illness and body parts and murder, oh my

so, i've been sick this week. not sick enough to miss work (or can't afford to stay home from work is most accurate). but my head has been stuffy and nose stuffy and weak and tired and yada yada. i've been writing bits here and there but it has felt stilted, stale, slow - sluggish. like me.

i whined a little. slept. whined, worked, napped, slept. oh, and ate a little. and drank coffee. whined. wrote.

was feeling a little blah about the story or that we have not gotten to the exciting part yet. everything feeling drawn out.

i let the one character be murdered instead of hurt and in a coma. oh well.

then a body part appeared in the hamper. weird. and that thread is going no where so far.

and. stale. ugh. sloshing through the muck.

then today, i was feeling better, had another eight hours of sleep (careful, this could become a habit). even got up and went for a two mile walk (i could not do the 3eight i was scheduled and was advised to not push my body that much). home. showered. went for breakfast (in true nano fashion, this "breakfast" was at 1:30 pm) at one of my writing spots, along with my laptop.

oooh. so i said the story was getting stale.

well, over breakfast and writing, they (the characters, of course) decided that someone would die. well, another one would die. and this was the dog. omg, i told them. no, not the dog. geesh, what do you want people to think?

then i went to work.

oh well. it is their story. and the dog is dead as i approach 40,000.

back to work.

nanonotes on day 14

originally posted at
The Writing Vein
by dot.


It has been an amazing day. Full of fitness and friends and team and fun; ending with some work. And I still managed to get in some writing!

I started with a 12 mile training walk with two of my Seattle half marathon friends. We were lucky to have a clear and sunny - although cold - morning; and no rain. Yay for no rain; after I felt like I was going to freeze last weekend with the rain, I have definitely decided that I am putting in my order for no rain on November 29th in Seattle. I'll take the cold (a friend and I did a 10k in early January and there was ice on the ground; I can layer and bundle for that). Please no rain. One friend took off at her faster pace at about 3 1/2 miles, which is fine; my fast is her stroll - and her fast is about 4 minutes per mile faster than mine. But the other friend and I kept up our pace and we made okay time. About mile 9 I started to hurt a little; about mile 10 I was knowing I could do the half marathon but "knew" I couldn't do a full marathon and why would I even try; at mile 11 I saw the end ahead and was driven toward that. We reached our cars, I stretched a little and rushed home to shower and change and drive to the shoe store, where...

The 2010 relay walking team I'm captain of was meeting for shoe fitting and trying on shoes. Seven of us made it there - it was fun and the staff was great. The last of us (which included me) left 3 hours after our arrival. With shoes. And inserts. And socks.

Then I stopped for sushi.

Then I went to a coffee shop with wifi where I proceeded to make more progress on my nanonovel. I saw myself nearing 30k, just as I'd seen us approaching 12 miles, and I thought, I *can* do this before I have to leave for work (which was just 10 minutes away). So I typed and I typed and what do you know!?!?! I did it!

My ending word count for today is 30,104. And the story is still progressing - yay. I hated to stop because I was getting on a roll (though not as good as last night's roll when I had to stop for sleep due to the walk this morning). Oh well, I get to meet with my nanowritingbuddies tomorrow! Yay.

p.s. - I probably am going to sign up for the marathon training, after all. The first meeting is in December, with biweekly training walks/runs to follow. After I push through those final 3 or 4 miles, I feel good. Kind of like NaNoWriMo!

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.

in the land of nano you never know....

I was typing away, blissful in the productivity I was able to attain once I actually got to the writing meet-up with my buddy this morning. (It took a while, we were both late, but we did eventually make it.)

Then, all of a sudden, from out of the blue, it happened.

The story wants one of my characters dead.

I'm not ready to kill someone off yet. And not this character. She was going to be one of the primaries once I get to the exciting part of this plot. But, no - they want her dead. I'm currently deciding whether to overrule with my author's privilege and just have her be injured and taken to the hospital - I'll even give them a coma if they want. But I don't want her dead. No.

Who wins? The characters or me? What will I lose later if I try to play god in my story now? Or am I already god and this is their way of rebelling?

Oh, a NaNo dilemma.

I don't mind kidding off a character. Really. And it - to be totally, brutally, honest with myself - is about time something exciting happened. This plot needs to move along. Although I suppose that slow and plodding has its benefits during NaNo. But still.

Oh, what to do?

NaNo Notes: day 7

Today has been stormy. I overslept. Which is to say that I slept. A full 8 hours - no, not 8 hours all together - 6 hours, woke up, back to sleep within 20 or 30 minutes for another 2 hours. I still had just enough time to go for my 10 miles walk and get back in time for the next thing. But I did not make it 10 miles - only 6 and with 4 legs of hills. I have run a little low on sleep until last night (only 12 hours total for the previous 3 days) - and my body said no way was it going 10 miles. Plus it started to rain a lot heavier than I was dressed for. I was dressed for rain - layers, a waterproof rain jacket - but not the downpour that started, so I headed home, 2 miles out. By the time I got home it was torrential; truly. About 5 minutes later there was a lot of thunder and the rain kept pouring. Later there was a rainbow and I was wet and still cold to the bone; a phrase I don't often use because I have not experienced that feeling until now.

But you know what? Guess what started to come out in the next chapter of my novel. One of my characters decided to go for a training walk and it started to rain! Woo hoo. She is talking herself through it now -- or was when I had to stop to get to work.

I had a massage after a hot shower (I didn't plan to get soaked before the massage, but she has a table warmer so it was actually perfect!), went out for a quick dinner with my partner, then to a friend's art opening and sale.

Then, finally, to SE Grind for a couple hours of writing. And after a few minutes, the story started to unfold about one of my main characters heading out for a training walk, in the rain, and all she wanted to do was go home...

The Art of NaNoWriMo - imitating life.

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.

NaNo Day Two from Dot

I arrived at the designated cafe about 20 minutes ago to meet up with Jenny and write. I was a little later than I'd hoped, since today was my pace training day and not a short one at that. I was scheduled to do five miles, fast - or fast pace - something, whatever, language escapes me at this moment, which is not a good thing.

So I was supposed to do five miles - and I did five miles. After talking myself into getting out there to do it. "Skip it," I taunted myself. "No," I replied. "Yes, one day won't hurt. Go write. You know you want to." I almost caved. Then I thought that I really can't skip at this point because - well, the half marathon is only 27 days away (now if this was in my nanonovel I would have written twenty seven days because that gives me a word count of three instead of two - but I'm not so you get the contractions and the digits normally).

I did the five miles at a decent pace. And ran into construction on the way here - typical of Portland in the fall.

And now I have food and coffee and water and my laptop open, with Jenny in front of me.

Distracting myself.

Here I go, back to nanoland. My beginning word count for today is 3,956. I'll let you know where I land when I have to rush off the get to the trainers. Before the Write Around Portland group. And then end with a stint of work.

Procrastination is ending now.

NaNo - ho!

originally posted at The Writing Vein
by Dot.

The Last Post of October 2009

I am writing this post in the very last hour of October for two reasons. One, because I really need to talk some things out and what better place to do it? And two, because I can't seem to do anything else whilst waiting to write that first line of prose tonight at midnight. I'm sure most of you are off having fun talking plots and characters and settings at the midnight write in and I wish I was there, but perhaps next year.

Today, I kind of had a mini-freak out. This is because I realized that I have absolutely no idea what my book is going to be able. I mean, I know the very, very, very basics of it, but I don't actually know what the conflict is, let alone how it's going to resolve itself. After two or three stress filled hours of frantically trying to string a plot together, I realized that that's exactly what NaNoWriMo is about: writing something, even if you have no idea where it's going. Let your characters take you where there going to go.

Literary abandon. That's the journey we're about to embark on and I'm sure I feel exactly like the pilgrims coming over on their boat, this time so many, many years ago. That epic excitement of what is to come and yet the apprehension of not really knowing where you're headed, just knowing you're headed to somewhere great.

Have an awesome and fantastic November writers and don't let any thing getting in the way of making it to the top! See you at the finish line (and several places in between).

In just under seven hours...

originally posted by Dot at The Writing Vein on 10/31/09 at 5:05 pm

I will have been working on my new, 2009 NaNoWriMo novel for 6 minutes. I will have six minutes of ...

of...

...something. I will be there at the midnight write-in, with my friend, Jenny, and the 20 or 40 or 60 or more people gathered in east Portland to kick off this thing called NaNoWriMo.

My next post will be after midnight, after the fun begins, after I know where my novel starts. I have a summary - that you can read on my NaNoWriMo author's page (username is dot.). The working title of my new novel is "Cascade Lakes Footnotes." Other than the summary (which I already posted here on my website), I don't know what's going to happen or who will be there or who the guilty parties are. I've been promised a "struggle for survival" - so there does seem to be a bit of a mystery and at least the threat of death, if not one or more actual deaths. We'll see!

I've had to forego the nap I thought would be a good idea since I am excited and there's no way I'd sleep. I thought the 11 miles walk with half-marathon partners this morning would help with the napping - but, no. Now my partner and I are headed off to a dance for a couple hours. Then back home to change into the 2009 NaNoShirt I've had hanging on the wall since it arrived a couple weeks ago. NaNoNerd that I am, I promised myself I'd not wear it until....tonight! Now the only question is: which one? The official 2009 NaNoShirt or the official Camp NaNoWriMo shirt?

*grin*

It's nearly NaNoTime!

I Don't Wanna Stop

(If I can borrow a phrase from Ozzy)

As if cranking out 50,000 words in thirty days isn’t enough of a challenge, I’ve taken the bait and volunteered to do some blogging here about my NaNoWriMo experiences. Which are limited, so it shouldn’t take long. This is only my second attempt at it. I took the plunge for the first time last year at the urging of an online buddy, and signed up at T-minus 4 days (October 28, 2008) with nary a thought in my little pea brain as to what I was going to write. But that didn’t stop me. Oh no. Common sense was nowhere in sight. My friend’s enthusiasm for the miasma that would become life during NaNo was infectious (in a good way) and so I took up the challenge.

Oh those first glorious days (once I had a story idea) flowed. Word count, shmerd count, thought I, as I typed merrily away. Who’syerdaddy! I taunted my muse. Big mistake.

Then reality set in. After two weeks, I missed an entire week of writing and my confidence evaporated like… like… like something that evaporates really fast. Like those little drips of coffee that fall when you take the pot off the hot plate in the coffee maker, and they sizzle and bubble and are gone before you can grab a towel and mop them up. Kinda like that.

I managed to clock in at something under 27,000 words (not much under) so not an inconsiderable effort.

This year, however, I am resolved to tough it out to the bitter end, even if I don’t make the full 50k. I’ve even conned …err… convinced two friends to join in the fray, and am putting the thumbscrews to a third. I have no pearls of wisdom if you are new to this, except to Plant Butt In Chair and write. Turn off the internal editor, first drafts are supposed to be crap. Get some good music to tune out the sound of the dishwasher running, and the dog barking, and your neighbor continually gunning the engine of some antique muscle car he’s been trying to restore for the last ten years…

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines.