Rally Day

Today I spent most of the day at The Tea Spot in Boulder writing. I wrote 5,568 words, earning my Rally badge and catching entirely up!

On a side note, The Tea Spot is a lovely shop, and I am throughly enjoying my new tea pot and tea leaves. The folks there are very helpful and kind, and will even rebrew green leaves. I'm just about to make myself another pot of tea. Join me?

Labor Day Weekend

I love a three day weekend!

I'm in the midst of setting up my 2007 NaNoWriMo blog. Title and plot indeterminate at this time, but I've got some characters burbling in my head. hehe...

Have a great weekend!

Writing Quote

No thinking - that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is... to write, not to think!

-- Finding Forester

Democracy in the morning

I got to my polling place around 8am yesterday and by 8:35 I was done. The little room was packed, but we were very nicely herded by the election judges. The electronic voting booth varied from all the ones I've used in the past and I've used everything from punching the chad, to a hand ballot, to three or four different kinds of electronic voting booths - I like to keep my hand in, ready to vote in any manner presented. Haven't yet voted absentee, but haven't really had the need. I particularly like going down with all the other registered voters and feeling a sense of community, a sense that my vote is part of the whole vote, that we all come together for this special event, this sacred duty.

Ok, must be off to work, so I will leave off with the ramblings and get you back to your regularly scheduled November Insanity. Oh, wait, that's MY regularly scheduled November Insanity. Not doing so well, but writing every day. Story is in a weird place but then again, week two is starting, and gosh golly if it's not going to get harder.

Best of luck to all my fellow nanoers. Keep on writing!

Welcome to the Insanity

NaNoWriMo officially started this morning at midnight. I was snug in my bed with a touch of cold that blossomed into a bit of a cough and fever this morning. Auspicious beginning this is not, but I shall perservere! Even if I can no longer spell correctly.

Welcome to November, the month of insanity and mayhem in the writing circles I run in.

I can't remember, do blog posts count as word count?

Best of luck to all my writing buddies, GirlZoot, Ian, Sunrunner, Survivor, DaveToe, Iunones, and everyone else that my foggy brain has let slip.

Let's get writing!

Another good day...

Today, I brought my copy of Heart of Gold with me, because I was going to show one of my writerly fellows at writing group tonight. When I got into the office, one of my coworkers asked how my novel was. Pleased she asked, I told her I had it in the car. She wanted to see it, and later in the afternoon, I went down to get it and show her. She liked the phrase "supporting her words with numbers" on the back in the little about the author blurb. Warm fuzzies all around.

Then, a friend from another floor came in to say hi, and I showed her the book, and she was suitably impressed. Beyond the book, I was glad I ran into her, since I rarely see her anymore. We used to work in the same department and now we're on different floors. And she's been very busy flying hither and yon for the company. So all around good to see her :)

Then I showed the book to the security guard, who's a very nice man who always says hello. He was amazed. He asked when it would be published and how did I possibly write a novel in 30 days. More warm fuzzies.

I went up to the executive floor and showed another friend, the EA for the president , my book, and she was just floored. We chatted for a moment and then I went back downstairs to show my former supervisor (who gave me a day off in November to help finish the book). She had already left for the day *snap* so I'll just have to bring it in tomorrow.

Not like I mind, after all the positive reactions... I should write a book every November... Oh wait, I do!

And now, back to the writing or editing or something resembling such.

NaNoWriMo Finish

I finished my NaNovel (back on Nov 29th) and I'm so glad it's done! I am thinking of getting back to it in a week or so, give it some time to simmer, and start editing. This year I finished the book and the word count which was my goal.

Contgratulations to all other winners including these fine folks I consider my friends and Novelists all:

Girlzoot, Sasha, EDog, Survivor, and DaveToe

Huzzah for a great November!

You want to take a bite...

Ok, my NaNovel this year is about a stripper and I've been chatting with my writing buddy EDog about the whole book. We were talking about how there are no "adult" smilies on the IM service we use, but how you could dress your avatar like a hooker.

Now we were just being silly and it was pretty funny, but after we made our female hookers, we went to the male wardrobe and made some. Here's my favorite, the manwhore with his big smile and wink and his shirt open to the world. He's practically saying, "You want to take a bite..." in some heavy sexy accent of undetermined origin.

Ok, so I'm a little looped out on the lack of food and needing a shower and about 6000 words today, but I am still laughing.

All About Sevens

I learned something out at the Boulder NaNoWriMo Kick Off Dinner at Conor O’Neill’s, Tuesday night. Actually, two things. I just realized I hadn’t posted it.

First of all, I learned a practical and quick way to calculate the tip on a meal. If you take the amount you owe and divide by seven, you come darn close to a 15% tip. So, an easy one, if your meal was 14 dollars, your tip is 2 dollars. The exact 15% tip would be $2.10. So it’s pretty close.

The other thing I learned is about measurements, precisely how to tell the difference between a butt-load, a shit-load, and a fuck-load. Imagine you are at dinner and with your dinner roll you get a pat of butter. One pat of butter is a normal amount. Now, to reach the first unit of measure multiply the normal amount by seven, you have seven pats of butter, and that’s a butt-load. For the next level, you raise that by another level of seven, you have almost 50 pats of butter, and really, that’s a shit-load. And if you had seven times that, you would reach nearly 350 pats of butter, which no one would argue is a fuck-load. So that’s the secret.

And my friends and I always thought a butt-load was six. Hey, we were close!

Price Gouging?

I saw this gas sign on the way to my NaNoWriMo Kick Off meeting tonight and I did a double take. I pulled into the lot and looked at the sign from the other side and took a picture. Prices here in Colorado have come down some 50 cents over the last few weeks, however someone forgot to tell these folks.

Perhaps it was due to a shortage of fuel at this particular station. But the same company, just 20 blocks up the road (and it's a big road) had a much more normal spread. I pass that station every day and I believe it was 12 cents between 85 and 87 octane, and another 14 between 87 and 91. And another 20 blocks was a station I didn't get a chance to photograph, but it was a normal spread as well.

I sure wouldn't pay for this, and even when it was at it's highest, I don't think I paid quite as much as the premium price on the sign is. But after all this, you probably guessed that I pay a little attention to gas prices.

Holiday Wishes

A bit late, but Happy Thanksgiving! Banana bread anyone??

My baby cousin, Caitlin, loved her new blanket that I crocheted for her baby shower. “Grandma” says she sleeps with it in her crib, and regularly kicks it off, just like we all did at her age. “Mama” says she loves how soft it is. Aww, warm fuzzies!

Thanksgiving was relatively peaceful; we brought our baby, Charlie, and nearly gave my aunt a coronary. But the dog was good and she didn’t chase the cats, mostly she made laps around the kitchen and dining room and tried to eat the cat food. Elmo, the scaredy cat, came out after everyone else had left and bapped Charlie on the nose. I was upset until I remembered that Elmo has no toenails and could really only sass my dog, which she didn’t even seem to notice, poor dear.

I even got some writing done, but I have yet to upload anything from this long weekend. I will be done tonight, huzzah! I am less than 2k away from my NaNo goal of 50k! But the story won’t be done, not by quite a bit. I think I made some good habits about writing every day, so even if I write less, it will still be good. I hope to have the manuscript done by March for NaNoEdMo, hehe. I imagine, taking into account what I’ve already written, that the finished first draft will be around 85-95k :) Not bad for a first draft!

Having my writing read

Ok, I've been in writing groups in the past, and shared my writing with my fellow poets/storytellers. I sometimes needed a bit of encouragement to read my stuff out loud, but I always knew when I was sharing my work, and with whom.

Since I'm blogging my NaNoWriMo novel, I know that people are able to read it at any given time. I've given out the address to my friends and family for encouragement and to show what I've been working on all month (while holed away in my little apartment).

It is still the most surreal thing to me that unbeknownst to me at the time, people are actually reading it, and hearing a friend tell me that she wanted to shake one of my characters and say "Look, lady, you need to back off!" is both encouraging and so strange to me. I like it a lot, I think it's such a great medium to share practically instantly with the community. Still, it's strange to get a call from my mother at 10:30 at night asking if the different entrys are just very short chapters or what... But really cool to hear people talking about my work.

I can't wait to get back into the writing group groove again and read my fellow author's stuff, this is so encouraging, so fascinating, oh, I'm so tired.

Ni ni.

Huzzah!!

Ok, I reached 30,000 words tonight. *YAY*

Must sleep now, no fill pen first then sleep. Blessed sleep.

Cold weekend

Ok, turns out it wasn't just cold. My pilot light had blown out and my furnace was blowing cold air all over me (the intake is from the outside). *brrr* So now it's fixed and I can take hot showers and be warm in the house and the kitty can take his naps on top of the covers again (the water heater and the furnace co-habitate apparently).

Good news is once I got the heat going, I wrote over 5000 words written on my novel. Very exciting!

SuperNovelist

My Nano t-shirt arrived!! Yay! I've been wearing it all day, and I got over 3k written, so its status of new favorite writing shirt is ensured!

Ok, I'm watching the rest of SNL and going to bed. It's COLD! And me without my fuzzy slippers.

NaNoWriMo Day Fourteen

Whee, I'm coasting on chocolate pudding and a caffiene drip.

Some people don't get it, ok most of my friends are writers, or are supportive of the writing endeavor that I've undertaken, which is making me a bit crazy (no, really?) and extremely protective of my time. I want to go see movies, I want to leave the house, but I have this invisible word counter in my head (and two on line) telling me that I need to write to get this novel out of me, to finish the 50k and see where it takes me from there. So I stay home, or I go to writing groups and write.

I was told today that the design of NaNoWriMo was forcing me to sacrifice content for word count, that essentially what I was writing wouldn't be any good because it was rushed. I tried to explain that the point of NaNoWriMo was to give a deadline and a goal to get the novel written. Because I'm one of the people who's plotted a book in my head and in notebooks and on paper and talking to friends about it for years and years and never sat down to write it down, to get it OUT. NaNo is getting me to write, character, plot, setting, getting everyone together and setting out on the greatest adventure ever told. {Ok, now I'm just swinging from the rafters.} Nonetheless, I've been writing, instead of detailing down to the eyelash my characters and the setting and how magic works and outlining decades and centuries of history before the moment I want to start. These things are vitally important to my writing, but I've already done all this, I've got a basic skeleton of my novel in my head, getting the flesh of my story is what November and NaNo is all about to me.

Ok, so I'm a wee bit crazy, and being a recluse and a bit of a crappy friend this month. I have to do this for me. And of all the things in the last year I've done for selfish reasons, this one is probably the least damaging.

Please understand. I'm not apologizing, this is who I've wanted to be since I was a tiny little girl. So I'm doing it.

For those who've supported me and written with me, and encouraged me, and shared their pudding with me, thank you from the bottom of my little novelist heart.


Joy

‘I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn’t, I would die.’ - Isaac Asimov

Surfing for names...

Ok, I've got a bunch of people my characters are coming into contact with and I'm sick of naming them Bob or Joe (last post about writing to the contrary) So I decided to look up some name generators and came across this one. So now I now have a new title:

Princess of Quantum Mechanics
(You're probably one of those fucking people who pluralize everything with apostrophes.)

I'm a bit loopy from (not) writing all day and right now this is the most hilarious thing ever. Mostly because the apostrophe is my friend...and I've always wanted to be a princess...

And my secondary title is: Princess Junior Grade of Procrastination for not writing on my book. I really want to go and see Bridget Jones tonight but if I don't get some hefty word count out, I'm staying in with a wet noodle to beat myself with.

Had to share...

Must...go...WRITE!!!

I broke 10K *whew*

Ok, that feels really really good. Week two of NaNoWriMo is wicked hard, but I've reached a point where I'm happy with the work and I've broken the 10k mark...barely, but now I can sleep the sleep of the righteous and just... or somethign like that.

*happytiredwordcountdance*

The month of November

I'm terrifically guilty of looking back on a week, a month, a season, or a year and saying "where did the time go? why just yesterday it was (Summer / June / the beginning of school /my birthday)!" I suppose that makes it seem like I go thru my life in some sort of daze.

Well, however much this might be true, I know for a fact that I will know where each precious hour and every ticking minute went toward for every bloody day of November 2004. I am both enjoying and dreading the passing of days this month. Being part of NaNoWriMo has completely changed the way I view my time. During most months, I try to make time to pick up the house, to run my errands, to spend time with friends, but this month, my overwhelming goal is to complete the 50,000 word requirement of my novel. And every moment, even this one, when I'm not writing or sleeping, or actually making a living, I seem to begrudge to every living thing and even some inanimate ones (like laundry, which I have to take out now).

But also bred in my bones is the magical happy fun gene of procrastination as well as the huge, bulbous black gene of guilt. I sit at my computer and post to my blog, or read someone else's novel in progress, or search for that perfect character name, when Bob or Joe would do just as well. Or that I have tickets to something with someone for a holiday gift, or a friend who I am obligated to for various reasons wanting to do lunch and a movie in the middle of my only day to write in solid blocks all week...*sigh* But I LIKE talking to my friends, I ENJOY surfing the net for no particular reason.

Ok, no more bitching, I'm going to do this because I WANT to do this, I have a deep desire, one that is stronger than guilt and louder than procrastination. I want to be a novelist, I am a writer, now I want to prove it to the world!!!!

Tired and hungry and going crosseyed looking at the computer. Must finish laundry and order pizza, perhaps come back in an hour...yes, that is good...

Must fly!!

Joy

NaNoWriMo day three

Ooh boy, I'm tired and it's not even past my bedtime...Too much excitement this week, and as usual, nothing's slowing down. I've got a full weekend, not exactly planned that way, but *shrug* all things I want to do.

I've been writing every day, and thinking about writing when I'm not actually doing it. If I started writing at work, I'd never get anything done there, and we're gearing up for fiscal year end (I AM in accounting, after all).

But I'm glad I'm not putting it off, I'm determined to get this novel written. Editing can start in December, but I'm getting down the spine and the muscles and ligiments together and worry about the flesh later. It'll be a creepy looking thing, now that I imagine my analogy, but I'll get over it *grin*

I'm currently having a lovely conversation with my mother regarding the recent election. Money for schools, who was elected, who's a bigot and why (ok that was mostly me), why some things got passed and shouldn't have...Ah well, at least I can talk to her about it (sometimes a bit loudly on both our parts).

Ok, time for that time honoured, best beloved, and most needed time of the day, the time where I put my head on a pile of fabric and buckwheat hulls and drift off into the land of dreams.

Sweet dreams.