NaNo 2013 Progress - Week 1

Day 4: Wrote a couple hundred words in the morning and didn't get a chance again until spewing out almost 2k at last night's write-in. WooHoo! Still behind though. However, that's pretty usual for me.

Day 5: Planned on writing in the morning as night is going to be busy. My plan was derailed with signing a contract for a short, receiving a rejection on another and then submitting it to another magazine on my list, and answering/reading regional forum posts. Darn you derailing writing related activites! At the end of the workday, I had to run to our Sunday write-in venue to sign contracts and get a key, then it was off to the used book store to drop off donations from Kickoff...and then to the store to buy supplies for the write-in and donations for the venue. Family stuff ate up my night. Ending wordcount:7282

Day 6: The bank's underwriters took hours of my day with all their extraneous needed details. I did manage to stop and get extra chairs for the weekend write-in and then got them and all the stuff that had slowly filled the back of my car loaded into the big van that will be transporting everything to the write-in. Then there was lots of work, dinner, followed immediately with a meeting with our builder. Then family time. Oh hey, there was finally forty minutes for writing. Go! Word count: 8003

Day 7: Got a couple hundred words in in the morning, then it was off to prepare bidding sheets for our silent auction this weekend. And, of course, work, and email subcontractors for our house. Had dinner with the electric contractor and then managed to get some words in. Word Count 9332

Day 8: Wrote a bunch of words. Worked a lot. Got bad news about our builder from our bank. Swore a lot. Word count 11,328

Day 9: Met with new builder. Got the unmarked creeper van loaded for the write-in tomorrow. I sure hope I come home with a lot less stuff. That van is backed. And its a big cargo van! Wrote a lot of words in the hopes of eventually catching up. Word count:  13,681

Day 10: Big write in day! Woke up at 4am and started thinking about all of our house drama. To sum up: Because we're within 500 feet of a county drain, we were notified we have to file a bunch of extra paperwork and pay more money for permits. This lead to discovering that the majority of our land is actually wetland. Thankfully this is not the area we'd planned to build, but we still have to pay another fee and file a bunch more paperwork because where we intend to build is right next to the wetland. ARG.

Left at 9:30 am for the write-in got set up, wrote about 2k, ate lots, had fun, and cleaned up. Got done at 6pm and then spent the rest of the night with family.

Day 11: Weekly write-in night. Had a busy day, but managed to get words in at the write in. Ending word count: 18,010

Day 12: Work, running around with kids, and then a lovely evening migraine. Word Count: 18,328

Progress Report: NaNo 2013 - First Days

Due to a total fail on my part, progress is slower than I expected. Two fails, really.

Fail #1: Ambitious plan to submit a short for critique the week before NaNo, secure in the knowledge that my NaNo project was suitably prepared after locating my file titled: Into the Blue Notes. This plan would have been successful if not for the meddling new house project that ate up a ton of my time that I had planned to be revising the short after receiving critiques. Revisions didn't mostly wrap up until the afternoon of November 1. There's still the middle section that needs work, but I'm mulling over suggestions on that yet.

Fail #2:  That Notes file that I assumed contained the character and chapter information that I usually compile as I write...yeah, not so much. It contained the two articles I'd used for inspiration, but nothing else. *headdesk* So the rest of November 1 was spent compiling those necessary notes. I ended the first day with a big word count of 37.

Day two sat at 387 words for a long time due to the fact that I was still editing my way through the notes compellation part of the project. I added...I tooketh away. Evening saw a major rush of progress as one of my lovely wrimos, who was also lacking in words, challenged me to word wars until we were both on track

Day three brought our regional Kickoff Party. Lots of loading the card, driving, set up, hosting, posting pictures, counting donations and putting everything away, along with prepping next Sunday's supplies for the next event and then spending time with family to make up for being gone all afternoon, meant I didn't get much writing in. Ending word count 4117

2013 NaNo Project

November is fast approaching and I'm buried in work and house planning. In light these facts, I've decided to give myself a chance of getting to 50k by continuing a story I started months ago. Into the Blue was intended to be a novelette, but at 20K, I still had a lot of story to tell. Someday I'll master that novelette word limit. Just not today, or next month.

Into the Blue is the story of Dalmont Tibido, a sixteen year old boy who wakes from incubation in a deep space traveling ship to learn the AI has chosen him as the commander of their mission. Given that he has an entire crew of well-trained youth just like him eager to colonize the planet their ancestors have chosen for them, plenty of supplies and an AI to guide them in all things, what could go wrong?

Oh, pretty much everything.

Hence why 20K just wasn't near enough.

This is why I'm so happy that I made myself write notes about all those additional bad things I hadn't gotten to yet. It will make November just a little easier. Assuming I can make time to write, that is.

Getting Crafty: More Book Pages

NaNoWriMo is fast approaching and while I ready regional emails, event locations and details, and the pile of prizes I've stockpiled over the past year, a few more projects begged to be created. Who am I to say no? Okay, I probably should have said no rather than staying up late to make time to do them, but who needs sleep? Yeah, I know. I do. I also need to create something once in a while or I become a very unpleasant person, so I guess that's important too.

One night I made flowers from book pages. Henry the Eighth to be specific. The poor book had lost most of its binding. After doing a little origami, the first chapter makes a nice bouquet.

 

This project took a couple nights, but I ended up with three of them - sort of by accident. I was mindlessly making page cones when I realized that what I'd thought was enough to make a full flower wasn't. Well, not exactly. They were all the same size cones. It made for a nice stack-o-cones, but it didn't have the flower effect I was going for. Rather than throw them away, I made lots of the other sized cones I needed and ended up with three complete flowers.

 

It's hard to tell here, but they are fifteen inches across. It's a big flower! I only managed to burn myself once on my old malfuntioning glue gun. I new one might be in order soon.

In other news, a veggie picking expodition into my garden, yieled a black swallowtail caterpillar which is now happly muching carrot leaves in a vase on my kitchen windowsill. It's nearly doubled in size in the past three days. Very hungry caterpillar, indeed!

 

While clearing trees over at our property, my husband brought home a friend for my daugher. A brown snake. I am not a fan of snakes. At all. Yet, she was very excited about it and am I going to say no? Yes, except that it's a very small snake and it's now behind glass on my kitchen counter, where I can see it and know it's behind glass. Knowing is half the battle, right? 

 

I won't be holding the snake any time soon. Or ever. But I was nice and found worms for it. Worms don't bother me. A tad ironic, I know.

 

And so, with two new animal charges to watch over, it's time to ponder what I'm going to attempt to work on this November.

Juggling, Folding, and Hauling

I'm happy to say that one of the short stories in my juggling routine has found a home. A Little Thing Like Death will be in an upcoming issue of Isotropic Fiction. In the midst of all the non-writerly stuff taking over my waking hours, it feels good to know that productive things are still happening on that front.

This is what my weekends look like.

I did manage to find a couple hours to pound out some book page crafts after a long day of branch and log hauling last weekend.

Did you know that you can turn a tattered paperback into an ornament?

Outdated financial and internet books can become artwork for your walls.

Getting up two hours early on the weekend and ten minutes here and there throughout the day allowed me to draft seven NaNo preparation emails for my region. They will be appearing here as well in the upcoming weeks if you're interested in joining the November novel writing frenzy. I guess that also proves that I can find time to write as long if I don't sleep much. However, I'm not sure how many days I can do that in a row. This is the first November that I'm seriously doubting my ability to reach 50K in a month AND get everything done that I need to do every day. Time will tell.