Writing Journal

Just real quick....I'm at 38,332 words.  I need to be at 44k by tomorrow at dinner if I want to stay on track with my goals.

The NaNoWriMo official website has regular (I think daily) pep talks, and today's came from Marissa Meyer, a published Wrimo.  My favorite part was this, cleverly hidden at the end:

I advise you to keep your head in the clouds and your hands on the keyboard, and to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. But if NaNoWriMo had been around back then, it very well might have been built in thirty

 

Writing Journal

So a real quick update on NaNo...

I hit kind of a block over the weekend/yesterday.  I could've written something between Jeopardy and Wheel, but chose to read instead.  I just felt as though there was this large, raging river between where my story was and where I wanted it to go, but I just could not find the bridge over it.  How frustrating.

I tried for about half an hour before Castle and half an hour after.  I started the day where I wanted to end, so the little I wrote makes me less ahead than I was when I started the day.  Just pushed words out, most of them meaningless and doing nothing to take the story forward.  I was dragging my knuckles through the words, I guess you could say.

Since I've been feeling this way since, oh, Saturday-ish, I had been including a request for guidance in my prayers.  I knew my heavenly Father knows this story is important to me, and wants to help me, so I figured I'd ask.  Just in case He had any advice to impart.  I mean, he created the earth, so He's got some imagination, ya know?

Well, last night's prayer was cut short by an epiphany (crap!  I just realized I left my laptop in my car.  I hope the 40 degree weather doesn't do any damage!) as to where to take my story next.  I wrote down the ideas, expressed my gratitude and opened up my Bible to this verse:

And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever.

1 Chronicles 28:9

emphasis added

Reading/Writing Journal

So, I looked at the reading list widget over there ------->
for the first time in a long time.  I thought I was okay with starting this year's round of O! Pioneers after I finished Mayor of Casterbridge, but I was wrong.  It was a New that was next up, and I can only count O! Pioneers as either an old or a random.  Flubzies!
Looks like I've got more reading to do than I thought.

Which is okay, since I'm practically an entire day ahead of my lofty NaNo goal.  I didn't want to write on Sundays or Thanksgiving, so I set my daily word count at 2000 a day, rather than the 1666/7 a day set by the "officials."  The goal was to reach 16k by the end of today, and I reached 16,308 last night!

I think I'm starting to plateau, though.

NO!  Don't say that!! 

Just because the story isn't moving as quickly as you'd like, and you've found yourself unable to tell it any way but chronologically, that doesn't mean anything.  Okay, all four MC's have finally met each other, and it's only a matter of time before the connections are made.  Yes, that's the goal for tonight: make the connections, especially between Justin and Candy.  (Last night's work kind of ended with Marcus and Corby.)

Here's a fun little anectdote, now that I'm done talking to myself....
I was dozing off a little between my write-in and a meeting, when I caught myself thinking it was September for some reason.  As soon as I realized it was not September, I wondered why I would think such a thing.  Maybe the weather?  But could it also have been that I had just finished writing about something taking place in September?  I think that might have actually had more to do with it than the weather....

Writing Journal

NaNoWriMo kicked off at midnight!!!

I had considered taking a nap and going to the First Chance Midnight Write-in. 
I ended up not going because I knew I wouldn't be able to stay much after midnight if I wanted to function at work today.  I also knew that, with as excited as I was about my NaNo, I wouldn't be able to write just a few (hundred) words, and that it would get me too keyed up to go to bed.

Instead, I went to bed relatively early (10:30) and woke up early (5:30) to write for about an hour this morning.

1,722 words, baby!!

I was surprised at how easily they came, as well as how easy it was to let my internal editor sleep.  I never went more than a paragraph back to change anything, and only added or changed a few things as I went.  Going back to it tonight is going to be difficult, though.  I think the best way to keep my editor out of it is to not read much of what I've written, which is unusual for me.  Call it egotistical, but I like reading what I write.  But I know when I do, I automatically look at ways I could have said it better or differently.

That's going to be hard to turn off.

Oh, and I also wrote a poem yesterday and 3 on Saturday (while waiting for my roommate's plane to get in).
The one yesterday I especially like because it was challenging to say what (I thought) I wanted to say with the rhythm I set with the first two lines.  Then I noticed some patterns that ocurred naturally and wanted to keep those, too.  It was only 8 lines, but it took me about 3 hours as a secondary or tertiary thought item.  (During those 3 hours, I was also processing claims, day plotting and communicating with other people in a social manner.)
Still veerrrrrrrrrrry far behind my 366 goal, though.