Date: November 30, 2008

After studying the template for awhile, I realized simply adding "Date:" to my settings and manually entering the date of each post was much easier for me to comprehend do.

I just realized this blog template doesn't seem to have the date listed with the time published. Gonna see if I can fix that.

WHEW! I did it. I made it past 100K and I have a book. Sorta. It needs LOTS of work, but I am determined to do whatever it takes to get it in shape for publishing. This has been a lot of work, but a lot of fun, too.

I'm taking a few days off, maybe to even sketch out the ideas I have for another book, and then I'll get back to work on this one.

The big question - do I take it to CreateSpace, which is a guarantee publish, but is just self-publishing, or do I take a chance with a "real" publishing house?

Why? Because I find it very amusing that NaNoWriMo can be anagrammed into Warm Onion.

Yes, little things like this keep me happy.

I decided yesterday to shoot for 100K, but now I'm wondering if that's really a sensible use of my time. If I want to turn this book into something publishable, I should probably quit writing extra scenes and start focusing on what I have.

On the other hand, I've had a lot of ideas I never would've thought of if I hadn't been on this freewriting binge, so I'm just not sure what to do at this point...

I just had a close to 7500 word day.  Wow.  I'm beat.  Went to the mall and met two other NaNoWriMos.  That was cool.  :)  Going to bed now.  And look at that, it's only 10:30.

The lack of sleep is starting to make me loopy.  In any case, I have passed 60K.  I am starting to wonder if I really could make the 100K mark by the end of the month.  The problem is of course, the number of days I will not be able to work on the story at all.  Still it is coming along, bit by bit.

I'm working in a new file, so that I don't inadvertently ruin my word count, but still this story grows.

Okay, so I usually hate using multiple punctuation marks, but this is a special situation that calls for it.  I did it.  I passed the 50K mark, and it did it in just 2 weeks!  I am so unbelievably psyched at this moment.  *does snoopy dance*  I still have so much work to do on this book, but still, I won another NaNoWriMo and that means at this moment, I am made of win!

WOO-HOO

Woo.  Just passed the last big milestone before hitting the magic number.  Way cool.

Okay, this blog-right-from-flock feature is pretty darn cool, I gotta admit.

Does this really work?

I went to a write-in tonight and met 3 lovely ladies also NaNoing. Very cool. And wow - does the addition of people writing busily around you help or what! 3500ish words in just under two hours. Woo.

So - see that? I'm over 40k! Awesome.

And I did something I really wasn't supposed to. I deleted about 400 words that'd I'd written several days ago and just *knew* wasn't going to work any more with all the wild changes that have been taking place. But I promptly wrote another 550 to make up for it.

I suppose I should go to bed now. Last night, I knocked off, but then I could not sleep. How frustrating is that? I kept telling myself, "Why don't you just get up and get back to work, then?" Except I knew that would disturb the household, so I stayed in bed and stared at the ceiling and waited for sleep to come. *sigh*

Ooh - uh, OWC: 40,268

Okay, that's not an "I did it!" as in I finished or anything *that* exciting, but what I did do was reach 36K, so now I have 14,000 words to go and 14 days in which to write them. Fantastic.

I wonder why my word widget isn't updating properly. Maybe it will be correct by morning?

Anyway, officially: 36,036.

Heh. The forums are way, way too distracting.

So, procrastination much? I've been poking around the "fun stuff" part of the NaNoWriMo section. So now I have the handy little word count widget over there in the sidebar. Which? Kinda takes away some of my need to post here, come to think of it.

In other notes: My "a" key is sticking badly. I have to press very hard to get it to work, which is slowing down my typing speed. *cries*

Well, it's so late, it's not even funny, but I hit 34K tonight. To be specific 34,040. And according to my math, that makes my adjusted nightly requirement 1064. I'm thinking if I do well tomorrow, I could get that number down to below 1000, which would be awesome.

Yay, me. I did just over 5,000 words today, to push me past the 30K mark. Official count now stands at: 30,284. And it's not even midnight yet. Go figure! I'm actually going to get a reasonably amount of sleep tonight. :)

Last night, I was so excited to make the half-way mark, I posted a shout-out on the forums and went to bed, without coming to update here. So, as of last night I was at: 25,266.

Yay.

Then just now, I tried something really funny. It's found here: WRITE OR DIE

And this was the result:

	502
12
lab.drwicked.com

Which means, officially my word count now stands at 25,768.

The exciting thing was how fast I wrote the words. That's a much better wpm rate than my usual 1000 words per hour. That said, I will admit there's a more crap than usual to the writing. Still, I might start each writing session from here on out with this, just to get going, then switch over to my normal way of doing things.

All right. Every night is dark of course. Heh. I meant that in "tone". My poor queen has just learned that her planet (and most of her people) has been destroyed by a "superweapon" that left the atmosphere full of toxic radiation. Very few were evacuated in time.

And unlike Princess Leia who watched her homeworld get blown to smithereens with only a bit of an anguished wince and a desperate cry, my queen absorbed this news by casting up her accounts and then fainting dead away.

Whew. What a scene to write.

Word count: 23,584.

Tomorrow I will be editing a 40 page paper for a friend. Yikes. I have no idea how much writing I'll be able to get done, considering. But I am hoping to reach 25,000 tomorrow night. It would be cool to know I reached the half-way point in 8 days.

Well, no, really, I'm not. I feel like I could write for another hour at least. But I'm being responsible here and forcing myself to get some sleep. I know I need it.

Current word count: 21,359.

I re-did my math and now I'm at 1591 words a night to end on time (for me.) :)

I just got the bread dough in the oven. (For rising, not baking yet.) I'm going to brew a cup of tea and then it's time to get to work. I'm supposed to be getting up earlier than usual tomorrow, so I realize the wise thing will be to not stay up too late. I guess I'll decide based on how well things are flowing as I write.

OT: I liked tonight's episode of Life on Mars, though it was predictable in a lot of ways.

Hmm. It's getting chilly in here. Maybe I should turn the oven light on to help the bed rising. (Yes, that really does work.)

I just updated my word count and I'm now at 18520. Definitely met my word goal for tonight, and then some!

And it's... working. It's funny, because I think most of the writing itself is crap, and will need major revisions, and yet, the story is there. The characters are there. They are already starting to become "real" in my head. I just jumped ahead some and wrote a scene that referred to the death of a major character, and I hadn't even thought to go there with him, but of course, in a war of this magnitude, people are going to die. There's no way around it.

I also realized that two of my characters - best friends since childhood - would find themselves fighting on opposite sides of the war. Again, it wasn't something I'd preplanned, but as soon as the thought occurred to me, the scene was there, the moment they themselves realized they were going separate ways and could very well never see one another again.

Hmmm... it sounds like my novel went dark all of a sudden, but I can see it all unfolding, even the eventually uplifting ending.

LOL! I think I'm sounding like a complete nutjob right now, and waaaay too pleased with myself, but yes, I am very happy with where this is all going.

Hmm. So I booted up my computer, thinking I'm so awfully tired and that I can no longer even call it a joke when I say I'm "looking like the Zombie Soccer Mom from Suburban Hell" because these late nights are taking their toll. And I was thinking, all right, tonight I will only type my minimum words count, which, according to my calculations is now 1775 a night, but after a cup of Lady Grey and a few Grasshoppers, I'm actually feeling a bit more perky. My math is as follows: (Total Number of Words Required - Total Number of Words Already Written) / Total Number of Days Left. (Duh!)

For me, the big thing here is that "total number of days left" = 20. Not 25. Thanksgiving, which comes at pretty much the end of the month this year, always gets in the way, and there is no chance in the world, between all the cooking and other holiday events requiring my attention, that I will get any writing done. Trust me. Having done NaNoWriMo for a few years, I have learned - the hard way - to count several days out for Thanksgiving.

So, I'm setting my word goal for tonight at 2000. A bit more than needed, but I think I can do it. I'll see if I can make it, or if I crash and burn.

Or I should say, "Hanging up for what's left of the night."

I'm ashamed to admit I started editing tonight - without even noticing I was doing it right away. I spent an awful lot of time re-reading and changing minute details here and there.

There's got to be some way I can keep myself from doing that!

New word total: 14507.

So, I'm listening to Live365 and, because I'm a lowly, poor person and can't afford to pay for the ad-free version, I get commercials. Anyway, they just had an ad for the CIA. No, really. The CIA. Central Intelligence Agency. Apparently some of the requirements for the job are being patriotic and a US citizen. Whew! Glad they've got some standards. Interested in becoming a Clandestine Service Officer? Check out the official website - cia.gov. Just be ready for a career of "adventure and ambiguity." I swear I am so not making this up!

Wow. I think I liked living in my Chuck-inspired fantasy world better than this. The idea that the CIA was recruiting kids at Stanford? I'm okay with that. The fact that they're going after any schlub listening to "Permanent Waves" - soundtracks, classical, and new age? Is very, very scary. Amusing, but scary.

So, I've been writing tonight for about... uh, twenty minutes now and I did a word count and I realized it. I've just past the quarter-way mark. On day 4! Yay! No, this doesn't mean I'm sure I'll reach 50,000 by the 16th, but it's a good feeling to know I've gotten this far, since I know the closer we get to Thanksgiving, the less time I'll have.

My banner is too big for this template. I guess I'll fix that later, too.

I've finally come up with a coherent synopsis:

An ambivalent young queen faces a growing tide of rebellion and sympathizes with those who would see the millennia-old monarchy and ruling class replaced by a democracy, but upon discovering the leader of the rebellion is nothing more than a manipulative, power-mad man certain to become a monstrous tyrant should he take her place, she finds herself reluctantly fighting a war to keep her crown.

I've also designed a "cover banner"



For some reason I can't get it to show up in my signature on the forums, but I'm too tired to work it all out right now.

Meanwhile - Day 3 word count puts me at 12002. Woo.

I'm going to bed! But I reached my goal (plus a little bit more.) Yay, me. My word count now stands at 9287. Almost a 5th of the way there!

Humph. Well, last night I increased my word count to 6576, which I realize is not too shabby. But it wasn't what I would call a "productive" writing period. I have no idea why, but my mother (who couldn't sleep, apparently) kept coming down stairs and banging around in the kitchen, or pacing around on the extremely creaky floor directly above me, and I just couldn't seem to get past it. Which is a little weird actually. Usually, I'm pretty good at tuning things out, though admittedly, I still write MUCH better in the dark and dead of night.

I'm hoping to reach at least the 9000 mark tonight, even though I'm really kinda exhausted.

So, last night - Day 1, I managed 4001 words. A good start, above the total daily average needed. It took me four hours, so I guess I'll monitor my time and see if I can keep up the 1000 words an hour total. Heh. I guess that's what? 16 or so words a minute? Not exactly speed typing! Maybe I need to try even harder to not edit myself as I work.