Writing, but not "writing"

Xandar peers up at the desktop. Quiet clacking and the occasional sigh are the only things he's heard in days. "What is she doing up there?"

Nekar pats the young man on the shoulder. "It's nearing that time of year again. You're new but you'll get used to it."

"What time? With all that typing I expected some new crumpled pages or characters down here."

"Listen to the typing. Notice anything different?"

"It's too regular. What happened to the long silences, the muttering and the occasaional run for cover when she gets up to trample us while acting out scenes?"

Nekar nods. "Exactly. She's not writing. Not our kind anyway."

Ms. Wildstar wanders over with a frown on her young face. "What other kind is there? I mean, that's worth spending all that time on? She could have written a quarter of a novel by now."

Xander cocks his head. "Were you hoping for some new characters to hang out with?"

"Of course not." Ms. Wildstar stares at the surrounding hills of crumbled paper.

"Cut it out you two. We won't be seeing any new characters around here for a couple months." Nekar points to the glowing screen high above them. "She's writing peptalks, donation requests, a forum full of informative posts, organizing events, and writing down story ideas for NaNo.

"Oh, not NaNo again." Ms. Wildstar wraps her arms around herself and looks to Xander. "You have to watch out for the newbies. They're not the same. Not real characters. If you find one, kill it, cut its head off and bury it."

Xanders eyes grow wide. "Why? What the hell are they?"

"NaNo cast offs." Nekar hands him a Barthromian slingshot. "Sorry, that's all we've got down here right now. Cases of them. Stupid things. She hasn't cut any new weapons in a while and we've used the good ones up."

"I'm supposed to kill it and cut off its head with a damned slingshot?" He holds the rusty metal bar up and examines the yellowed rubber band. "How long have these been down here?"

"A very long time." Nekar hands two more to each of them. "Always stay armed. Once you have them down, paper cut their necks. There's plenty of that."

Ms. Wildstar snorts. "Let's just hope its not a humid day."

"Enough. This is important. These NaNo things, they aren't fully formed and usually dim-witted, but they can show up in masses or alone. Some of them may have abilities we don't know about, ones she didn't fully explore before tossing them out of the story as she's writing. Some of them have family up there." He points to the desktop. "They want to go back and will do anything to make that happen. If we ever want the chance to get back into a WIP, we need to protect her."

Xander tucks his slingshots into to his pants pockets. "And why the decapitation and burying thing?"

Ms. Wildstar does the same. "They turn into zombies if we don't. Kind of hard to get back into a WIP as a brainless character."

Nekar half-stiffles a snicker. "True. How long have you been down here again?"

She glares at him. "Shut up."

"But what happens if we miss one and it goes zombie? How do we kill it?"

"Fire." Nekar takes a long look at all the paper around them. "And that means we all go up with it."

"Oh. Gottcha." Xander stands tall and looks alert. "So what now?"

"We distribute the rest of these slingshots and then wait for November to strike. Good luck to you both." Nekar heads off into the paper with the crate of slingshots. "It's been nice knowing you."

I need a few more of these days throughout the year

Last year my enthusiastic wrimos asked to have an all day write-in during the next year's NaNo. Since my superhero self is buried under a cement slab in the backyard, I'm relying on two wonderful volunteers to secure the location. For my part, I spent yesterday making this poster. The boxing cyborg weasel will also be on t-shirts for raffle and I'll have free stickers for everyone who attends.

33 days til NaNoWriMo. I'm looking forward to a month of reveling in writing - the one time of year when my family and friends accept that I'll sneak off at all hours to write instead of me having to work around everything else that always gets in the way. More importantly, I have to put aside the excuses that I make for myself. Six hundred guilt monkeys are hard to ignore.

Mad Men

My husband recently declared that we just had to watch Mad Men because some of our friends loved it and he was sick of feeling out of the loop. Therefore, we conformed with the masses, glued our behinds to the couch and got watching. And watching we have been. Hooray for season DVD sets.

I like the show. I do. However, I'm so frustrated with the amount of skipped opportunities for tension and mystery time lapses between episodes that I want to smoke a carton of Lucky Strikes and pound a few bottles of gin, vodka and/or anything else sitting around.

People have babies and nothing more is said about it until way later, months go by making me wonder where the hell we are at the start of each episode, people argue and then are fine without any explaination, people leave meetings and we find out later that they were fired. There's plenty of tension still there, but I can't help but think of all we are losing because of missed opportunities.

Neck deep in room temperature vodka and without a secretary to bring me more ice, I pledge now to persue all avenues of tension when writing.

Interesting things about Mad Men I have noted while speeding through the first three seasons:

No one ever says "goodbye" before hanging up the phone until season three, episode nine - yet when this momentous dialogue does happen it's as if the character is offended because the person he's talking to didn't say it. For some reason, all calls in this one episode end in "goodbye". Did no one actually say goodbye in the 60's? I don't remember ever noticing that before.

In a scene where the family goes on a picnic: when they are ready to go, they pick up the picnic basket and shake out the blanket, leaving all their trash on the grass. I honestly yelled at my tv, chastising these characters for their blatant 1962 littering ways. In fact, I was still mad about it hours later. Yes, its was acurate for the time, but still infuriating with our current social consciousness.

The writers earned massive bonus points for cutting off an up and coming antagonist's foot with a lawnmower in an office in a way that totally worked. I bow to the NaNoesque absurdity of it.

Everyone will sleep with everyone else as soon as they kiss or share the slightest googly-eyed gaze unless they are gay, then they have the magical power to say no.

The first think a man will do after arriving home from a long day of drinking at the office is pour himself a drink.

You can't film a scene depicting the 60's without at least one person smoking unless its a scene in church. Even then, I'm sure they are all being directed to think about smoking.

We're almost caught up to season four. I'm finding spoilers are everywhere. Don't tell me!

The dreaded question

As I was in my daughters school last week, gently nudging the principal to let me hold a used book drive there, I ran into one of the teachers. Not just any teacher, but the one I'd first done the Young Writers Program with. She was going on about much she loves the program because it gets her students so excited about writing, but she also asked the dreaded question: "So, do you have your novel published yet?"

She wasn't even asking about the novel I've been slaving over for years, rewriting, editing , querying for a short time and now working on again. No, she was asking about my first NaNo novel. The one that hasn't even seen the light of critiquer's eyes yet. The one I've only started a much needed rewriting effort on after letting it sit for four years. This novel being the one I wrote alongside her class to prove that I could write 50,ooo words in thirty days so they also could meet their writing goals.

I'm convinced she purposely hunts me down every year just to lob guilt monkeys at me.

"No." I go on to explain, like I do every year, that I'm using NaNo as an outlet to try new things and to apply what I've learned over that year. How I use NaNo as a break from working on the one novel that I'm really trying to get ready and out into the big world. I then am happy to finally be able to add that I do have a short story out soon, and did have some progress with my efforts toward getting a novel published, but it's not there yet.

For some reason, while this makes me feel positive, it's never quite enough for those who don't know better. "Oh, well that's nice."

I want to explain that you can't turn around and submit your NaNo-wonder-suck-novel to publishers in December, and that the publishing industry grits their teeth every December for just that reason. I want to tell her that what I churn out in November is a horrible rough draft and nothing even close to an actual finished novel. In fact, I am tempted to go on and on, but I know her eyes will glaze over in two seconds and we both have better things to do. Instead, I smile, nod and make a mental note to pick up extra bananas on the way home.

Day of the Guilt Monkeys

In preperation for NaNoWriMo, I've been busy making new items for raffle prizes to help raise money for our regional donation. This year I'm proud to present a set of four guiltabulous stickers.

This sticker features one of the dominating rabid cyborg attack weasels. These weasels keep us in our seats by patrolling the floors around writing areas until we meet our daily word count. Trust me, you don't want to anger the weasels.

Though less threatening than the rabid cyborg attack weasels, a mob of guilt monkeys is hard to ignore. That one in the back on the right looks less than impressed with my writing efforts no matter how much I try. I guess you can't impress every monkey.

Even less impressed than that monkey above, is this one. In fact, he kind of scares me.

If that array of guilt monkeys doesn't spur you into action, there's this little guy. Do you really want to make him cry? Really?