It's a Little Scary

I hit 40k day before yesterday, and pardon me if I say I always find it thrilling and a little scary to have less than ten thousand words left until I reach the month's goal. I'm hoping to hit 45,000 today, and then it's just a short hop to the finish line!

As for my story... I have twelve (long) chapters, and so far I'm on the... fifth or sixth? I'm not sure anymore. It's nowhere near done, wherever I might be. I did accidentally get the wrong character mad at someone, but I managed to turn that around into being some sort of practical joke/helping out thing (with some help from my wonderful mother).

I have another write-in with a friend today, and hopefully I can make some more of that number go up. To 45k and beyond!

Oh, in other news, while I was writing I decided that the word "glew" should be used as the past tense of "glow" instead of "glowed." I just don't like the way glowed sounds, when pretty much every other word in English with that structure doesn't use it. The exception being "hanged," but then, that's only used when referring to a hanging, when you're executing a person, anything the word "hung" is used.

So there! Glew it is! Unless you're referring to a "glowing," where you uh... hm. When you're dumping a person into a vat of radioactive waste in order to give them glowing superpowers? That's a "glowing," and then you "glowed" someone.

NaNo Time is Here...

...and I guess I should post something. Not that I don't like NaNoWriMo! On the contrary, it makes November one of my favorite months of the year. It's just I haven't been feeling the bug for blogging lately. It's my problem I guess.

Anyway, for a recap: I did very little plotting the rest of October, because it was virtually all done back in June (note to self: do not do that again. EVER). As a result, I had trouble getting all excited and happy like usual. My mom helped me out with that though, whens she finally signed up for NaNo and took me goodie shopping. I got candy (of course) and some fluffy socks for writing. After that... I dunno.

Day one of NaNo was rather interesting. We were out of town for Halloween to see family, and it was me, my parents, my two brothers and a friend of my brothers all staying in this one room guest cabin. I somehow manage to get my Neo and such early in the morning and go out to the car, in the cold, writing by flashlight. The worst part of this was I had caught a rather nasty cold the afternoon before, so I was rather unmotivated. I didn't get all of my words that morning, and had to finish them later. It was cold!

The whole first week I either couldn't get up early like usual, or if I did I couldn't get as many words as I'd like. On Saturday, I didn't get up early, and we mowed on top of that, but from four to seven in the evening I wrote like mad and got a good 3,000 words done. Spurred by this, I managed to write 5,000 words yesterday. 2k in the morning and 3k afterwards. 5k people! On Sunday! With church and junk taking up my schedule! So there! I'm happy.

Victory! Though a Small One

I actually did some plotting today! I have most of it done already, and I've just been trying to remember what in the world I was doing when I left off. New rule: no major plotting until October 1st ever again. At least I need to plot straight through and then start writing that same story not too long after that.

At any rate, my timeline is finished and my story is divided into chapters accordingly. All that's left is some character polishing and sub-plot that should be added. I need to think of some for that. But that's a job for tomorrow morning.

Let me see, I also have to stock up on candy and other treats, I might write myself a few letters again, and then there's always the getting ahead in school that I'm so happy I can do. Hooray homeschooling!

Of course, getting ahead on school requires me to do at least what I'm supposed to...

Vote for OLL to get $10,000!

I feel strange plugging such a thing, but I'll get over it I suppose.

All of you fans of Office of Letters and Light (bringers of NaNoWriMo and the Young Writer's Program and Script Frenzy and the like) need to go here and nominate them to win $10,000! Whichever charity gets the most votes wins that cash, runner up is $5,000 and the next ten charities after that each get $1,000.

As for my NaNoPrep, I uh... hmm... haven't really started yet. I was out of town Friday and Saturday, and of course Sunday is a day off... but I did some worldbuilding over the weekend, and tomorrow I'll do more yet, or plot, or something. I have to get my head into that mode. I've been writing on one thing for so long, and now I have to skip forward some 800 years in my world, and there's quite a bit of change between there.

A while ago I got so far as plotting out my timeline, but I'm not sure if I should return to it stright away. Those only seem to work if I have the plot in my head anyway. I'll have to read through my notes - and probably rewrite them - before I remember what's going on. Oh well, I could use the practice. I quite enjoy plotting mode when I get into it. And then there's the cleaning and organizing and setting up and various other things to be done... It's really more fun than it sounds. October is full of anticipation for November, and it's all part of the NaNoWriMo experience. I can't imagine November without any of this. Woo October prep + November madness + December relief!

Happy October!

Just one month until NaNoWriMo...

I attempted to get up a little earlier than I have been this morning, and it failed utterly. I instead got up at nine o'clock when my other alarm went off telling me it was time to start school. So the getting up thing will have to start tomorrow instead. Except for the part where tomorrow my mom and I head out west to talk at some sort of mother/daughter retreat about some Africa stuff... I don't know exactly what, but my participation will be limited... I hope. I'm not so great at public speaking is all.

I don't know if I want October to go quickly or slowly. There's so much to do, and yet NaNo is so close I can almost taste it. I don't feel at all ready. I should fix that.

Finishing and Plotting

One thing straight to another... Good news though (that I should have posted before)! On the... 22nd of September, I finished up my current project, at least as far as first drafts go. It came in at about 98k. Not bad for under two months, eh?

I've been sleeping in during the mornings since I finished, as a treat to myself. I'll have to get up again in October to start on my NaNoWriMo prep - aka NaNoPloMo. I've got a to-do list somewhere, I'll have to put it up in a while.

I meant to put up updates with my goals, didn't I? Sorry. Um... I don't like the Italian program we have right now, because despite the fact that it brags of lots of grammer, I don't like when it tell us - after we do all of the exercises. I don't know... I want to be told the rule, and then I'll be all right. I might fiddle with the different modes of it a bit, and we'll see how we do.

Writing's been going all right, since I managed to catch up and all. I'm just taking a nice break, like I said, and I'll put my nose back to the grindstone in October and get plotting.

Speaking of... It's not cheating if I do a total rewrite during NaNo, is it? I won't be saving a single scrap of manuscript from my previous novel, but I'll be using it basically as plot, so I should be all right, right?

Drama: A Rant

I'll have an update on my writing in a moment, but first I'm feeling rather ranty, so I'm going to have a nice little rant about drama.

I'm not talking about plays and theater and such, that's perfectly fine. I'm talking about people in life who seem to feel like it's too dull and have to go around hacking people off so that things are harder for everyone, but apparently more interesting.

I find this most at internet forums. People will bring up something about a brand they like or don't like, and then everyone loves to come and join in a big fight about what's good, what's bad, and why. And the original issue brought up was something totally stupid. And all that gets done is people look like idiots, people get mad, and a point is maybe made that's been made many times over on that very forum. Who wants all that trouble?

I guess people on the internet who are apparently anonymous, so they like to cause all sorts of grief. But what can you do with a drama-free afternoon? You can go for a swim, you can talk nicely to friends, you can write a book (or at least work on writing a book, maybe not a whole book in an afternoon...), you can enjoy the product of the brand you like, and stop caring about the brand you don't like. And I'm sure it's better for your blood pressure. It's not boring. It's infinitely more productive than getting people mad who odds are you've never met before, and you'll never meet in your life. Why bring the grief?


-ahem- Ok, now I'm done. On to the update!

I started on that Monday, as I planned, and things went well until the... 11th of August. Then I started getting behind. It took me three days (the 11th through the 13th) to write two thousand words. After that, it took me another three days to write another two thousand words. I have reasons for the second set, what with stuff going on over the weekend, but still. I wrote a few extra words today, so I'm only (only, heh) five and half kays behind now. My challenge runs through September... I can catch up, right? Right?

At any rate, I'm going to do my best not to miss any more days, and to do plenty of extra to catch up. I've never been this far behind before though... I'm just glad this didn't happen in November.