nanonotes from day 13

Yay - I made it through the dreaded second week.... almost. Another day to go, but I'm feeling great about my word count. And the story gained a little momentum.

It's interesting. Tonight my partner was working, so I had the whole house to myself. Which is not a common event, given our disparate work schedules. But I did. And I decided, since I have a twelve mile walk tomorrow morning (the marathon is just fifteen days away! - yikes - ) that I needed some carbo loading tonight. It's okay - I can do this once in a while. I will not be pushing myself as hard as I will be for the half marathon in Seattle - but it is still walking twelve miles.

So I found a new to me place to go and I did. With my college ruled spiral bound notebook in hand and a pen. While I waited in line, I continued with the chapter I started last night. My whole day had been full of work, so I had not written anything today. But, standing at the little bar, I started writing. The maitre'd' guy (I think that wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans allows me to call him this and not even bother to look up how to spell it correctly) told me politely that there was a table for me by the front window.

"Perfect," I said and put down a couple more words to complete the thought as I walked over there, with one eye on the aisle so I didn't run into anyone.

I sat down and quickly decided what I wanted to eat. For any of my friends who read this, they will scoff because I tend to not be a fast decision maker when it comes to ordering food. But, believe it or not, I decided what I wanted in about three minutes. And got right back to writing down my story. The waitress came, I ordered, my Merlot arrived and my beets, walnut, and goronzola on mixed greens salad.

I tried to eat left handed since I knew that writing left handed would be abysmal and I would only get five or six words down. Gave up. Ate right handed, put the last bite of greens and chunk of beets into my mouth and was back at writing. I can drink left handed and write at the same time. Which I did.

Then came the penne with lemon butter sauce, green onions, salmon, and halibut - oh, and artichoke hearts. Dang, I had to put down the pen to eat. But it was worth it and I have an entire second meal waiting for me in my refrigerator downstairs right now.

So back to the writing. Then came the check. And I kept writing. There was only a short line in the restaurant now and I couldn't stop. The story was flowing - although in a different direction that I thought it would but my hand was literally moving faster than I could think and I could not stop it.

Well, I had to stop it after a few minutes. To get home. Then get sidetracked by an email and then a phone call. And it was all good. Because when I did finally get back to my story, I discovered - again - that my by hand word count and the story it contained were not bad at all. And I liked it.

So, second week, hah! Who cares! I did it. And I faced interruptions (oh, life). And still I ended today with a new word count of, ta da ....

28,035

...that is 2,092 words by hand in the space of about 80 minutes, which included ordering and eating!

originally posted at
The Writing Vein
by Dot.

ack! no technology!

Today I had some down time on a job. No laptop. No wireless access even if I did (which means no access to my novel, since I'm using Google Docs for writing it). But I had pen and paper.

So while the clients were involved in individual activities for an extended time, I went back to pen and paper and wrote. And wrote - always keeping one ear and one eye on the room, listening and surveying in case I was needed.

For 35 minutes, I wrote longhand. I filled 10 pages of lined notebook paper. I did an estimated count of 1,650 words!

This brings my approximate total to 23,035.

I also noticed that my longhand word count was just as quick as my typing word count for a similar time. Interesting. Except that now I'm trying to type in all those words I wrote and I'm noticing that it is actually taking me longer to type in what I wrote than if I was creating and typing at the same time.

What does it mean?

Nothing, I guess. Except: hmmm, interesting!

originally posted at

The Writing Vein

by Dot.

NaNoWriMo: day 6 from Dot

originally posted at
The Writing Vein
by Dot.

An extremely sleep deprived day. I did not get to sleep immediately upon arriving home from work in the week hours of the morning today. Right now I cannot even remember what it was that was so important to do when I got home - but it was, I swear! I did it quickly, but it still delayed getting to bed for an hour. Then I had a very early job so that my number of hours I had to sleep was absolutely horrible. I did squeeze in two 10 minute naps today - which helps.

I came up with a new metaphor. These last two days have felt like the "old days" when you scrounged through the sofa and the car seats, collecting whatever coins you could so you could drive to the gas station and buy 5o cents or 75 cents of gas to get you around for a couple of days.

I've been scrambling around in search of long enough blocks of time to take a nap: 10 here, 15 there, another 10, and even a 30 last night. Just long enough for me to catch a little down time, eyes shut, lessening the chatter in my brain, to make it do-able to get through the next stretch of work.

But tonight - I will go to bed and I will sleep. I can't sleep as long as I want, since I have to do a 10 mile pace walk tomorrow. But, if I can wrap this post up and get to bed right now, I should be able to get a full 8 hours before I walk.

My reward will be a massage in the early afternoon.

Woo.

Oh, and my current word count? Give it up for me, who has passed another major milestone: 15,608 ! Yay.

countdown: 5 days, 3 hours, 41 minutes

originally posted at The Writing Vein, by Dot.

...but who's counting? oh, me... right... and thousands of other hopeful writers

And so I've entered the final week before NaNoWriMo. Am I prepared? Maybe. Am I ready to jump into this novel? Yes, definitely.

Maybe I should be making lists. What I need and when and where. Or maybe not. Life has been hitting me from right and left these last two weeks and I feel like I've been in a battleground. I won't bore you with the details nor expose personal garbage by spilling it here *grin. So the one thing I have done is put out a request to the universe to stop with the messes and get those stars aligned because I am going to write another novel beginning at midnight:01 on November 1st. And I need a little help getting things straightened out before that time.

Despite all the drama and the too many things to do in too little time, I am excited. I am excited to see where this idea leads me. All you see on my author's page synopsis is what I know. I don't have specific characters in mind nor specific incidents. I don't know if what I wrote as a synopsis will be a scene, the start, or the setting in general.

But it will happen. It will go somewhere. It will be completed. As I work, and teach (which is work, yes) , and finish out the last three weeks of the writing group I'm facilitating, and wrap up the final two weeks of the writing workshop I'm taking, and train for and walk my first half marathon. I can.