The Yes Zone » writing

British Govt ends teaching of the “I before E except after C rule”

Glenn D'mello — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:43:06 +0000

Now I’d always found that rule strange, and everytime I heard it, I keept remembering this poem:

“I” Before “E” Except After “C”

It’s a rule that is simple, concise and efficeint.
For all speceis of spelling it’s more than sufficeint.
Against words wild and wierd, it’s one law that shines bright,
Blazing out like a beacon upon a great hieght.

It gives guidance impartial, sceintific and fair
In this language, this tongue to which we are all hier.
‘Gainst the glaceirs of ignorance that icily frown,
This great precept gives warmth, like a thick iederdown.

Now, a few in soceity choose to deride,
To cast doubt on this anceint and venerable guide;
They unwittingly follow a foriegn agenda,
A plot hatched, I am sure, in some vile haceinda.

In our work and our liesure, our homes and our schools,
Let us follow our consceince, sieze proudly our rules!
Will I dilute my standards, make them vaguer and blither?
I say NO, I will not! I trust you will not iether.

- By Duncan McKenzie (in rec.humor)

Nanowrimo

Glenn D'mello — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:36:21 +0000

It’s finally over. Hello world. Hello books I can start to read. Hello everyone. I did it. Knuckled down and pushed out close to 8000 words today to get me over. What was amazing was how easy it was to get into the flow. Towards the end, all I was doing was typing out words at a furious pace, and the story just happened to fall together.

A funny thing is that even though I finished 3 days early, I was surprised on seeing my stats what my writing style was. See below the cut for my daily word count and a brief analysis.

The picture below shows a graphical view of words written per day.
There were 7 days where I did not do any writing at all (red bars). I had four very good days (>4000 words) and most other days I was just over (green tipped bars) or under (red tipped bars) the daily quota of around 1700 words. And there was just one day when I hit the word count exactly (grey bar).

Now please excuse me while I gloat a little.

Of course the novel is nowhere near finished. I had a secret weapon I could use whenever I was blocked and needed to get kick-started again, and those naughty bits need to be toned down. The first few chapters have their points of view all messed up. The first half seems to have a different main character – one of my minor characters takes over the novel in the second half, and I need to fix that.

And no, I’ll only be inflicting it on any of you (even after editing it and writing a second/third draft) that beg and beg me to let you have a copy you can read

Back to the online world…

Glenn D'mello — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 07:43:04 +0000

After a brief(!) hiatus, I’m finally back.

What I’m currently up to is this:

June Flash Fiction Carnival

Glenn D'mello — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 03:22:00 +0000

I’m hosting the June Flash Fiction Carnival over at the Flash Fiction Carnival 2008 blog. Sharpen your pencils, (scrape off your palimpsest if you need to) and head on over.