50,709

The magic number has been reached (albeit through highly improbable means), though the Nano counter and my Microsoft Word counter seem to have differing opinions as to the base amount of words I wrote. I'm not altogether sure where Nano got the extra 318 words. They must have filled in all the ones I accidentally skipped in my rush.  

And yes, for those of you with inquiring minds, I did bring the story to an end within those 50,709 words. I tied up so many loose ends in three pages that my brain feels like a rope-climber's fingers (a rope climber who wasn't wearing gloves, that is. If they exist...or are they so foolish as to forgo the gloves? Do they wear gloves? I don't even know.)

At the moment, my brain is the chemical concoction of whatever it is they put in jell-o and I am very, very glad to be finished. (Erk, I can't even write "glad" without automatically tacking an "e" on the end. Glade was the name of my hero, in case you're wondering why this is something worth noting.)

So, umm, that's all I had to say (surprisingly, since I'm so used to boosting my word count that I'll throw a walrus into the mix just to get a few extra sentences to my credit). 

Yay for finishing! 

I shall think of a new ending for that mess presently. 

But not now.

No sir, not now.

P.S. Stay tuned for the next post. I'm planning something which will probably be rather interesting to most of you. Many secrets will be revealed!

P.S.2 Also, many apologies for falling off the face of the earth for eighteen days. Aside from the slight gravitational shift, most of you probably didn't notice it at all. 

NaNoWriMo Day 10: Glorious-ness

I guess spell-check doesn't accept "gloriousness" without a hyphen, so my title is somewhat split up. 

Oh well.

It's day 10, ladies! Well, actually Day 7 on my newest attempt at NaNo-ing and I am absolutely having a BALL over here! 

Sounds eerily like what I just wrote today - a sort of carefree celebration of a certain personage's welcome to a neighboring country and all that good stuff. In fact, I got through the whole thing and realized that my heroine had spent one-half of the merriment greeting people and the other half dancing her feet off and absolutely no-half eating any of the delicacies I had been intending to describe as sitting on the table against the northern wall. 

Ah well. There's more to life than food. But the violet-tinted, whipped syllabubs and sparkling, ruby-hued punch and the glittering sugared fruits did sound tempting to the palate.

And I am consuming large amounts of early grey tea with honey and milk as I type away. At least I was until I ran out. 

:(

Here are a few bits of useless information on things that I've been doing to keep my energy up. 

- Consuming much loose-leaf tea - with hot water, of course, and the leaves are properly confined in a tea ball. Well, the bigger pieces are anyway. I've experienced a lot of dregs floating around because someone lost our fine-screen tea ball. 

Oh most despicable creature...

- Listening to the Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack over and over and OVER again. No idea why, since it has no bearing or similarity WHATEVER to what I am writing. But it is fun to hop around the kitchen to the barroom song while I take my tea-replenishing breaks and such. 

- Frequent bathroom breaks. (This has absolutely nothing to do with keeping up my creative output, but is merely an unfortunate result of consuming the aforementioned quantities of loose-leaf tea)

- Traveling down to Valparaiso University in Indiana to see my best cousin and make up a member of the audience for the play she had a hand in writing and a foot in acting. (I realize that this is not something that's going to help everyone)

- Keeping a good thought regarding the continuation of this most interesting plot. Unfortunately, when the end is what you're most looking forward to writing, it does have a sort of rushing effect on what you're currently working on. 

Must...not...overlook...important...details...

And that's all I have for today, folks! 

See you when I next come up for air.

P.S. Is it just me or as JocelynRose dropped off the face of the earth? I shall have to poke her and tell her that you all told me to do it. 

=D

NaNoWriMo Day 4 - Crises Encountered (hopefully averted)

I have often wondered, truly wondered, if I ever struck anyone as sheerly crazy. 

I know I tend to be capricious - often detrimentally so - but I generally am a very cautious person when it comes to absolutely life-changing decisions.

Well, sort of.

I was solidly set today on my Nano word count. I finished day four on a solid 7284 - slated to finish on November 27th and all that good stuff. 

Until I finished my allotted words for the day and realized that I was absolutely sick and tired of Nano already and really, really dreading the entry tomorrow. 

All my planning and careful character design and every bit of work I put into my novel before November 1st came around was tying me up, tangling me in and throwing me off. I was so sick of these characters and the plot and all the mess that I wasn't enjoying.

At all.

The plot I had wasn't conducive to writing a novel in a month. It was character-driven and the characters needed more time to open up their emotions and their lives than I could give in a word-count rush. 

I felt like I was wasting a perfectly good idea. I felt like I was butchering the lives of people who were - before this began - very, very dear to me. I felt as if I would reach the end of the month, fully ahead in everything, not even winded, and realized that I didn't care to keep 40,000 of the 50,000 words I had written. 

And since I hate editing and knew that I would only rewrite the story again at some point, basically ditching a month's worth of work, I decided that the effort was a senseless waste of time. 

To whit, I needed to either give up NaNo entirely or approach it in a different fashion.

I've currently decided that I'm going to start over armed only with a vague idea that I thought up in the car on the way to the mall. Basically a hazy and uninformed sentence about a perfectly ordinary girl stepping into a forest. 

At this point, I'm not sure if I'll succeed. I'm not a writer who plunges in madly without a clear idea of where I'm headed. And yet, here I go. I must write at least 1900 words a day to safely meet my goal and I intend to make full use of my curse for maundering and just write what I like and not care what happens tomorrow. 

Free at last - just glad this occurred on day 4 and not day 24.  

I may need that chocolate and caffeine now.

And maybe some key covers...

I hope to be able to see the letters on them when I'm finished with this venture. 

Until next time - if I survive this craziness,

NaNoWriMo - Day 2

Hello all, Jamie here!

I meant to post yesterday, but ran into other things that occupied my time most dreadfully (like opening a surprise NaNo box from a dear friend and watching The Avengers). I tell you, I was completely overwhelmed by highly important duties. 

At any rate, the name of the game on Day 1 was over preparation. 

I had four scenes planned out that I intended to cover, but soon found that I was maxing out the 1700 words I made my goal to reach each day on the first scene. 

Oookaay...

New plan of attack! At least I've got my subjects plotted out for the week instead of three days...

Day 2:

I just finished poking out my words for the day. I'm really frustrated watching the words come and not strictly controlling quality over quantity. I am very much annoyed with seeing how unoriginal my paragraph openings are when I don't give myself much time for reflection. However, my inner editor's bark is much worse than his bite and so long as I keep up a constant stream of words and strictly keep my eyes away from what's above the line I'm typing, he is kept at bay.

But I keep reminding myself that everything can be fixed later (at least, I hope it can without rewriting the entire, blasted thing) and plow on ahead. 

Here's a quote I found to be eerily appropriate for this venture into the unknown to share with you fellow writers:

"Sometimes you just have to take the leap and build your wings on the way down."

Kobi Yamada

Oh! And I figured out how to center that word-count widget too! I don't know if anyone is really interested in following my progress, but it's there if you want to toss a glance now and then. 

Until I post again (and if my fingers or keys aren't worn off)!