NaNoWriMo Day 15

Saturday was our all day write-in. Though we had a lower turnout than I'd hoped for, we had a great time during our eleven hour writing frenzy. My writing was interupted by chatting, eating and prize distribution but I still managed to pump out almost 6k in my struggling YA story. As you see, there was a lot of candy involved to fill us all with sugary creative energy. The giant chocolate covered marshmellows helped too.

Commander Rippy McWeasel and I did appear in the newspaper. Though most of his details were miscontstrued, Rippy was happy to see his photo in print and help spread the the word about NaNoWriMo and our event.

After all my writing Saturday, I spent Sunday unpacking all my bags of write-in supplies and eating leftovers. I also started in on rewriting my original NaNo novel from four years ago, a project I've desperately wanted to get back to. I'm hoping that this will go faster than slogging my way through the YA story. I want to get back to the short story, as well, but at this point, I need to build some momentum and I'm jumping ship to where the excitement is. During NaNo, any writing progress is good progress!

Freakouts and Suck Dragons

Tomorrow is our never tried before, all day write-in at a local college. I'm both nervous and very excited. I'm busy mentally packing my car so I won't forget anything.

Why the freakout over forgetting something? My days have been so hectic that as I was rushing off to my weekly local NaNo write-in tuesday night, I threw my bag of prizes into the car and got half way there before realizing that I'd forgotten my laptop! Serious head desk moment there. Thankfully, that location less than ten minutes from my house and my wonderful wrimos saved a seat for my late behind.

Saturday's write-in is just under an hour away. Kind of hard to run home a minute and get what I forgot, should that happen. Don't forget anything. Don't forget anything. Don't forget anything.

One of the local papers is advertising the event. I'm waiting anxiously to see the story as it may be featuring Commander Rippy McWeasel. He's been scampering around my feet all morning getting himself worked up about what photo they might choose and if they'll use his good side. Between you and me, he doesn't have a good side. He's a weasel.

I have no idea what kind of turn out to expect, but if attendance follows the trend of everything else this NaNo season, we should have lots of people. However many end up there, I know we'll have fun. We always do.

With two stories I'm happy with completed and one still being munched on by the suck dragon, I'm happy to announce that story four has teetered back from the cliffs of suckiness and is evolving into something I can work with.

My second attempt at something YAish is very rough at this point, but I like where it's going. So far.

It's about a boy recieving his artifical finger interface which allows him to uncover society's secrets and possibly save his friend who as vanished. Unless I decide that the friend is dead. I haven't gotten that far. Either way, he'll try to save someone, even if it's himself. Maybe he'll save everyone! Oh, the choices I must make for this young man. I feel like I should warn you, I'm laughing nefariously.

And now with a deep breath and a packing list in hand, I'm off to write today's 1667 words.

NaNoWriMo Day 10

Please send sleep and more time to write.

Life is good here. Mostly. I have two short stories done that I'm pretty happy with. They'll be going up for critique in December. The third story is currently being fed to the suck dragon until it finds a purpose in its wandering chaos of run on sentences and expansive sections of rambling streams of consciousness. Number four is tetering on evolving into something workable. I'm holding my breath.

Also, if you could send oxygen, that would be great.

The Elementary YWP is going fairly well. Attendance has significantly dwindled thanks to the beautiful fall weather enticing kids to play outside rather than write with me. And, of course, there are those who have realized that they have to write outside of our meetings with prizes and don't want to make the effort. Happens every year. I'm used to it. The faithful will go on.

The Middle School YWP is a bust. It just never got off the ground this year, which is a shame. Though, I'm appreciating the open space on my calendar. I am still going in to write with my son during his lunch hour, but one hour instead of three, is fine with me with everything else I have going on.

Regional events with the adults have been wonderful. In person event participation is way up. We're two people away from tripling our number of members in our region this year from last year! 666 people are doing NaNo around me. We had twenty people at our write-in last night! That was a new record.

One of the local papers is doing a story on our event this weekend. I can't wait to see it. I also can't wait for saturday to see how this big event is going to go. It's the first time we've done a huge, all day write-in so who knows how well it will be attended, if we'll have enough space, food, or raffle prizes. At least one thing is for sure. I'll be getting some writing done!

"Solitude" - Out today!

After much waiting, I am thrilled to announce that my short story "Solitude" is now out in the fall issue of Tales of the Talisman.

Trapped alone on a space ship, Zephros, the last wizard, discovers the secret to saving humanity that his kind has hidden from themselves for generations, but is he willing to succeed?

Greed

Thanks to an extra day off school for the end of the marking period, I had to rearrange my schedule and do my elementary Young Writers group on Thursday. Because it wasn't our usual day, less kids came. That was fine by me, I still had a room full.

To conserve my stock of prizes for my huge unanticipated group this year, I decided to consolidate our two shifts of word wars into one. Waiting an extra five minutes got all of the forth graders and the majority of the fifth graders included all in one word writing frenzy.

Last year I'd discovered that the same three kids could write far faster than the rest and won the majority of the prizes so this year I changed my prize tactics. If they write more than a hundred words in ten minutes, they get to enter. Most of them can do it and the rest will if they keep working at it. Out of those, I pick four to win small prizes.

That meant that the first time with two groups, I was out eight prizes already. We meet twice a week. I didn't exactly have sixty-four prizes. Not even close. Half that, I could handle between stickers, funky paperclips, erasers and other misc things I'd picked up throughout the year on sale. Not to mention since my middle school group seems to be a complete bust thanks to the teachers (I'm still fuming about that lack of any effort), I can use their prizes for my abudant elementary group.

We got done with our word race. I picked the winners. They get their prizes. A fifth grader piped up, "Um, what about the fifth grade word race."

"You just did one."

"Yeah, but it was with the forth graders."

"You entered to win a prize with the forth graders. That was the one word race we're going to do. I don't have enough prizes to do each grade seperately each time."

"So get more prizes."

I refrained from glaring and took a deep breath. "I pay for all of these prizes out of my pocket. I can't just keep buying more stuff for all of you. We have a very large group. Normally we'd only do two prizes. I was being generous by giving you four chances at winning something."

"Can't you just go to the dollar store?"

"I did. I buy prizes for you and the middle school. That's around forty dollars of my own money for you guys to win prizes. I don't get anything out of it. You do. We don't have to have prizes at all. It's just for fun."

"Oh." Yet, she seemed far less than impressed.

Some kids, I tell ya....