Category: nanowrimo

I’m doin’ it!

After a restorative weekend in Bodega Bay with The Cute Boy™ (celebrating our two year anniversary!), I’m caught up again and feeling that feelin’! Looking forward to getting through this week and onto my week of Thanksgivingy goodness. My benevolent CEO (snarf!) is giving us the week. Much needed. Work is getting in the way of my writing!

My novel is so far approximately nineteen thousand words of utter dreck. But that’s part of the joy of NaNo. Or so they say.

It’s not the Great American Novel, but it’s mine.

Photos from the weekend coming soon!

Longer, better written posts too!

And soon I must begin planning the menu for the Turkey Day treats. I want to go *simple* this year but my *simple* is always made too complex by my own OCDness. Turkey. Stuffing. Taters. Vegetable. Pie. There you go, the stuff of full bellies and happy family.

This year will be the first year The Cute Boy™ and I are together for the holiday. Years past we’ve gone separate directions, me tending to my family and he to his. The cooking this year will include Mother of The Cute Boy™ which means my nervousness is already starting. Thankfully I’ve cooked me a turkey before and have no qualms about it. I make excellent turkey, killer smash potatoes, delish stuffing and pies that make you say “yes please!”. So why am I so nervous?

Oh I don’t know, probably like the tides and the rising and setting sun, it’s just how things are.

Onward, I’ve many miles to go and at least a thousand words before I rest tonight!

What a difference a day makes

I guess I’m going to have to give credit to Sister Mary Ignatius of the Wooden Ruler who tried to impress upon me that confession is good for the soul. I do hate letting that woman be right. It makes her SO superior.

Anyhoo, after confessing here that I was struggling with the progress of my NaNo novel, something snapped into gear inside of me. I had an almost 7,000 word day yesterday. Yep. I found a couple quiet hours at work (personal project, the best and highest use of my work time – heh) and then went to a local “write in”. The fire was there. Unsure if I can sustain it to the finish line, but mine is not to question. Mine is to keep my head up and not look down as I totter on the precipice.

I LOVE it when I have the fire to write. It is such a great feeling. I *crave* it and sadly find it too infrequently. But that moment, like I felt last night, when the words just fly out of my fingers, when I’m not thinking, just typing, when I’m smiling as my inner reader listens to the story. Yeah. That is the greatest feeling. That’s the Muse baybee.

Ok, today’s a new day and there’s a new 2,000 words that need to be produced.

Giddyap!

update: It’s just 2:15 and I did it. Once again using work time for my own, I’ve gotten my 2,000 words for today. En fuego!

It’s not going well

NaNoWriMo. Oy. I’m off the pace. I don’t know what’s got into me this year! Or not into me I guess. The fire isn’t there. Why? I can’t understand, actually.

Progress continues, slowly.

My benevolent CEO has given us the week of Thanksgiving off. I hope to use some of that time to “make it work”. “Make it work” being the new slogan of my work team (shamelessly stolen from Tim Gunn of Project Runway). When everything is messy and nothing makes sense? Make it work.

When you’ve got 2000 words written and you are eight days in? Make it work.

Back to it.

Belated Dia de los Muertos

Yes, I know it passed me by last week. I usually at least TRY to think of those who have passed on, but didn’t. See, November 2 marks the anniversary of the day The Cute Boy™ and I met. And it’s a day so filled with joy and happiness that it’s hard to be sorrowful.

Yet, feeling that sorrow every year is important. Circle of life, no joy without pain and all that.

I was too caught up in NaNoWriMo and celebrating love that I forgot to think about death. Not so bad a trade off, I suppose, in the long run.

My NaNoWriMo progress limps along. I wrote nary a word for the first four days (yikes) and am now some 8,000 words off the pace. But I calculated 50,000 words over 25 days and that’s 2,000 words a day. Still do-able. I’ve got 1500 so far today, so progress has (finally!) begun.

But back to those muertos.

Today I remember the lives of those I’ve lost. All four of my grandparents, my father, and my best friend from high school. Of them, my high school friend is the one I can say truly didn’t get a chance to live her life. My grandparents and my father lived good long lives, saw their children into adulthood and were ok when the time came to pass. The loss of my friend still gives me pain. She was too young. Such is the nature of life.

But here, when the veil between our world and theirs is thinner, easier to access, I think of those I’ve lost with a heart full of love.

I remember.

*cramp* Oh the pain!

So. Today is November 1. Yep. First of November.

What does that mean?

The start of National Novel Writing Month.

Yeppers. Fifty THOUSAND words. Thirty days.

I’ve done it twice now, in 2004 and in 2006. Made it across the finish line both times.

So. I’m trying it again this year.

Worried.

Don’t have the focus. Don’t have that pinpoint freak out, holy-crap-nothing-will-stand-in-my-way-to-get-this-done kind of laser beam lock on. The two years I succeeded, I was sharp, on top of it, wrote plenty of words on day one to launch me into it.

It’s almost noon. Nary a word. Hoo boy. This might be a tough year.

No shame in not making it, really. But my Type A overachiever is YELLING at me inside my brain.

Oy.

Like I needed to add stress to this wacked out life!

So, pull for me. Send me the gods of the written word. Despite the crampy writer’s block I’m suffering, I’m jumping in!