Glad to Report!

Our vending machine at work used to dispense a cranberry drink - I forget which one. They had a game going, and one day I popped open a jar, to find the phrase "You are not a winner" transcribed in the top. The first time I saw it, it gave me pause. Who are the cranberry juice people to judge me? My dad thinks I'm cool! Of course, once I got over the initial, albeit unintended ramification of my beverage choice passing judgement on me, it gave me a giggle.

Regardless, I have told you that to tell you this :

I am a Winner!

Whooooooooooooooo!

I hit my 50,000 words on my NaNo novel today, actually, a nice round 50,200. Ironically, the last three days have been a slog, and today, I wrote about 200 words of useless ramblage just to try and get somewhere (which I did omit, the notes I wrote to myself, consisting of "What the fark do I put here? What is Jale thinking? Does anyone care what she is thinking? got taken out and put in my notes)

I'm not done with the book of course, I've got probably another 30 -35k to write, but I'm proud of my accomplishment, it's a goal I set and made. I came up with the grand plan of writing my Dragongar trilogy many years ago, but I put it in action on December 16, 2007. I finished writing the second book August 16, 2009 (the irony! I didn't realize it was the same day of the month!) So it took 1 year 9 months to write two books.

I have now written at least half a book in less than a month. In less than another month, I should be done!

Yay me! Hope everyone's NaNo is going well!

Embrace the NaNo. Be the NaNo.

So, how is NaNo going, you ask?

Super! Thanks for asking!

Seriously. The first week, I got 20K! The most I've ever gotten in a week. I'm now at 34,751 (according to the NaNo bots). The secret? The Alphasmart Neo, and not reading and/or editing over what I've written. The Irony! It's probably going to be the best thing I've written and I know it reads like a barely literate third-grader right now. But that's ok! I'm embracing the write, write, write, and polish, polish, polish later, later, later.

This is seriously freeing! I'm jamming between 2-3k a day and NOT stopping to read, to meddle, to try and make mah werds be all purteh - I'm just getting the story on the paper. Sorry. I don't think I'm makin' any sense, and this blog post is for crap - but I have a good story goin'!

Also - a shoutout to Wayne. You guys know Wayne. In case you didn't know, he's got an agent, who says he will soon have a publisher, a movie deal, and probably a harem-full of women following him around to try to get him to be their babeh daddeh. Suck up to him now, so you can say you knew him when.

NaNo Preparedness

How I prepare for NaNo : for to see picture below

#1 is Drangongar book, filled with secrets, inner workings, plot ideas and other lies.

#2 is the AlphaSmart Neo supercool Angie from AW gave to me. It has no internets connection.

#3 is my ipod

#4 is my new sparkly pen with editing purple ink still in it

#5 (hidden under the headphones) are my notecards for important character notes and the suchlot.

How kitty tells me that all this NaNo is cutting in on her "special" time.

but idn't she purty?

Past the 10,000 Word Barrier

Greetings, blog readers. Five days into NaNoWriMo and I am at 11,888 words on The Spiritcaster. I'm really diggin' it.

Tonight, for example, I wrote about 3000 words that might not make the final edit. It's personal, family stuff around my female main character. And I didn't got all wingerific over it - bemoaning the fate of my 3000 words. Since this is the prequel to the trilogy I was writing, I have tons of backstory, I am crazy about the world, I know this is The One, like Morpheus knew that Neo was The One, even thought Neo wasn't convinced he was The One. I know there is no spoon. I wrote something that might only be for myself (depending on if I can make a Dragongar look guilty of a crime.... that part of the plot is a little bit up in the air.) But I enjoyed the words. I enjoyed the flow. I found some real depth of character, and... I am sorry to go all artisty, I think I delved into some stuff about myself. We all put a little bit of ourselves, our history and our hang ups in our work, right? Dysfunction. I has it.

Also, I have a confession to make. Ok - big intake of breath. I. Am. Writing. From. An. Outline. I don't know how it happened. I didn't plan it, like that whole sparklepeaches, tt42 throwdown challenge (inside reference to mah AW Crew - what up, AWers?!) I just started jotting my first few scenes, like always (cuz if dummy doesn't write it down, dummy doesn't remember it) and next thing I know... I've got two pages of an outline. For reals. I have added a few scenes, and I'm keeping my outline updated (so there isn't that 29 page synopsis fiasco that happened last time.)

So. In short: NaNo - goin' awesome. Wordcount: on track. Writing from an outline: Not dead yet. It's a miracle.

NaNoWriMo 2009... I can has story?

Greetings, all. Don't know why I have let the blog go all cold and moldy. Guess it's because I missed a huge writing goal. I petered out on doing edits of book II and gave in to the emotional and enjoyable splurgitude of the tv. Ah... Ace of Cakes. Animal Cops. Flash Forward. Project Runway. And who doesn't love Ghosthunters?

But, alas, NaNoWriMo 2009 has begun, and I stayed up late to greet it. If you don't know what I am talking about, get you hence to http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano and learn all about it. Basically, you begin a novel and write 50,000 words in a month. This is 1667 words a day. I am increasing my goal to 2000 words a day, since that is what I did way back in the old days, and I want to get that mojo back. Since NaNo starts Nov 1, I sat up to write and got 2028 words in 1 hr 54 minutes. If I can keep up with that, it should be no problem. That means, no sitting and drooling and looking off into the distance. Fingers must move, and move constantly.

I did pretty good at that tonight, but of course, I now have the "It didn't quite meet expectations" afterglow. I must resist the urge to fiddle. I shall resist. Because I'm rarely any happier after the fiddling. I'm also going into this with more of a plan than I've ever had on any other novel! It surprises me... but also feels good, since I have this "no drooling" rule, I have a direction to write in.

Well, I'm going to try and get myself tired so I can go to bed. Happy NaNo, everyone.