The Crzyness Writer

Well

2007-03-07T21:24:00.000-05:00

It's come to my attention that my family have located this blog.

Not necessarily a bad thing, it's not as though I've much to hide from them.

Nevertheless, this blog was set up as something where I could talk about whatever without worrying about people that knew me in real life reading it.

This blog will be migrating, everyone who needs to know will know.

Do svedanya

EDIT: you know what? fuck that.

As mentioned above, I've got nothing to hide.

and if they've already read what I wrote, then it's not as though class-skipping will come as a surprise to them if/when I write about it in the future.

It's very strange...

2007-02-27T22:04:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago, I wandered over to yahoo! answers because I thought it might be interesting (or at least amusing). And to some degree, it was. The questions that some people ask there, in any and all of the categories, are quite frequently bizarre. Anyway, I felt out of my depth commenting or answering for most of the sections, so I gravitated towards the one on education. After all, I'm a student and so that's something that I should know a thing or two about.

A lot of people there seem to be high school kids posting their homework problems/essays there with the expectation that someone is going to do them for them. That's a whole different story, and one that I'm not in the mood to talk about today. But some people genuinely seem to want help understanding things. I was in correspondence with one of those people today. It was over a math concept that I find quite simple, and was happy to explain it to this girl over the course of several emails. I think, in the end, that she finally got it.

I felt good for having helped her. I felt like I'd done a good deed for the day. It's not something that I would usually say about myself, but I've come to realize, that I like to help people. Not in a community service, go and pick up trash way. But educationally. I like to be able to explain things and see that they get it. To see that I've helped. I've never really thought about that before. But if that's true about me, then Teach for America looks like a great post-grad opportunity for me. Who knows, maybe I'll even be a teacher (my family would sure get a laugh out of that).

And the Long Night Begins

2007-02-22T00:10:00.000-05:00

So I've got two midterms tomorrow afternoon. One in International Security, and the other in Russian Literature. Neither of which I'm ready for. I didn't happen to make it to most of the Lit classes, and so I'm at present re-reading the books (which is what I'll spend most of the night doing) in the hope that I'll be able to put together sensible answers for tomorrow's exam. The International Security one I'm less worried about; I've paid attention and can sum up the most important concepts. The only thing that's going to be an issue is the time constraints (3 essays in an hour). But I write pretty fast, so here's to hoping that I'll manage a pass in both of them. I deserve it after that 43/100 in my cognitive neuroscience exam (thank god it's best 2 out of 3 exams!).

But aside from that, I'm quite proud of myself in the getting-things-done realm. I managed to talk to the undergrad advisor in the political science department, and as soon as I find an advisor, I'm set for the major. And amazing...I have weeks to go before it actually had to be done! And, just a few minutes ago, I finished my housing application for next year. Fingers crossed I get a room and don't have to fuck around with off-campus housing.

I'm just hoping I don't fall prey to the I'll-just-nap-for-10-minutes syndrome that tends to get me so very well at about dawn whenever I try to pull an all-nighter.

At least I don't have classes tomorrow, so I can just come home from the midterms and crash for the next day or so (though I do have to be up for work at 10...blech)

Content

2007-02-19T20:36:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling strangely content today, the fact that I skipped both my classes today notwithstanding.

Over the weekend, I've got myself caught up in my International Security class, Comparative Politics, and spent all of last night catching up on a week and a half of Russian homework. Yeah, I'm ignoring my Russian Lit midterm this Thursday, but I want to just bask in my content-ness right now.

I get this feeling when I'm on top of everything (or at least just about so). It's not quite happiness, but it's more than just a good feeling. It feels like I know what I'm doing, that I've got control of my life, and that I'm not going hellbent towards self-destruction. It's like I'm super-calm and content, and it's a wonderful feeling. It's a shame I don't feel it as often as I should, because I'm lazy and I procrastinate far more than is good for me.

But for now, I'm just going to sit in this warm glow, do my Russian homework and read the chapter for Cognitive Neuroscience. Yeah, that sounds really good.

Lethargy

2007-02-15T22:37:00.000-05:00

So I was out until about 1am last night (or this morning, whatever). I set my alarm clock for 8 so that I can do my homework for today before class starts at 10:30. Alarm goes off at 8, I distinctly remember this. I fumble with my phone (my alarm's on my phone) and I vaguely recall having distinct difficulty resetting the alarm for half-past 8.

Clearly, I was incapable of it.

I woke up at 12:15.

That meant I missed Cognitive Neuroscience and the beginning of Russian. I decided that I'd call Russian quits and just go to my afternoon classes.

Couldn't quite work up the enthusiasm for that, either. So, I didn't go. I'll regret it when my Lit midterm rolls around next week, but for now I'm good.

Anyhow, that's only part of the lethargy problem, though quite arguably the part that needs to be dealt with most urgently. This not bothering to go to class thing is going to bite me in the ass, and I know it.

So I've not done any writing for days. Weeks, really. I didn't last week because last week was the week from hell, but I've no such excuse this weekend.

I'm thinking about calling this nanowriye thing quits. I want to focus on the novel-from-hell, recently retitled the mortal gods, and run it through the not-insignificant edit that it definitely needs. The whole second half needs to be re-written because it all stems from a stupid premise that I rethought to something a bit more sensible. And when I've done that, I want to focus on sending out queries.

It's one of my goals to have an agent by the end of the year.
I've still got 10 months.

However, in mildly humorous news (to me, at least) the paper from hell that I had to write last week, I got back yesterday with an A-. Considering the half-assed job I did of it, I'm frankly stunned, amazed, and amused. Of course, it will help when I flunk the midterm next week.

Snowday?

2007-02-14T10:04:00.000-05:00

Firstly, let me assure you that I live in a large city (Philadelphia). I live in a large city that typically does get snow every year. So, one would assume that in said large city, with lots of people, that if this city gets snow every year, that there would be, y'know, plans for what to do when said snow came.

We got about 3 inches over the course of yesterday/last night. Towards the early morning, it started sleeting, so there's a nice layer of ice on top of the snow. But, as I said, we get that about every year, at least once. Yeah, it's kinda late this year, but it's still winter.

So I was out at about 11 last night, it was yucky, the roads were unplowed, etc. I looked around and thought, thank god it won't be like that tomorrow. They've got all night to plow the roads and salt them, and clear off the sidewalks, and all those nice things that makes the lives of both drivers and pedestrians a hell of a lot easier.

I wake up this morning and look outside. I don't have a street view, instead I have the view of the little courtyard towards the inside of the building. But when I see snow there, I'm not bothered. I couldn't imagine that clearing off the courtyard where no one goes could ever be much of a priority. Fair enough.

Then I check my sibs' school page; they have a snowday. I call home to moan about the fact that they're getting the day off and I'm not. Mom says that Dad (who works in the city) has decided not to come in, and that she's going to work from home as well. She asks me what the roads are like, obviously I can't tell her as I've not yet ventured outside. But I assume that they've been plowed and call my dad a sissy for not wanting to come in.

My first class this morning was at 9, and so, all wrapped up, I head outside. And what do I see?

Snow.

No sidewalk. No roads.

Snow.

NOTHING WAS PLOWED.

As of right now (10:00), the roads are still not plowed.

I'm sincerely considering skipping the rest of my classes today as it would clearly be hazardous to my health to venture outside to go through icy snow that no one could think to clear off for the sake of the fucking students.

Grrr...I'm just annoyed by the stupidity of it all. We get snow EVERY year. Why aren't we prepared for it?

Bad Logic?

2007-02-13T13:04:00.000-05:00

Well, I just got back my second snail-mail query letter.

Clearly, the logic that I was using was faulty. Another form rejection.

Ah well.

I'm looking at this on a more positive note: now that I'm not worrying about my query floating around on the streets of NYC, I can focus on giving the piece the edit that it sorely needs that would change it from what the queries I sent out said that it looked like.

Of course, it may just be that my query letter/synopsis sucks. Which is entirely possible. Also more than possible is that, y'know, the writing sucks.

Ah well.

Goal for now is to get this piece through its new edits, and have it ready to be sent out again by the end of March, hopefully this time in a round of submissions rather than one at a time (that way, I can get a bunch of rejections in a row!)

Way Behind

2007-02-09T13:37:00.000-05:00

That seems to be the motto of my life, as of late.

Comparative Politics: Actually not behind in this one
International Security: I've got about 450 pages to read by Wednesday
Cognitive Neuroscience: I haven't even started reading the 6 chapters yet
Russian Literature: I didn't read the last book (250 pgs) and I haven't started reading this one yet (300 pgs)
Russian: Never not behind in this class.

And then, writing. According to my nifty Excel spreadsheet, on the 9th of February, I should be at 220,000 words. Or, in more concrete terms, I should be finishing my second novel today. I'm at 128,688 words. Or, in more concrete terms, I've finished one (at 118,000 words), and I'm 10,000 words into the second.

And of course, there's the fact that the first one of these novels should be getting edited right now, because it's the novel-from-hell and that's all that I ever do with it. Write, edit, re-write, and continue. Except I'm happy with it this re-write, or happier than I've been with any of its gazillion predecessors. I even intended to read it all the way through last night, and make notes to myself about where to start editing. And then I made the mistake of...well, sleeping for 14 hours.

I really want to work on my writing this weekend. But, as listed above, my schoolwork has fallen just as far behind. So, guess it's time for Kate to crack the books.

Grah

2007-02-08T02:27:00.001-05:00

Who gives a shit about neuroanatomy anyway?

*brain explodes*

A Break

2007-02-07T10:19:00.000-05:00

Funny that I talk about a break in the middle of midterms. I should actually be doing some last-minute cramming for my comparative politics exam that starts in 40 minutes. But after going to the recitation this morning, I think I know what I'm doing, so instead, I'm going to waste my time productively. Heh.

Anyway, I've not done any writing since Sunday, I think. We're now on Wednesday (Gah! are we really?) and so that's 3 and counting days without writing. Of course, knowing how far behind I was even on Sunday (about 75000 words, I think), I'm getting progressively more and more behind with each day that I decide to put my college education over enjoying myself and writing. (And, for the record, I AM enjoying what I've written of the second novel. Not a fucking clue where it's going, but that's half the fun).

I think that it might be the first genuinely sensible decision I've made in ages.

See, I'm the kind of person that blows off classes on a whim because I'm really in more of a writing mood than a going-to-class mood. I confess that I've done it a couple times already this semester. But when it came to Monday night and I'd realized that I'd not started studying for either of my 2 midterms, nor had I started on the 5 page paper due Tuesday, that it might be a good idea to close down Word for a couple days and try and focus on something that my parents might care a bit more about.

Yeah, it'll put me about 100k words behind. Yeah, that's even less of a fun number to make up between now and the rest of the year. Yeah, that's a FULL NOVEL behind schedule. Yeah.

But I might just pass my midterms if I do it this way.

Paper from Hell!!!

2007-02-06T10:41:00.000-05:00

Well, my paper is due in 3 hours and 20 minutes.

The good news? It's written

The bad news? It's so puke-worthy that I'm almost ashamed to hand it in.

I'm going over it now, after a nice long nap (8 hours worth...oops) and I'm just hoping that I can salvage some of it before 2 comes around. Not to mention that I'm already skipping a class just so that I can rewrite it right now, and I have Russian in an hour, and I really shouldn't skip that (well, I shouldn't be skipping neuroscience either, but that's another story. If I fail THAT midterm, in that class, it's best out of 3 exams, so not too many worries.

I've never been as unready as this to hand a paper in, and I hate the way it feels. I hate the fact that I procrastinated until tonight to do it, and now I've got a piece of crap to hand in.

Much need time management skills, me thinks.

Comfort Objects

2007-02-04T22:41:00.000-05:00

No, this isn't even slightly about writing, not really.

I've got a hell of a week coming up, a paper and two midterms, tuesday, wednesday, thursday. None of which I've started yet, and it's now 10:42. I promised myself I'd get a bunch of things done this weekend. Instead, I think I slept for about 90% of it. It seems these days I can just lie down in bed and I'm right off to sleep. No idea why, and it's getting rather irritating. I'm used to being able to get by on very little sleep.

I've also got a data entry job for $8/hr with my psychology department, 6 hours a week. Boring, but it's better than working in that pizza place like I did last summer.

Then there's all the pressures that are going to hit me in the near future. Getting a room for next year. Declaring a major. Passing all my classes. Finding a summer job. Figuring out what the fuck I want to do with my life, because I don't think that I'll be able to live off my writing straight out of college barring a miracle (and for the record, I don't believe in miracles).

I'm not very good with stress, and I never have been. I'm a perfectionist to the core, and I take on more work than I can handle. It doesn't help that I'm also a procrastinator, because that just makes me put ALL my shit off till the very last second, and then I work myself into a nervous fit. And at that point, the slightest thing anyone says/does can send me into tears. I thrive under pressure, but best not come near me when a deadline is approaching. And I have the hugest fear of rejection in the world. When I applied to colleges, all but one of them that I applied to, I was 99% sure that with my grades, I'd get in. And, surprise surprise, I got into them. I don't date much, because I'm a loner and because I'm afraid that I'll get dumped. I learned about this last semester, it's called avoidant personality disorder. While I don't think I could actually be diagnosed with it (along with at least two other personality disorders I'm not quite clinical in...but no one's perfect, right?), I know that it does put rather a damper on my life.

Anyway, when things get stressful and pressured and I'm just in an all-around shitty/sad/miserable mood, I have one movie that I'll watch over and over again. It's called Love Actually, and it's not like other movies that I tend to watch. But I don't know, for some reason, it restores my faith in humanity (and Hugh Grant is really cute).

I don't eat lots when I'm stressed, I don't go out and do stupid things (fear of rejection, remember), I just sit here and feel vaguely sorry for myself, until I turn on the movie.

And, despite the fact that I have a 5-page paper due on Tuesday, that is exactly what I'm going to do right now.

1 down, 19 to go!

2007-02-01T23:32:00.000-05:00

Well, as of five minutes ago, I just finished the first of my WriYe novels. It clocked in at 135,202 words, but as some of it was written before January started, I'm only at a total yearly word count of a bit over 118,000. Still impressive, I suppose. Except for the fact that I'm supposed to be at something like 180,000 words and should have made this post regarding the finishing of the first one about eleven days ago. Ah well, at least it GOT finished, and I haven't given up hope yet. There's still time for me to catch up. Plenty of time. And as I'm not nearly as serious (or as emotionally committed) to any of the rest of them, maybe they'll go a bit faster as I don't feel as though every word is right for the story.

Coming up with an ending for this one was hard. I knew where I wanted it to end, but I couldn't quite get it there. So that's going to mean some revising later on.

The next story should be fun. It's about a loser who can't wait for the apocalypse because he thinks that when the apocalypse comes, that's when all of his special "talents" (like...erm...drug dealing) will make him an awesome leader. Only he's terribly, terribly wrong. Like I said, fun stuff (*grin*)

Ah Well

2007-01-29T17:41:00.001-05:00

So I just got the response from my snail-mail query from a while back. Form rejection.

Ah well.

However, I am not to be daunted. Tomorrow, I shall be sending out my next rejection...I mean...my next submission (heh)

I even have some imaginary logic to this next one. However, I am only going to share that logic if it proves out to be right. No need to look like an ass by claiming I know what I'm doing right now, after all.

Nanowriye Update

2007-01-21T10:44:00.000-05:00

Well, as of this instant, I am 51,978 words behind where I should be. This is a big number. It is a very badly big number. However, I have worked out that if I write 7000 words/day from now on, then I'll catch up on March 12th. If I write 8000 words/day, then I'll catch up on February 14th.

However, what I think this illustrates to me is that once I stick to schedule, I really do need to stick to it. If I fall behind my schedule, then I slowly, slowly, lose morale, and that makes it even harder to get the requisite desire to catch up to where I should be. It's maddening, but I really do need to keep up with my writing, because I really do want to come out of this with some stuff that can be reworked in coming years to be viable send-out-to-agent novels.

Still heard nothing back on the query. Then again, we're not at 2 weeks yet. This past Friday, when I was sitting in my dorm room much of the day (I don't have Friday classes), I think I checked my mail 5 times, each time telling myself that I hadn't hit the 2-week mark yet and that I was being stupid. I also had a dream the other night, a very strange one. I dreamed that I dreamed that I dreamed that I got a positive response and told my mother about it.

I think this query letter thing is really starting to mess with my head.

the waiting game

2007-01-11T21:34:00.000-05:00

I did something the other day that I've never done before. I don't regret it, I don't think it was a mistake...I'm just anxious as hell.

That's right. I sent in a query via snail-mail. I did the e-query thing last summer (uniform rejections). Some of them were quite speedy, the others took a little time. But there was somehow something less daunting about them. I don't know exactly why; maybe it's because an email is somehow inherently less daunting than that envelope waiting in the mailbox.

Anyway, I did it on Tuesday, and I have 2-3 weeks to wait, so I should find out before the end of the month. My expectations are not terribly high, but I can't give up hope. I know that when I see my shiny SASE sitting in my mailbox, I'll just leave it on my desk, unopened, for at least an hour or two, dreading what it might contain and hoping - hoping so much - that my fears will be put to rest.

Of course, there's the fear that I a) addressed the envelope wrong b) did something else stupid to make myself look like a moron c) am laughed at for being said moron....but at least I'll not know about these things, I'll just get a nice form-rejection (which I'm used to). I can pretend that it's for a simple and non-stupid reason, like....my writing sux.

If I were religious, I'd pray. As I'm not, I'll just cross fingers and toes (though they'll likely be quite cramped from staying like that for 2-3 weeks + the 2-3 weeks if (miraculously) I get asked to send chapters + the however long if (even more miraculously) I get asked to send the whole thing).

But I'm excited too. How could I not be? This feels somehow more real than the e-mail queries...stealing the manila envelopes from parent's house before coming back to school, buying stamps and #10 envelopes, printing all that stuff out on my printer, actually posting it...made me feel like a big-grown-up writer! (lol)

Oh, and as for nanowriye...yeah. 24,000 words out of about 50,000 that I should be at now (I think).

Oh dear.

Dies

2007-01-08T10:33:00.000-05:00

Got the book today.

The one with my name on it.

I keep staring at it, like it's some real accomplishment.

If nothing else, it's incentive.

But I'm not thinking about incentive right. I'm thinking about how incredible it looks sitting here on my desk...something that I wrote that looks like a book.

*dies*

End of Week 1

2007-01-08T01:43:00.000-05:00

Where I am: 25,518
Where I should be: 40,000 (as of Jan 8)

Damn.

Incidentally, classes start tomorrow, and I'm sitting up at 1:43 in the morning, because I'm on an awful sleep schedule and so I'm sure that I'll miss at least one of my two classes tomorrow.

What a wonderful start for the new semester!

Halfway through Week 1

2007-01-06T02:13:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm only 11k words behind now.

That sounds so awful, I just want to curl up in a ball.

But I wrote 7k words today. That's good.

In order to get back on track, I skipped the part of the story that was giving me absolute hell and moved on to a bit that I thought would be easier to write. And it was. With me being so far behind, I really need easy writing right now.

I'm really hoping to catch up this weekend. Classes start on Monday, and I'd like to be caught up so that I'm not stressing myself about writing as well as new classes. Of course, if I do a NaNoWriDay next weekend, that could solve the problem once and for all.

I'm become a more regular reader of Miss Snark's blog (see link at side) and it just keeps planting this nagging little thought in my head that I should try to get published. And yes, I need a written, edited, GOOD story before I can do that. But fuck, I've been working on this stupid fucking story for six years.

I get this feeling every once in a while, usually accompanied by the feeling that I'm just not good enough and that I'll never get published, ever.

Then I tell myself that I'm not yet twenty. And I tell myself that I've submitted to about ten agents, total. And so I tell myself I'm being an idiot.

The thing is, though, that I can't not write. So even if I never, ever get published, I don't really think I'll ever stop writing.

Are we surprised?

2007-01-02T18:43:00.000-05:00

So, we're at 6:44 p.m. of day 2 of nanowriye 2007.

How many words has Kate written?

0.

That's right. Not a one.

And yet I'm sitting here writing a blog entry rather than writing.

Can I convince myself to write? I hope so. I'm going in with my dad tomorrow to work, and so I'm probably not going to get much writing done.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I don't need to be behind quite this early!!

And it has begun!

2007-01-01T10:37:00.000-05:00

Well, it's half-past ten on the first day of the new year, and I've yet to write a single word. I will, though, once I'm done writing this post. Honest.

I will not get behind on the very first day of NaNoWriYe. I refuse.

New Year

2006-12-31T18:51:00.000-05:00

Well, we've got about 5 hours to go before the New Year. Unlike nano, though, I won't be starting at midnight. First of all, I'll likely be drunk (and writing drunk is not a good proposition for me), and second, I promised my sister that I'd watch the south park movie with her at midnight (or 1, I forget which). It's a tradition, so I can hardly abandon it.

Tomorrow's also a family day, and I'm supposed to be meeting with my best friend and possibly spending the night, so I foresee getting behind on the very first day. I'm sure that'll be a splendid predictor of the rest of the year.

Anyway, Happy New Year to everyone.

Argh...the ideas! the ideas!

2006-12-30T22:12:00.000-05:00

So I just finished watching a show on Nostradamus on the history channel (my favorite channel...yeah, I'm a dork).

And then I came downstairs and now I'm looking through the quatrains of his predictions, and it occurred to me what great story-starters they'd be. I mean, really, they would be.

And I'd do it, too. Just get a random number generator to pick one of the 942, and off you go.

If only I weren't doing nanowriye.

I'm still tempted though.

Reeeeeeeeally tempted.

(and I'm adding the linky to the side, in case I lose it)

Frustration

2006-12-29T03:31:00.000-05:00

So, the original plan was to write the approx 120k word draft of a mortal god before New Years and then set out on the 20 novels of the 2007 year.

Plans suck.
I'm soo bad at them.

So I was sitting there yesterday with 20k words. I think to myself that if there's 100k to go, I might as well make that Book 1 of the new year. That means not touching it until January 1 and then going on my already-decided 5k daily pace. Shouldn't be a biggie, 'specially as I've hardly touched it since coming home for Christmas.

Now, of course, that I've made this decision, what's the only thing I want to do? That's right: write the damn thing. Stupid writing.

I also have 6 other story ideas that I'm hoping last out 100k words. I'll also need to think of a few more, or I'll run out pretty quickly.

And it's 3 something in the morning. I should be in bed. Not worrying about writing, not worrying about my stupid semester grades, not posting on the blog. In bed. Sleeping.

Epiphany!

2006-12-24T23:15:00.000-05:00

So I was forcing myself to write last night, just because I'm of the firm belief that if I sit there thinking about how much I don't want to write that nothing will ever get written. I don't personally happen to believe in writer's block - I think that you can write through it and revise later. (as long as the writer's block isn't happening in the editing stage, of course). Anyway, I was writing away, and thinking to myself about the comments that Miss Snark made (that Russian bad guys are way too cliche) and so I thought that maybe I should change it.

Basic rundown - Russian guy is the kinda good/kinda bad guy, and I've got an American guy that's supposed to be his counterpart, who's supposed to be a good-ish guy.

So I've decided, on a spur of the moment, to switch those roles around, and now the Americans are the kinda good/kinda bad, and the Russian is the counterpart.

Of course, that's no doubt cliche in it's own way, but it felt really right to do it. I only thought about it for a few minutes before I began to change the names and places, and I wrote 4k words today. I know that I'm going to have to rewrite everything I've written because it's both clunky and strange now that I've switched the setting from Moscow to Washington. But I'm not going to stop the flow now by going back to rewrite, and instead I'm just going to plunge on ahead and see what it looks like at the end. The only issue is that nanowriye starts in just a few days, and I'd really rather have this finished, as I want my nanowriye novels to be completely separate from this project. But we'll see how that goes.

I'm just glad that I've had this epiphany, and that I have a whole new direction to go in. (Even if it does mean I have to do research on Canada to make my plot work. Argh, research!)

(Christmas in about 40 minutes!)

Season's Greetings!

2006-12-23T21:14:00.000-05:00

Well, it's nearly Christmas Eve, and I'm sitting at home on the dial-up connection (though we're getting high-speed on the 27th, I think).

I've rewritten an outline for a mortal god and I'm 2500 words into it so far, but I can't quite motivate myself to write any more. I think I'll write some more tonight, but I'm having one of my spells where I'm convinced that I'll never be a published author. Unfortunately, these spells can last months, and so I'm hoping that with nanowriye starting in a week, I can work myself out of it.

I'm hoping to finish this draft by New Year's, but I realize how unlikely it is. Maybe it'll just sit docilely on my hard drive until the end of the year (if the stupid f%$king laptop lasts that long) and then I can work on it again.

I haven't quite given up the dream of being published before I graduate, but it's looking more and more unrealistic as time goes on.

In any case, happy holidays to all!

Squee!

2006-12-19T13:26:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm uber-excited. Why? See, lulu.com does a promotional deal for nanowrimo winners, and you can get one free copy of your book. It doesn't even have to made visible to the public, so it's not giving up first rights. What it means is that in a few weeks, I'll have a book delivered to me, that has my name on it as the author.

Yeah, I know it's not quite the real thing. It's not gone through the hell of revision and all that (in fact, it's not been edited at all. Then again, it's just a copy for me to put on my desk and squee at all day...which I definitely will), but it's going to give me incentive to push for getting it done for real, getting it really, honestly, truly published.

Best. Christmas. Present. Ever.

*squee*

When is it time to just...stop?

2006-12-16T08:21:00.000-05:00

As mentioned in my editing post, I have the same plot-line/characters that I've been working on for 6 years. Once my hook was sent into Miss Snark and I received her comments, I rewrote the hook (for my own personal satisfaction) and have since decided that the new hook means a complete rewrite of the prequel one.

Is it time for me to stop trying to perfect this story line? Should I simply put all of it in a folder and leave it alone for a few years, and work on something else in the meantime? Or should I keep torturing myself thusly and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting? Or is this just some inner nervousness - I never want the story to be finished, so I make ways for it to not be? Should I suck it up and just start trying to get the damn thing published?

Well, I don't know the answer to any of the above questions. I haven't yet decided whether to rewrite the prequel before the New Year, or to make it the first novel of Nanowriye. I just feel as though I'm not getting anywhere, that I'm not making progress at all. One draft seems just as shitty as the last when a new idea comes in.

Maybe I'm just grouchy this morning.

hyperventilates

2006-12-15T20:02:00.000-05:00

Submitted to the crapometer.

Now the waiting begins.

How is it that that feels worse , the anticipation of it?

Argh.

You know, I still haven't slept yet. I'm going on 34 hours now, but I actually feel pretty good.

-EDIT-

And yes, I stayed awake to get the results, because I couldn't have slept even if I'd wanted to. That kind of jittery adrenaline (and I've not even had any extra caffeine), means that at close to the 37 hour mark, I still feel plenty awake.

Anyway, what was the verdict?

Well, like every other piece so far, no pages for me. I got some tips on what was wrong with it, and when I rewrite for the queries, I know what to do with it.

I guess I do feel kinda deflated, but at least I didn't get that it was complete crap. So that's something.

Now, sleep?

Coffee and Exams and Writing and Such

2006-12-15T10:01:00.000-05:00

I'm so high on caffeine I'm practically shaking right now as I type this, and I've been awake for 24 hours, studying for my psych final, which I just got home from. It's a 2-hour final, 66 multiple choice questions, and I finished it in just under half an hour. Why? Cuz it's on personality disorders, which frankly interest the hell out of me, and so I knew it, even though I'd not slept.

I think I'm going to go to sleep now, because sooner or later I'm just going to go SPLAT and I'd rather be in bed when that happens.

Of course, there's the nagging little bit of me that wants to sit here and gnaw away at my hook for the crapometer for the next 10 hours, which would be hugely unhealthy and ridiculously unproductive because who can work when they've not actually slept?

Not sleeping is good for some things, though. I came up with the most utterly fantabulous first line for my novel at about three this morning. What is this sparkling gem of caffeine and sleep-deprived brilliance? "You know, the Gestapo went out of fashion ages ago."

Amused me, anyway. We'll see what I think about it when I wake up.

Partly terrified of the thought that I'll somehow manage to sleep the next day and a half and miss the crapometer entirely, which would suck.

And I'm rambling now. Time for Kate to clear off the bed and go to sleep.

Editing

2006-12-14T19:53:00.000-05:00

I have this novel. I've been working on it for 6 years, give or take. The first version was a 300k word monstrosity that even I can't bear to look back on. But I was certain that it was going to make me millions. Indeed, I clearly remember telling a summer camp counselor at the time that I'd be a millionaire by the time I was 20. Oh dear, I'm 19 now, and riches sure as hell ain't running my way.

So, anyhow, I realized that this book was a. completely unpublishable because of the length and b. just bad. I decide that rewriting it would probably be my best bet. Of course, I'm an awful procrastinator, and I'd just started college, so anything could justifiably be put ahead of putting my story through the wringer. Consequently, it lay untouched for the better part of a year, probably. Around the spring of this year, I discovered that somewhere in the past 18 years, I've picked up a fast typing speed. So I decided to put it to good use, and put out another draft of my novel in a bit under a month. That one came to about 125k words, I believe. I was really psyched about it, and thought it was the best thing ever.

I gave it something of an edit and then decided it was time for Kate to find an agent. So off flew the queries. They were all email queries because it was over the summer and I was at home, and I didn't want my parents giving me funny looks when I asked them to buy envelopes and stamps and stuff (me not having a license). Checking back on the records I emailed out 9 queries and got back 5 form responses. The rest never replied, so I can make my own assumptions there. It was a bad query letter, it was remarkably 'form-like', in that I didn't do much to alter it between one agent and another, and the book wasn't ready in the first place. It had hardly been edited at all, and I admit that, freely.

In condensing down my 300k monster to something that stood a chance, I cut out a lot of characters and a lot of subplots. What was left was incredibly boring, and so I have come to the realization that I need a happy medium. This does not make ME terribly happy, but that's another story.

Of course, there's also the PREQUEL to this novel, that I've written and that I think is quite a bit more sellable than the original.

The goal is to edit this prequel of mine, a mortal god, in the spring and hopefully have it ready by the summer to get rejections. But at the rate I'm going (read - utterly untouched), it's going to be quite a bit longer.

Almost anything's more fun than looking back over your darling and realizing just how much fucking work it needs.

Nanowriye

2006-12-13T14:03:00.000-05:00

So, as well as trying to find an agent for my book in 2007, I've also decided that it would be a good idea for me to continue writing, becuase the fact is, that maybe I won't be able to sell my first book. In that case, I need to at least be working on something else that could potentially be it. Thus, NaNoWriYe - National Novel Writing Year. I think there's a website for it, but I can't be bothered to find it at the moment.

What kind of goal have I set for myself? Well, I already know that my next Nano goal is 300k words, so that's at least 300k. But I know that writing 5000 words a day is not a particulary difficult task for me - I can do it in about 2 hours. So I decided to set my goal at a rather ambitious 2 million words. That's just 5000 words a day January-October, 10k words a day in November, and 6k words in December, with one day off somewhere in the year. That seems like a decent enough plan to me, without me actually knowing what much of my next year is going to look like.

Of course, then I have to sit back and realize that 2 million words is 20 100k rought drafts. That's 20 novels. And that's far scarier to think about than just plain old 2 million words. Do I have 20 different ideas in my head that I can write to 100k?

Well, we'll see, won't we?

Lazy Bitch

2006-12-10T12:25:00.000-05:00

I'm lying in bed with my laptop, and I've just realized that the music stopped playing and I'm still wearing my headphones.

There's a gazillion things to be done.

On the educational side (which I can't afford to neglect), papers to write and exams to study for

On the writing side, a novel to edit, a stupidgoddamnedhook to deal with by Friday for the crapometer, and by midnight, I have to have a full critique on a 200-page book that I said I'd edit for another nanowrimo-er. Fortunately, I've read it all the way through, so it'll only take about four hours instead of ten if I want to give a proper critique (and I really do).

And you know what I'm doing?
That's right. Lying in bed with my laptop.
Doing none of these things.
Instead, I'm playng Dicewars, a hugely fun and timewasting game.

I'm probably going to do this for at least another hour, despite me telling myself that I need to do some work. Then I'll stay up all night working. Even though I work better at night, that's still not really a great schedule to get myself on.

At least I've done all my Christmas shopping.

Done with School

2006-12-08T14:44:00.000-05:00

Well, today was the last day of classes. I survived another semester. Almost, anyway. I still have 2 exams and 2 papers, by the 20th. After that, though, I'm free until January 8. Except for the fact that I may have a job over winter break. In which case, my writing will likely get neglected again.

I can sit down and force myself to write every day, no problem. I'm not saying that the quality of it is very good. Most of it's pretty crappy, to be honest. But first drafts are supposed to be, which is something that took me a long time to learn. I can write crap, because I know that it'll all get edited into something that doesn't resemble verbal vomit.

Therein lies the problem, though. If I tell myself that I have to edit a part of it everyday, or that I have to sit down for half an hour, or an hour, and edit...I'll never get it done. It's not that I don't think my stuff needs a good hard edit, because I guarantee that it does. I've got a couple glaring plot inconsistencies in my draft, which has adopted a new title "a mortal god", which I reeaaally like. But the plot inconsistencies need to be worked out. I've also got a list of new scenes which I intended to put in the first time, but they never got in.

Oh, and I did something silly. I sent off a query letter, because I was proud of my hook. Of course, the danger is if they like it and want to see the first couple of chapters. Fortunately, the first couple chapters are (I think) some of the best in the book, so hopefully IF the agent likes the query then I'll have enough time to put the thing through a proper edit. I've always worked better under pressure, and yes I KNOW this is a bad idea. But I console myself with the thought that I sent out 11 (something like that) queries over the summer, and got a uniformly negative response. So maybe this agent will hate it as well. Hurrah.

Hooks

2006-12-05T12:09:00.000-05:00

Blech.

I'm exhausted, should be studying and/or writing one of my gazillion papers due (okay, okay, there are only 2 of them, and only one of those is due this week). What am I doing instead? I'm busy trying to come up with a decent hook for my novel.

Why now?

Well, because of Miss Snark's Crapometer contest (see link at the side for her blog). Basically, by December 15, at 8pm EST, anyone can send a 250 word or less "hook", and she will give her snarky opinion on it. Now, my skin's not the toughest in the world, but I'm pretty convinced I have a good novel. So I'm trying to come up with something half-decent...which probably is not the most feasible thing when my head is pounding and my eyes are sore and keep closing every fifteen seconds.

Regardless, I'm working on it now because I know that if I work on something practical and sensible now, I'll just have to redo it. Redoing, though, is part of the editing process, and so there's no harm writing while in this state!

And that's if I don't chicken out and not send it in. But probably, I will.

A New Month

2006-12-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

It's going to be a busy month for me. I promised myself that I was going to get a start on editing my novel, with the hope to have it edited by mid-January, so that I can start putting the finishing touches on it and have it ready to send out to agents by the spring. Of course, we'll have to see if that actually happens, or if I procrastinate my way through the month, as I'm so good at.

Of course, I do have some excuse. Classes end next Friday, and I've got 2 exams and a 12 page paper due by then, and then another 2 exams and another paper by the 20th of December. So when I don't work on my novel, I'm justified, right? Right???

But at this moment, that's not what's bothering me. I'm a really lazy person, and I...I won't go as far as to say that I don't care about my classes, because that's absolutely not true, it's that some days, I just wake up and I just can't convince myself that it's worth going to class. For most of my classes, this is not a problem. Most of my classes are either too large for the professor to notice whether I'm there or not, or too impersonal for them to care. That, however, is not the case for Russian. Technically, you're only supposed to miss 3 classes a semester, and every one after that loses you a grade point, or something like that. Thing is, our Russian dept is really small, and so in their endeavor to keep students, they don't like to fail people. That bad attitude towards going to class has lingered through three semesters of Russian now.

But today when I got to class, she told me that I'd missed too many classes, and asked what I thought we should do about it. I never got a chance to answer before class started. I have to go see her tomorrow for part of my exam, and I know the subject is going to be brought up, and I have nothing to say in my own defense except that I'm lazy. I don't know what she's going to suggest. I'm thinking at this point that I'd probably be lucky to get off with a C. I've never gotten a C before. But even worse than that, I'm thinking she might fail me and I don't know how I would face myself or my parents with that. Really, I don't. There's nothing I can do at this point, though, there is no case that I can make, no excuses. I have decided that if she says something like that, I will ask what I can do to change that, and if nothing, well, then there's nothing that I can do.

I'm trying to convince myself that this is all just a worst-case scenario, but...I can't. I'm a worrier by nature, and I just don't know what I'll do if she fails me.

But it's my own stupid fault, and I'm not blaming anyone else for it.

I hope that it comes up tomorrow. If not, it's something I'm going to worry about until I see my grades in January, and that would be awful (though probably no more than I deserve).

Milestone?

2006-11-28T22:49:00.000-05:00

Well, I remember reading somewhere at some point that the first million words that you ever write will be crap. I personally happen to think that that is a fairly arbitrary line to choose (why a million?), but regardless of its arbitrary-ness, I have crossed that mark.

I added up all of the fiction works on my computer, and came in with about 1.01 million words.

I would love to say that that makes me some kind of literary genius.

Sadly, I fear that it does not.

I still have my nightmare quartet of books. Provisionally, they're in a folder on my laptop called "Hero Quartet", but whether that name will stick is debatable, and I'm not entirely sure why I chose it in the first place.

I've written the first book of the quartet, and written the second about 4 times so far. I still don't know which would be the most publishable first book. Now that Nano is over, I'm supposed to be working on editing the first one, which has been alternately titled The Beat of Terror and Not Immortal, and it's probably going to end up as neither of those. I like the way it's written, but it gets hugely rambly, especially towards the end. The second one, Not a Hero, is a story that I've been writing for 5 years, and I've still not found the right way to tell it.

A million words might be a milestone, but that is all and nothing more.

I will consider myself publishable when I get my first book published, and not a second sooner.

Done with Nano 2006

2006-11-27T09:55:00.000-05:00

Well, I came to the conclusion this morning that I just don't have it in me to write any more this month. I have a paper due tomorrow that seriously needs my attention, and my hands are hurting so badly that they may fall off within the next hour or two.

Total word count for this year: 236,424. (And if we're counting the abortive lit-fic, it's about 244k)

Quite short of the 300k goal that I set myself, but I took several days off, and while a 10k a day pace isn't really that hard for me, it starts to get tricky when one takes five or six days off and then has to make up those words in the last few remaining days.

All in all, I'd have to say that Nano was a success for me, and a learning experience. I've never written quite this much in a month before, and by the end of it (last night), I was typing 4044 words an hour (actually, 50 minutes) which stunned me beyond all belief, considering that my normal pace is a sedate 2k an hour.

I intend to finsh the fantasy story that I didn't finish, I like it, I just can't bring myself to write it right now. I will polish up the other fantasy one, because I like that one too. I'm on the rocks about the fourth one, the one that I wrote in 3 days and is really quite odd and I doubt there is much salvageable in it.

So what am I going to do now? Well, I have a shipment of books coming in today, and I think that I'm going to celebrate by having a nice lazy day, with only one class that I need to go to. After November is over, I'm going to be starting on the exciting world of editing.

I'll be doing Nano next year, too, and next year, I will hit 300k.

Day 20...part 2...

2006-11-20T23:54:00.000-05:00

Well, it is just shy of midnight, and I am at 17,521 words, which makes me quite happy, because that is only 2.5 short of my 20k goal that I had for today.

All in all, today has been a good writing day. Tomorrow might be a little more difficult, because of my Tuesday schedule, but Tuesday is my last day of classes before Thanksgiving break, and I'm leaving sometime on Wednesday, so that is going to be plenty of time for me to write. The fact that I have other homework to do, that I really, really have to do, is of course, important, but I will always find time to write. That is more important to me than anything, as I have said before.

Day 20....Catching up....

2006-11-20T07:18:00.000-05:00

well, I'm theoretically aiming for 20k words today, and I'm at 10k. This fantasy that I'm writing, Shadow of the Ashes is certainly a lot more fun than the stupid lit-fic piece that I tried to convince myself that I would enjoy writing. Anyway, so I'll probably update on that by the end of the day, just because I'm so excited about catching up. Heh.

In other news, though, I think my laptop is dying. Quite a long time ago, the 'b' key fell off my laptop; the plastic piece just popped off; and so I can still use the b key, I just have a piece of tape over it now. But as of two days ago, the spacebar became really sticky, as in it takes a long time to come up after I've pushed it down, and I haven't spilled anything on it at all. And then when I went to close my laptop down last night, and closed the top bit, the hinge went kinda wonky. This laptop is getting a little on the old side, but short of a harddrive crash, I don't think I'll be getting a new one until, at the very earliest, next summer.

And in other good news, I got the proposal done for the paper, and it's not even due for another 7 hours! Stunning! Of course, I've done nothing else - I've been too focused on catching up - but hey, I'm getting there. I'm just counting on Thanksgiving to save me.

Day 19...And I Decided...

2006-11-19T10:41:00.000-05:00

That Final Night was the best cure for insomnia yet. It was going nowhere and I was loathing writing it. So I tossed it out the window. As I wasn't actually scheduled to start writing it until tomorrow, I'm still, amazingly, ahead of schedule. (The fact that I've not touched the papers that are due yet? Pah! Insignificant!)

In any case, it looks like the third one, in place of Final Night, is going to be called something along the lines of The Last Winter, and it's going to be a kind of post-apocalyptic fantasy world, but fantasy only because I like drawing maps and I would rather do that than do the proper research to make it plausible in a real-world setting. Yes, I know that's bad. But this is nano. I don't have time to do the research.

Probably an update on it's progress before the end of the day as I didn't post anything yesterday.

Day 17....keyword of the day:procrastination

2006-11-17T23:19:00.000-05:00

No, not procrastination in writing (though there was a fair bit of that, as well). No, just general lethargic procrastination. So much stuff to do, and I cannot quite convince myself to do any of it. I know that I work best under pressure, but I'd still like to get SOME things done in advance.

In other news, I'm likely to hit 10k on Final Night before I go to bed tonight/this morning. It's actually turning out to be just as pretentiously crappy as I imagined it would be, but I think I'm managing to put a bit of life into some of the characters. Or at least I'd like to think that I am.

Ah well. I'll get all my work done. I've been good at that so far. Been a year and a half (nearly) at an Ivy League school, and I've still got a B+ average, and I'm perfectly happy with that. So far, I have A's in nearly all of my classes, excluding psychology and probably Russian. That doesn't meant that I'll blow stuff off, but for everything that's not due next week, I tell myself that I have Thanksgiving break to work on it.

At least when I'm home for Thanksgiving, I won't have unlimited internet access, and I've been making myself a kind of promise that I'll not spend more time than I need to when I am home. Not that I'm tpyically a very social person, but we have dial-up at home, and there's no connection from my room, which means that I have to go and kick someone off the downstairs computer, and so I'll just stay in my room and read and write.

It actually sounds like the perfect holiday to me. :)

Day 16...so much for taking a break

2006-11-16T23:23:00.000-05:00

Well, I intended to take a break for the next few days and start again on Monday.

Unfortunately, when you write so much in a short period of time, abruptly stopping leaves you with this huge empty gap in your day that just demands to be filled.

So I started the next one.

Who wants to bet that it gets more attention than the things that desperately need to get done?

I really need to shut down the noveling part of my brain. I wish I knew how.

Until then, I am going to be writing, writing, writing. It's not a bad thing that I write so much...well, not really. I know that the more writing I do, the better it is slowly going to become, hopefully one day giving me the ability to write something that other people want to spend money to read.

One day, that will happen.

Until then, I shall write for myself.

Day 15.....Hurrah!

2006-11-15T21:13:00.000-05:00

Well, as of just a few minutes ago, I finished the fantasy nano, clocking in at 100,143 words, which is incredibly awesome, and I am so deliriously happy right now that I swear I could fly (no, I'm not going to jump out of my 4th story window and try...haha). It means that I've reached the 150k mark by halfway through nano, which means that I am more than halfway through my goal of 250k in the month!

The next novel, Final Night, is going to be a contemporary lit-fic piece, with 10 different characters (each, conveniently, with a single 5000 word chapter) and while there are 4 different arcs, everyone is connected to everyone in some way. This books is going to show 10 different people on the eve of the greatest night of their lives, and it is going to show the inter-connected-ness of things. Or something like that. More likely, it's going to be 50k words of bullshit. But that's okay. I can deal with that after November.

I'm not starting that until Monday (probably). There's too much stuff that I've been neglecting over the past 2 weeks, and so the next four days are going to be completely devoted to getting it done. That means that when I start next Monday, right before Thanksgiving, I'm more or less caught up with everything.

Of course, considering how boring my Thanksgivings usually are, I'll be able to write over the whole break, and so maybe I'll finish the nano in less than the five scheduled days. After all, I've got a fourth nano to write!

heh.

Just a Random Aside

2006-11-14T11:45:00.000-05:00

I just got back from class, and on my way back to the dorm, I stopped by at the little cafeteria/shop to get lunch. I do this maybe two or three times a week, depending on my mood and how hungry I am. Anyway, I only ever get one thing: chicken on ciabatta (mmm). Ever since I started at this school, it is the only thing I have ordered from this particular cafeteria/shop (the reason is, there's a dining hall on the bottom floor of my dorm, and that's where I eat most of the time).

Anyway, I go there today, and, for the first time, they've got my order memorized! I walk up to the counter, the woman looks at me and says, "Chicken on ciabatta?"

I'm just like, "Yeah."

I was amused by it, at least.

*big grin*

Day 13...Slow Day

2006-11-13T23:12:00.000-05:00

Well, today I only wrote 6.5k words, but fortunately, I had given myself one more slow day and today just happened to be it. I've had very little sleep, but am strangely not very tired. I intend to, after posting this, go and lie down for a bit, and hopefully sleep with follow shortly, but I have learned that my body can do whatever it damn well pleases, with little thought as to how that might fuck up the rest of my schedule, and there's nothing I can do about it.

I think I'm starting to lose interest in my fantasy novel. Not because I think it's a boring plot, because I'm just coming up to the assassination attempt, but because I have such an awful tendency to ramble and monologize (is that a word?) that it seems that none of the action actually gets to take place. It's not that my characters are angsting, they're just doing a lot of thinking. Something else I've noticed, is that I have a woeful lack of dialogue. Which is funny, because I've been told by friends that dialogue is the strongest part of my writing. Yet it seems to all but disappear in my fantasy novel, because my characters are so busy living inside their own minds to talk to anyone else. Hey...that sounds like me ! (heh)

Still on track to finish it by Thursday, so looking forward to that nice weekend break. Only it's not a proper break, because I get to do my papers then, but it'll give my creative mind some time to refresh so that I can start on a fresh note next Monday with a completely different type of novel in Last Night.

I'm still enjoying this, very much. I'm used to having a fairly high output when I do actually get my mind set on it and sit down to write, but if I get everything done, and hit that magical number of 250k, I think that will be the most that I have ever written in a single month.

Awesome.

Day 12....The Insanity Continues

2006-11-12T22:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I got to 130k today, and that's great! The not-so-great news? On my whiteboard, on Friday, I made a list of 6 things that I needed to do this weekend, that I really, really needed to get done. Do you know how many of them I got done? One, and that was to get to 130k by the end of the weekend. I have not finished either of the two books that I was supposed to read, I have not studied for Russian and am woefully behind, have not done my statistics homework, have not started a paper. So do you know what I will be doing tonight? That's right, as many of the things on that list as I can possibly manage, starting with Russian and ending with the paper. But I feel strangely not guilty about not doing any of them...at least I reached my writing goal. Gah.

And I have also managed to reason myself into trying to write a FOURTH nano novel. I think that I have gone insane. But it's justified...I should be able to do it, if I really want to. Here's why:

So far this month, I've only written less than 10k words twice, and right now, I'm averaging 10k words a day (day 12, just over 120k words).

For my third nano, I'm scheduled to write 5k a day for 10 days, which, as stated above, is about half of what I'm writing per day so far.

So it COULD be done.

It's just, do I want to do it?

We'll see.

Day 11...Struggling to stay on schedule

2006-11-11T21:57:00.000-05:00

Alright, alright, yes I have nearly 120k words all said and done. That doesn't mean that I can't be behind schedule, though. I had a lazy day on Wednesday that really threw me for the weekend, and now I am trying to get back onto that schedule. I am finishing tonight with 118k words rather than 120k, with tomorrow's goal being to hit 130k. Completely do-able, just stressful and tiring.

Don't get me wrong, I love writing, and I am always a schedule-oriented person when it comes to writing. So this isn't tiring on me because of either of those things. No, this is tiring on me because I just feel as though I am spending too much time writing - which I am - and not spending nearly enough time on school and things like that. I know I should be, but I'm not. And so when I tell myself that tomorrow I have to write 12k words - which means about 6 hours worth of writing - I silently groan to myself that that's a huge chunk out of my day, and how am I supposed to get all of that done?

I probably will, of course, but at the expense of what else? I really want to finish it by Thursday so that I have the weekend free next weekend to do all the things that I really, well and truly, need to get done.

One day, I hope that I am free of all constraints on my time other than writing. Maybe then I will look at a 12k goal and think 'oh, that's fine, I can have that done by mid-afternoon'.

Until then, I reserve the right to grumble.

Day 10...Finallly...

2006-11-10T19:52:00.000-05:00

Well, today I finally hit the 100k mark, so that's always a good thing. I didn't get quite as far as I would have liked (105k as opposed to 110k), but I think that I'm still on track for finishing up Wednesday/Thursday/Friday of next week, and I'm really looking forward to that.

The thing is, I've got two books to read for class, a paper to start seriously considering, several bits of homework that I've been putting off, etc. Sadly, those are going to have to start to take priority, and that makes me sad. I would much rather be writing than doing schoolwork. But at least the books are mildly interesting (Crime and Punishment and Что Делает), and the paper shouldn't mean too much work this weekend. It's just a case of taking time out of my writing life to make time for the less enjoyable parts of my life.

I hope that one day I can afford to live off of what I write, but I know that if that day ever comes, it is in the quite distant future; I know how difficult it is for a writer to live off of their writing, and so I will not plan my future around being able to do so. I will just look forward to the day that I can, and hope that it comes at all. What I do know for certain is that if I do not write at all, and if I do not try to get published, then it will never happen. And that means that everyday, I will write, or edit, or take some step towards that ultimate goal.

Day 9....Hugely Unproductive

2006-11-09T22:44:00.000-05:00

Well, today I only wrote 3000 words, so I didn't even hit 50k words today. But I'm intending to stay up into the early morning hours, so I intend to hit it before dawn. I have no reason for not having written much, so I am simply going to blame it on the Week Two Slump and hope that I can write myself out of it.

On the other hand, I've also decided to attempt a third Nano novel after I'm finished the second one sometime next week. Probably not the smartest or most advisable idea, but I've already started plotting it - which took away valuable writing time, I do admit. It is going to be literary fiction, so I am sure that it's going to be a load of pretentious crap. Should be fun!

Anyway, not much work done on the writing front today, but hopefully that will change over the next day or so. By tomorrow, I hope to have hit 110k total, which I think is a nice goal for me to have. And I only have one class tomorrow, so that will help. And it's Friday, and as I have no social life, I have nothing to do tomorrow night. What a loser I am...heh.

Day 8....Bad, bad girl

2006-11-08T10:30:00.000-05:00

Well, I did get to sleep, I woke up at 3 and wrote for a bit, then went back to bed at 7, setting my alarm for 9, which would give me a chance to get ready for class at 10. I had a bad dream, and so I reset my alarm at 10-minute intervals, and now I'm using it as a justifcation to skip Russian, which I KNOW is bad, I KNOW I can't afford to do...and yet I'm doing it anyway. Ugh. I disgust me sometimes. I think that, lacking a forced structure in my life...I kind of let my life fall apart. Or at least, I only focus on the things that I consider most important.

Don't get me wrong, I know that college is important. My parents are paying lots of money for me to get a good education and I know that I should take advantage of it. But I still have no idea what I want to do with myself after college, and I really want to be a writer. You don't need a degree for that. And I'm also thinking of doing teach for america, and that only requires a 2.5 GPA, and mine's about 3.4 or so. I just don't know, and so I can't quite feel bad when I do dumb shit like this. There's not even really an excuse for it this time. I'm not in the mood to write and so I probably won't. I tell myself that I'll spend a couple hours studying Russian tonight, but I know it's fairly likely that I won't. I'll blow it off, because that's what I tend to do when it comes to Russian. I'm not very good at it, but seem to harbor the mentality that it's all going to click with minimal work on my part.

Anyway, back to writing, which is what this month's posts are SUPPOSED to be about (as are, largely, the rest of them). I'm already at my daily quota, but I've rearranged my goals so that I'm not permanently ahead and I actually have to push to hit my goals each day, which is something new...heh. So, I'm at 36k words, and I think that I'd like to hit 40k today and 50k tomorrow, because I want my green bar back on Nano.org.
What a silly reason.

Day 7...milestone reached

2006-11-07T18:22:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm actually awake as I'm typing this, so that's definitely an improvement over the last few days, when I've been a zombie for most of the day. I only woke up about half an hour ago from my little nap after taking my psych midterm. Fortunately, I've been able to write plenty in the last couple of days so that I'm actually 3,000 words ahead right now, at 30,000 words (YAY!). I'll probably do some more writing this evening, just because I like to be prepared for if there is a day when something comes up and I can't write that day.

When it comes to writing, I'm very schedule-oriented. I'm also very competetive, so I'm forever cutting my schedules down and telling myself, 'of course you can write 10,000 words day', even with classes and everything. (Speaking of classes, I'm a bit regretful that my nap took me through Lit class...we were discussing Notes from the Underground today and I must confess that I could use all the help I can get on that particular book.)

There's a more practical reason that I want to finish my nano early. It's not midterms - I'm done with those now, but I have three papers that I have to write, and a proposal for one of them. The proposal is due on the 20th of November, one of the papers is due on the 27th, and another of the papers is due on Dec 7. And unlike my papers from last year, where the professor told us that we should only use the course materials so that he did not have to go and check our sources (for fear of plagiarism), I actually have to do some research for these suckers, and I'm really too much of a procrastinator to be very good at that. But if I have nano as well as papers to write in conjunction with each other, then things are just going to get messy and I'll end up a zombie again.

But, fingers crossed, I'll finish my nano sometime next Friday or Saturday, and then I can focus on trying to cram a little bit of research into the weekend so that I can write my proposal and then get to work on the writing that is far less fun than nano.

Day 6....damn....

2006-11-06T12:38:00.000-05:00

I knew that the late nights were going to screw me over eventually.

I missed my 10 a.m class today, which pisses me off. It's Russian, and trust me, I'm not good enough at it (not by far) to be able to miss it and not automatically get even further behind than I usually am.

But every cloud has a silver lining. I hit 20,000 words on my second nano early this morning, and that almost makes up for it.

I know that college is important, but sometimes writing just seems that little bit MORE important. I doubt that my parents would agree, but we'll see who's right in the end.

Hoping for the 25k mark by the end of the day, but we'll see.

Wonderful

2006-11-05T23:44:00.000-05:00

So, due to my not going to sleep until about 7 or so this morning, and not wanting to completley throw off my sleep schedule, I woke up at 11. That means that I was tired all day, and so decided that I'd go to bed at 8-ish tonight, because I've found that I really like writing in the really early, quiet hours of the morning (if you've never lived in a dorm, you'll never quite understand why the quietness of the early a.m. is so precious).

Anyway, I assumed that, because I was so tired, that I'd easily sleep until about 2a.m., which would be fine.

But nope. I'm up now, at 20 of midnight. That means that IF I manage to stay awake all night, I'll be a zombie by my last class today, that ends at 3:30pm. On the other hand, it means that I'll get to write all night, and because I'm promptly on schedule for my fantasy novel and my weekday pace of 6000 words is not too strenuous, I'll probably shoot ahead. And that's really good, because I want to get this written as soon as I can, because I'm competetive like that.

Here's to being a zombie! Yay!

Day 5...I should be sleeping...

2006-11-05T06:40:00.000-05:00

It's now 6:32 in the morning.

I haven't been to bed yet.

No, that's not true. I went to bed at around 8-ish and woke up at just before 11pm. So I've managed to get some sleep.

I DID finish the shorter story, with a whopping 50,097 words, and I'm very proud of that. It got kind of silly in the end, as I got tireder, but as that one is purely for my own entertainment, I'm not too bothered.

Later today (assuming that my body decides to go to sleep), I'll be starting on the harder one, and hopefully will make some progress with that.

day 4....grrrr

2006-11-04T14:36:00.000-05:00

Well, I wanted to hit 44k words before I went to bed last night.

That so didn't happen.

And today's goal is 58k, i.e., finishing the silly smutstory. That leaves me a nice and oh-so-comfortable 18k words to write today.

Damn, that's a lot.

So far, at 2:30 in the afternoon, I'm to 45,000 words.

This is going to be a looooooooong day.

-edit-

well, at 6pm, I am at 50,000 words. I've reworked the rest of my schedule so that now I'm due to finish on the 17th and don't have to write anymore today.

I should also probably get around to studying for my psych midterm.

Others might find it funny that I'm not celebrating the 50k mark. Well, I'll be celebrating the 58k mark, because that'll be the point where one of the stories is actually finished. That should be sometime tomorrow.

Day 3

2006-11-03T20:02:00.000-05:00

Well, I hit 40,000 words a little while ago.

It feels comfortably good to be writing at this pace. It is more than I usually write, but there is something about the competetive nature of Nano that makes me write more. I look at the list of authors and their wordcounts, and judge where I am on them, and it always make me want to push to reach the next person.

The funny thing is, that I'm not even skipping classes, like I typically do during the rest of the semester (I'm sooo bad at going to classes, especially when all of the material is straight out of the textbook). But since nano started, I have gone to every single one of my classes, which is ridiculously rare. And yet I'm still doing well wordcount-wise.

My lovely little pointless story (the 50k one) is going well, and because I already know the characters in it fairly well, it flows out of me without any problem. I do intend to finish that one at some point tomorrow, and then start thinking about how best to attack the more difficult one.

It's not that I don't think I can write it; there's no reason for me not to be able to. But it's just harder to write, because I don't know the story or the characters as well. It means that the writing will come out of me a lot slower.

Nevertheless, I have already figured out a decent schedule that will have me finished the second one by the 16th of November, and that is more than satisfactory! (Especially as that then gives me a glorious 4 days to figure out what I'm writing a paper on for one of my classes and submit a proposal for it!)

the crzynesss is here!

2006-10-17T13:46:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm a writer. An aspiring one, in any case. Also a college student, also a daughter/sister/girlfriend.

This is about me and my journey through finishing my damn novel, writing a Nanowrimo novel or two, and getting published.

At least, I hope so.

No promises it'll be interesting to anyone but me.