Despite the weather that seemed unseasonally warm and lovely at the beginning of last month, November is firmly entrenched now in cold and damp (and my allergies coming back along with the rotting mouldy stuff) and it is only the 4th.

Of course, November is NaNoWriMo and I’m doing it again. This year’s story is another maybe post-apocalyptic one (I only seem to write these in November, maybe it is the season, I don’t know). But this is my 5th NaNoWriMo and my 3rd story of this general type. Hmm. I’m using Scrivener for the writing and general organization, but I have also downloaded a beta version of Scapple, which is a mind-mapping/graphic organizer/virtual whiteboard sort of thing from the creator of Scrivener. I’m finding Scapple to be great to rough out my ideas for scenes and then being able to move them around to get them in the ‘right’ order. It’s just like using index cards (which I do), but virtually and in a spread out, easy to see everything all at once way. I’ve tried some other similar programs before, but Scapple works better, it doesn’t force you to put lines or arrows or what have you between the items (you can, if you want, but it isn’t mandatory). I like it’s simplicity.

What else? I’m continuing with the online classes through the Writers Studio, which continue to be awesome.  As a result of the last assignment, I have a stack of books of Plath‘s poetry beside my computer right now (and I’m very excited about the new compilation chosen by Carol Ann Duffy!), along with Neruda’s collected poems. It is not the poetry exactly, but how I can use that to improve my prose. Re-reading Tulips over and over again for the assignment really made me think a lot about the technique involved. Plath was amazing at her craft.

I’ve procrastinated long enough now. Back to some ‘real’ writing.