Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

I finished my 50,000 words yesterday at 7:33 p.m. I actually ended up a little over since I was in the middle of a rather pivotal conversation at the time. I hit 50k at a good point but the story isn’t over. I still need to add a couple more scenes to resolve the plot. I think I’m going to wait to do that in the Spring when I pick this up again. Right now I’m still feeling rather like I had two finals and a final paper due yesterday - which is too say, recovering.

So, 10 days ago I wrote that I didn’t like my story much anymore and I started mentioning to friends that I didn’t really expect to finish. What changed? The plot hit its stride and got interesting. It’s still not high art, but it’s definitely less trite than I’d feared. So not only was it an awesome experience that I hope to repeat next year, I have a large body of text to work with and try to work into a finished product after a requisite waiting period. The waiting period is definitely necessary. I need to step away from it completely so that I can see whether it is actually a cohesive story and world when I reread it. Ideally I’ll go back to it with fresh-ish eyes in April or so…

So what did I write? It’s a little, still untitled fantasy novel about a world just to the other side of our own. No, you can’t read it yet. Wait for summer after my editing exercise. I won’t even let the Fop read any of it.

I learned so much doing this writing project.

• Guess what? I can write a solid 2000 words a day even when I have no idea what to write!
• I need to get to know my characters and world before I can really get into the plot. The first 14-20k words were still part of the book but I think another time I’ll do more pre-writing rather than just jumping in.
• Writing is good for my brain.
• I can kick out high volumes of text when my plot is interesting and the deadline looms. I wrote about 14,000 words in the last 24 hours of my writing. (Just look at that graph!)
• I can send my inner editor on vacation for a month but sometimes there are ramifications of that in other parts of my life.

It was awesome. It’s like I remembered how to write over the course of 50,000 words. The difference between the flow at the beginning and the end is huge I think. Now we need a National Novel Editing Month scheduled for May…

tags: finished, nanowrimo, novel, victorious, writing

I finally hit the halfway point in my writing for Nanowrimo. This is farther than I’ve ever gotten before! YAY!

However, I’m behind. I’m also starting to not like the plot and how it’s developing, or not developing as the case may be. I didn’t get a lot of writing done today but I did do some outlining in the hopes that it will help me fly through the rest of the week. My original plan had me not writing on Thanksgiving but I think I’m going to try to write that day anyway in the interest of actually finishing. It’s definitely an interesting and productive experience - I’ve learned a lot having gotten this far finally, despite no longer liking my own book. Hopefully that will change by the end of the week so I can finish this with a bang!

tags: nanowrimo, writing

It’s been a very gray Monday here so I am combating the drear with a very orange pumpkin! It’s a proper November day though - dim, threatening to be damp and generally conducive to naps, hot soup and building fires. Of course, I haven’t been able to do any of these things since I’m working today.

I had a most excellent and very busy weekend! Here’s the summary of my whirlwind tour for those of you interested:

• Thursday night I flew up to New Hampshire. Jon picked me up and we hauled K out to dinner at a fabulous Mexican restaurant in Concord.
• Friday morning, my mom picked me up for our adventures in Portland. I spent a lot of money on an embroidery sewing machine. I’ll be picking it up when I drive up for the holidays in December. Lunch Friday consisted of Maine Italians which made me really, really happy. Friday afternoon, I had a conference call that I couldn’t really miss, unfortunately. Friday night was spent hanging with the parental units and eating yummy hamburgers.



• Saturday morning we went back into Portland to go to an Italian grocery we hadn’t had time to go to the day before. Lunch Saturday was fresh mozzarella, Italian bread and bits of prosciutto. We made some really tasty cookies and fiddled about with my mom’s embroidery machine for a bit in the afternoon. The marvelous slyppi whisked me off to her brother’s house for a birthday party for her nephew (who is now 4!). We had a lovely time - much wine was had by all and I enjoyed meeting more of her brother’s in-laws. They are a fun family. We spent the night at slyppi’s dad’s condo in the Old Port.
• Sunday morning we wandered about a few shops in the Old Port then had brunch with our hosts. The Porthole makes awesome breakfast. We hung out with slyppi’s dad and M a little longer then headed towards Manchester to drop me off at the airport… of course, we had to stop along the way for a little, very successful shopping!

So all in all it was an excellent weekend. The weather up north was mild yet chilly - just biting enough to remind us that it was November. I took some photos in Windham and the Old Port that I’ll post eventually too.

Somewhere in there I found time to write about 1000 words for Nanowrimo. I’m about 2000 words behind now, but my plan is to make that up this week, hopefully by the weekend. If not, the weekend will be a big word-count push. I’m getting really excited about the world I’m creating as well as the story that’s wrapping around it. I still have no idea about a couple of key plot points, but they’ll come eventually… I hope!

tags: maine, nanowrimo, new hampshire, old port, photographs, photography, sewing, travel, weather, weekend, writing

When we were up in New England, we got to Maine after dusk and as such I only took a few photos and I like … 2 of them. I’m not a big fan of flash but I kind of like how this photo came out though the center leaves have a little too much light.

Remember to turn your clocks back tonight and be careful in the evenings this week! Daylight savings time always screws people up - auto and pedestrian fatalities go up significantly around the changing of the clocks. There’s nothing like artificially shifting our day by an hour to muck everything up.

I’ve been writing a lot today… I’m up to 6092 words so I’m currently on pace. I’m hoping to get 10k done by the end of this weekend so I have a little bit of a margin of error in case of writer’s block. So far I’m amused by the little world I’m building. The nanowrimo web site is slow as molasses going up hill in Maine in January, but my profile is here - drop me a comment or e-mail with your profile info if you’re also doing the race.

tags: autumn, daylight savings time, fall back, leaves, maine, nanowrimo

After a week of Starbucks coffee, I love to come home to my own tasty coffee… Freshly ground Armeno beans, french pressed brew, a cup with whole milk instead of my usual low-fat milk because I used up my milk on my cereal. It is bliss. This is not to say that Starbucks coffee sucks… I do enjoy it. But mine is much, much better. And cheaper. And easily acquired without needing to get dressed or leaving the house. Which is good since it has finally turned into a comfortably cool fall out here and running to Starbucks in my pjs would be chilly.

Another bit of Fall for you all… The farm stand Jon took us to had something called The Observatory. It was a raised deck about 15 feet off the ground that you could climb up and take in the scene. It may not sound like much, but it got us off the ground just far enough to take in the full, breath-taking views of the valley and mountains and fall colors. We went up there first, before the sun came out, so the foliage colors are even more intense in the photos. Gray days really are the best for fall colors.

My kitchen is littered with junk food, much of which I hope the Fop will be taking on his road trip to Crown this weekend.

I started writing for Nanowrimo this morning. I broke one of the usual recommendations. Usually it’s recommended that one not build on a previous short story or world because the writer will end up being too careful and too invested in the content to push out the 50,000 words as slap-dash as necessary. I’m hoping to avoid this problem through the sheer desire to get this world built and some actual plot into the world. I started to sketch an outline for some scene progressions yesterday as well as started to evolve the world around the events of the short story. I got down 732 words this morning before work and I have some time planned later today for writing. I can’t count the short story as part of my word count, which is fine, but I’ve incorporated part of what I wanted to add to the end of the short story from last set of editing notes.

Yes, I got up this morning and was awake enough to write. I got productive things done before 9 a.m. I know that this comes as a shock to those of you who have known me for a long time. Hey, I figure if this stupid allergy medicine is going to make me not get enough sleep, I should take advantage of the extra time!

tags: allergies, autumn, coffee, fall, foliage, nanowrimo, new hampshire, sleep, travel, weather