It’s about that time of year again, time for the ice on the Rideau River to be broken apart. I see from my Flickr photostream that the breaking up of the ice started around March 18 or 19 last year. (The picture below is from March 20, 2008.)

I haven’t heard any blasting this year and it’s hard to tell from a distance if the ice is gone or not. On the one hand, it looks as if it might be, but on the other hand, there are no lingering floes of broken up ice and from here I can’t tell if the water is actually flowing or if it is just snow-free ice. It’s been pretty mild lately so maybe they didn’t need to do any blasting this year to break it up — most  years, they just have a machine on a barge that mechanically breaks up the ice, which takes a lot less time because there is no need to set the charges for the relatively thin Spring ice.

ETA: Ah, I got a closer look at the river and it is definitely ice-free — not even any ice floes still moving downstream. Clearly, they didn’t have to do any blasting.

As you can see from the dates of my previous posts, I’ve had a problem sustaining my blogging. I’d toyed with the idea of just completely deleting the whole thing, but I think I’d like to give it one more shot. Ottawa has a vibrant community of bloggers and I’d like to take a shot at joining them.

I’ve spent the last couple of days playing around in LibraryThing — I really need to start cataloguing the books I own and LibraryThing is a handy way to do that, better than the dbase file I was using or the XLS file I’d just started. I’ve also added a few other widgets/feeds, including my last.fm feed and the latest photos in my Flickr photostream. (Yes, I know I haven’t done anything in either for awhile but maybe having them in my face will make me use them more.)

I’m still sorting out the theme to use — haven’t found one yet that I actually like all the facets of and I don’t have time right now to manually tweak one. So, this quirky pink one is an interim theme. It’s cute, but I imagine there are too many blogs using it.

ETA: Wow, just flashed back on my early days blogging (2002-ish?). Think I was using Movable Type at the time — don’t know how it works now but then you had to manually force the pages of your blog to update. It was very clunky. Mind you, prior to that, I was just manually writing static HTML pages with “news” so I suppose it was still a step up from what I was doing. Think I started using Movable Type after my brother pointed out Wil Wheaton’s blog (which used MT at the time) to me.

I went to bed last night after writing the first couple of lines at around 12:30. Had intended to only sleep a couple of hours but I’ve been not getting enough sleep for most of the week, and I started coming down with something flu-ish on Thursday. Still feel nauseous and lightheaded but maybe that’ll help the writing.

Have about a page written now. Need to stop rewriting it. Had intended to make my main character mail but I really don’t think I can do that justice in three days. So I’ll stick to what I know and make it female. Doesn’t have quite the same zing but it will do. And it will flow more easily than trying to translate my thoughts into man-speak.

I’m considering maybe writing it like a journal or a blog, rather than straightforward first person writing. Might be easier to do. (Damn, I’m all about “easy” today.) Had thought about whether to write in first person or third person — as a reader, I like both. First person seems like a bit of a cop out to me right now but, again, I’m going for the Easy Button this weekend.

I was using Word to write in but now I’ve decided to switch to WriteWay. It’s one of the reasons I bought it last year in the first place. It’s a writing program that helps you keep track of plot, characters, etc. I’m going to transfer the notes and rough outline I’d made there and spend the next couple of hours trying to beef that up. The writing seems to be OK but I really need to have a better idea of where I’m going with it.

So, I ended up sending in my registration yesterday. I tried to convince a friend to take part as well, but I believe she has decided (in a won’t-decide-if-I-want-to-register-until-it’s-too-late kind of way) to not take part. Too bad. Virtual company would have been fun.

I’ve pretty much decided to go with one of the ideas I was considering for last year’s contest. I’ve avoided much in the way of outlining. I know how I want it to start and I know very roughly where I want the story to go. I’ll take the rest of it on the fly.

After giving it more thought, I was considering not doing 3-Day this year. I have a lot of other things I should be doing on a long weekend — can I really justify earmarking the entire three days just for writing fiction? Then I found out today that it’s actually a four-day weekend. So, I could do the contest and still have a day to work on some of the other stuff.

Decisions, decisions.

Can’t believe I’m even considering it again.

The 3-Day Novel Contest runs a little earlier this year, since Labour Day itself is the earliest it can be this year. It starts at midnight this coming Friday (Saturday morning) and runs until midnight on Monday night. I still have a couple of ideas that I didn’t use last year — I just need to pick one and flesh out the outline a little. I tried flying by the seat of my pants last year and look how well that worked for me. A friend of mine is considering taking part but she won’t decide until the middle of the week. It would be nice to have someone to whinge with, but I won’t hold my breath. She actually has a life so giving up a whole weekend to this likely won’t happen. She’s the only person I’ve told that I’m thinking about doing it, which is also a difference from previous years. Unless someone I know trips over this blog (and, let’s face it, no one is likely to), it’s going to stay that way.

Getting to it early. Swamped by the third day blues. I’m a crappy writer, what the hell am I doing, I should give in, etc. The usual stuff. Lots of self-doubt. Probably shouldn’t have signed up this year. Probably shouldn’t sign up ever again, unless I can get my ass in gear in the meantime. Have no discipline, no gumption, no brain cells that are actually functioning. Any hopes that I might have a full novel, crappy or otherwise, to send in are gone. Miracles can happen and you never know but given how far behind I am now, I don’t see it happening. Still, I’ll keep trying to write until the deadline and send in whatever I have done. It will probably only be about 25 pages or so, which is both sad and completely predictable.

Oh, yeah, and the Book Television segments haven’t gotten any better. So exceedingly dull that I keep forgetting to tune in. Not much point in keeping the channel, really.

Have written one page and spent the better part of the day procrastinating, or “brainstorming plot” as I like to put it. Had a nap, finished the Kathy Reichs book I was reading and tried to sort out some plot issues in my head, which is not nearly as effective as using note cards but at least it’s doing something towards the book.

The little updates on Book Television about the live contest being held at the Edmonton Chapters store are really disappointing and incredibly dull. The contestants this year seem really boring compared to last year’s but maybe that’s the fault of Book Television and how they’re choosing clips. Maybe it’ll be more exciting they put it all together into next year’s TV series.

Almost time for the 3-Day Novel Contest to start. Another hour and half and away we go. Got official confirmation that my registration was received. Yay! Got very little of the outlining I’d wanted to do done. In fact, got little preparation done in general, except that I managed to buy some groceries today. No nap…and no point in taking one now. I’ll write a page or two come midnight and maybe take a little snooze.

The story idea I had/have keeps changing and I still haven’t worked about a full plot for it. I’ll write the scenes that I know I want and then I’m going to need to sit down and have a little plot party with my brain so sort out, at least broadly, where I want the thing to go.

My goal is to just complete it. Even if what I write turns out to be utter crap or a dull, boring snoozefest, I want it to be a complete piece of utter crap. So, it needs to be a complete story and it needs to be at least 100 pages or so (double-spaced). Picked my Dad’s brain for some location history so that I can make that a bit more historically accurate, but it isn’t going to be a historical novel so complete accuracy is not critical. So far it seems to want to be a supernatural story but we’ll see how that holds up.

34°C (93°F), 41°C (106°F) with the humidity. 41% humidity. Blech! It’s supposed to cool down by the weekend but still….blech!