News! Hot off the, errm, keyboard!

As if the early winter months weren't busy enough, I had to run off and attempt NANOWRIMO. Did I win? Yup, 52K or so. Did I complete the novel? Nope. Let's be honest here--how many novels are actually 50K words? What can I say, I'm a longwinded kind of gal.  I've got about 100K to go, I think. Give or take.

But before I get onto a whole tangent about that, I have more news.

You see, my subconscious must have thought that my early winter months, even with NANO thown in, would not be hectic enough. So I tossed in a job application.  You know, in case I got bored with the whole novel-in-a-month-plus-random-family-dropping-by-for-the-holidays thing. lol.

Long story short, I may be moving. Soon. Like, this weekend  (at the earliest) or next weekend (at the latest) soon.Whew! --That's very soon indeed! I should find out any day now, and if I disappear for a while, that's probably why.

So, what about you folks? Those of you who NANOed, how did it go? Everyone's holidays shaping up nice and neat?

Update! Nano and otherwise



What's your word count, fellow NANO writers?

Anything badass happening with your novels?



As someone who writes and reads for bread and butter, 1,667 words per day, especially on a fairly well-planned novel, is not that bad. Right? Right. This being the undeniable truth, I set my goal for at least 2,000 words per day. Again, not that bad. Right? Right. So I changed my goal--again--and set it for 4,000 words per day on said novel. (On that vein, any of you set wild goals?)

Ermm...

NANOWRIMO Is Here!



NANOWRIMO is officially in full swing. Anyone start writing yet? Anyone get a purty Paint star for writing during the wee hours?

Feel free to tell me all about your titles, your plots, your characters, or that one thread you can't stop reading when you really should be writing, or, you know, sleeping. Like that thread about DID/MPD. Incredibly interesting, right? My username is Jimothea, if you want to contact me on NANO.

Here's my stats:

Title: "Of These Fine Days"

Genre: Err...Lit fic. Basically.

POV: Third Person limited.

MC: Emilie Hirsch, age 8-29

Current Word Count: 2018

What about you?

NANO Midnight Write-In

How many of you are doing NANO this year? How many of you  (the ones jumping up and down in their computer chairs, wriggling their hands in the air....you know who you are) are hoping, wishing, craving a good start? How many of you are willing to give up your regular sleep schedule for the first night of NANO?

I mean, come on. It's Halloween. You're probably going to be up anyway. Just put down the candy and coctails and do some writing with other members of your friendly online writing community. Or hell, don't put down the candy and cocktails. Who could write a better story than you, writer/Jessica Rabbit-costume-wearer,  all bedecked in your slinky red sequin gown and purple faux velvet gloves you got from that weird little vintage store in the hippy part of town, cocktail and candy in hand (or rather, beside your pen and keyboard)?



Image courtesy of http://blog.moviefone.com/



Cuz that's the perfect getup for a midnight write-in. Very conducive to creativity, you see. It's the sequins.

Anywhosers, I'm going to begin writing at Midnight, November 1st, CST. I will not stop until at least 2 a.m. Midnight write-in participants will get a prize---a shiny star designed in Paint by me! Very high tech, I know. Please take a moment to catch your breath from the spectacularness of the prize.

Be sure to include your first line or completed word count or the like in the comments below so I can give you your shiny, shiny prize!

Shoo-woop! Happy writing!

Have I mentioned lately...

That I'm a holiday wh*re?  'Cuz I am. I love the holidays. Halloween?!?!? Get out of town!

I love Halloween so much I couldn't resist redoing the entire blog... yet again, this time with a uber spooky picture! *cough* lol. I coded this myself, which is saying something because I'm not exactly tech savvy, as some of you know, so, err, I'm still ironing out the kinks.

Which brings me to my next point: The text for the gadgets and for the posts have decided they want to be centered too, just like my spooky picture background. (I wanted the background centered, just not all my text.)

Until I figure out a way around that minor issue, the best I can do is manually change the posts back to their original justifications. And I'm not gonna lie, I won't do that for all of 'em, and even if I did, it still wouldn't fix the centered gadget text.

So instead, I ask you noteworthy bloggers who've messed with the Google Template CSS, how exactly do I get around this issue? Any ideas?  I'll keep tweaking tonight with the hopes of fixing it, and in the mean time, sit tight for me to get all the text back to the way it was.

***

In other news...NANO!!!

Whoa, it's in, what, 4 days? Exciting. How many of you are participating this year? Details too, please.

NANOWRIMO Prepping

So begins my planning for NANOWRIMO. I scrapped all the other ideas I mentioned (my favorite I ended up using for JUNOWRIMO), but came up with a new one today...One that will work, if I give it enough of a chance. I don't want to tell you too much, because I'm still not sure of it at all, and I don't want to spoil it. You know how it is...

That aside, here's my very vague, very tentative schedule:

August
Research & Development~~ Settle on thesis, characters, location(s), time span and etc. Dig, dig, dig until I've read everythign about anything I need.

September
Character Sketches, Plot, Settting(s) ~~ Just what it sounds like. Lots and lots of background writing during this time. At this point I shall have a daily schedule.

October
Fine Tuning ~~ Outline, scene-by-scene layout, attention to tone, theme, format, voice, etc. Try to cover all my bases, so to speak

That's all I've got so far. Any of you doing NANO this year? If so, do you have a plan? If you do, may I please steal it? -------->>>Just kidding. Kinda...

What to do, what to do

I find myself despicably excited for NANOWRIMO. It's just five months away! Ahh.

And I'm horribly unprepared. But I'm going to use this blog as a sounding board. Backstory info: I myself like really character-driven stories, and don't think I'm ready to do anything too experimental on this level. Ok.  Ready? Here's some of what I'm considering:

• A Princess Bride-esque tale, complete with ogres, rat kings, castles and the like. And lots of bad guys. Maybe some pirates and ninjas; I don't know. I don't know if we'll have enough time. It would follow the hero's journey, only the main character would be a girl. Probably a princess, but maybe an assassin. Hmm...
• A Midwestern gothic, modern day, or at least fairly modern day. 20th century. Terribly flawed characters. Guess that would make it a romance, which I'm a little squeamish about writing...
• Something based on an allegory or spiritual person of some sort. Think Greek epics, Bible, and Buddha here.
• A "serious" look at how modern Americans identify themselves, in class, region, ethnicity and personal identity. Again, based in Midwest.
• The if-marriage-could-be-distopic-and-humorous idea. A female main character kidnaps a man, rapes him and keeps him hidden away (at the beginning), declaring herself married. After numerous funny and predictable escape attempts and numerous not-so-funny enslavement scenes, the two really do fall in love. Set in modern western culture. Female main character first appears to be crazy as a coon, but later reader identifies with her (as does kidnapee) and her tactic, and even admires her and her relationship with kidnapped man.

Those are the ones which look most promising; I've got some other REALLY random ideas even more half-baked than these.

Opinions? Votes? I almost wish I could make this like American Idol, lol. Then, if I don't like the final product, I could say "Well, I didn't vote for it."

LOL.

Uh Oh, Spaghetti-O's

It's hot.

Whew. It's very hot.

And apparently the heat has addled my brain. I just signed up for NANOWRIMO. [EDIT: For those of you who don't know, NANOWRIMO is an international write-a-novel-in-a-month event. See this link for details: http://www.nanowrimo.org/ ]

When it gets this hot this early in the year, and I am bound and determined that I don't need air conditioning, I spend all day with the curtains drawn tight against the sun, drinking my coffee over ice. I am sure to wear a skirt so that I can catch the breeze of the fan.

Errr--perhaps that was TMI. On my legs, people--not anywhere else!

Anyway, I'm blaming my momentary lapse of sanity on the aforementioned stimuli. Do I have a plot? No. Do I have a main character? No. A bad guy? No. A theme? A genre? An idea of any shape or form?

No, no, and no.

What do I have? Zest. Say it with me: ZEST.

Great word, isn't it? Maybe that will be the title. Who knows. And to that tiny little voice in the back of my skull hissing you don't have the time, and you don't have the cahones, I shall repeat that great word, over and over and over and over until I finally finish said yet-unimagined novel.

To those of you who cross these pages who've participated in NANOWRIMO, thoughts? Suggestions? Links? Am I insanely ahead-of-schedule, or hit-the-ground-running-behind on research and development? I'm already feeling jumped-up and nervy about it, ha!

To bring it full circle, it really is hot in here. Lol. If I'm lying I'm dying.