myself I am fortunate enough to possess more than ample resources to possess more or less anything I desire (including a member of the fairer sex if I set my mind to it!).  But I may surprise you if I tell you that I aspire to relinquish the DESIRE to possess.  Certain fundaments I insist that I not only possess but have complete dominion over, these include my wits and my sanity!  Certain others I insist upon shunning and have a desire to dispossess, such as trouble and strife (and these are chosen with a view to the Cockney rhyming slang also, since I cherish my bachelor status!).

I must leave you for a moment now - my manservant is drawing me a bath and I do so like it to be at the perfect temperature.  Please could my fledgling audience consider what they possess and what desires possess them - I shall return when bathed and fed to consider further...

Adios!

... Returning to my screen after a splendid repast.  I find my possession of my senses most necessary!  And I am mindful of a poor chap who owes his life to the wonderful RAF emergency service.  I just heard on the wireless that he suffered a stroke mid-air and lost his sight!  Believe it or not he survived despite being alone.  Coming to his senses (sans sight!) the poor chap radioed for help and an RAF crew were scrambled to intercept him at altitude and "talk him down" this they managed to do.  The man was heard to grumble that he was concerned his landing was a little bumpy!  But he did thank them for saving his life!

There is a good tale to end my first blog posting on - so fellow readers of the Blogosphere, retain your senses and relinquish your possessions I say to you!  It is clear which has the more value, to me anyway.

Until tomorrow - Anton.

04:46 PM | 1 Comment | Tags: , ,
November 05

Excited to write! (Why?!)

This post will be brief, because the writing I am excited about is not blog posting, but more a little light coding and then NaNoWriMo (or nano as I sometimes call it for short).

The coding part is putting the finishing touches to this new "blog" site I have set up for my book! (I want to remove or lighten the sidebar for easier reading).

I know one person who will be thrilled to see this appear at least.  But what confuses the bejeezus out of me is why I am excited about it?!  You see if a publisher came up and offered to publish anything I had written (not something I believe to be even a remotely possibility!) then my reaction would be trepidation, suspicion, and vague concern (lest I become widely read, celebrity is something I would not wish upon myself or anyone dear to me, unless they sought it out as part of their nature).  So the only explanation I can offer myself is that the internet readership is a different ballgame, you retain anonymity (or is it the illusion of that?).  Your audience is selective and you can be too (it is technically possible to restrict the content and then ban people you do not want to see it, only those you trust can see it).

Also, to be quite frank the coding does interest me more than the writing - so there is that.  After this it is the last possible online activity of any length I should allow to be a distraction from my nano!  I hope you like the link, I'll put it on the "About NaNoWriMo" page too and until I have done that coding it may have mickey mouse content, but soon enough it will get (daily?) updates to become in December my nano novel online!   It runs on the latest and greatest chyrp release too (RC3), so I feel good about that.

12:09 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: , , ,
November 02

Displacement activity

OK well, so I sang the Verdi and that was great fun.  The best part is that unlike the first time where I went through months of weekly practices learning the piece and practicing (along with some singing lessons as I was new to singing then) this time it was one rehearsal a week in advance, then a rehearsal in the morning and sing my heart out for the concert in the evening!  What fun!  My stepmother says I am getting a "repertoire" and I tell her that is pretentious nonsense!  But it is lovely to get the chance to sing something you enjoyed again.

That recording is from a personal MP3 player with on board mic that I slipped in my pocket at the last minute - highly experimental and I am amazed I got ANYTHING!  There were mics all over and I'll probably HAVE TO buy a couple of CD's for family and friends (they'd kill me if I didn't).

But all of this is displacement writing!  I am MEANT to be making a start on my novel writing month!  You would not believe the things I have found that I just "have to do" before I sit down with the document open and type!  I have taken the rubbish out (early), done three loads of laundry (one a half load), formatted a laptop for a friend, burnt a knoppix DVD for testing, tidied my cable suitcase and filed a laptop charger...phoned a friend... emailed Quaker friends! All of these things I would normally leave for a more appropriate time or leave until they HAD to be done.

And now I am writing to my blog, because I have the dual excuse that this is also NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) where I am supposed to post daily for November.  That will not be hard to do (look at the count for October in the Archive!).

My NaBloPoMo profile 

Oh yes - I also wasted time changing a poem to "draft status" and seeing if I could install the Chyrp extension so that I could link you guys to a file where I'd put my novel to date - luckily for you that is broken but I may still do it by hand... esp. if there are more than a couple of comments expressing interest in that.

Last but not least at Quaker meeting I was (finally) able to take responsibility for the website! And I even repaired a linkback to it from London Quakers - so some of my displacement activity has been useful.  That site will start to get overhauled as soon as I have come up with content and it has been approved by the elders.

But enough keystrokes blogging - they all need to go to my novel really!  I have a name for the lead character - he is going to be Frederick Allsop, but he will prefer the Pseudonym of Anton Fehrnzeit!  So when things look weird on here with some blog entries if those names feature (or Lydia Dypchyk, the comic love interest!) then you can guess it is a "novel" blog.  I shall tag them all Fehrnzeit - if that helps...

05:23 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: , , , ,