Final NaNo Update

This was supposed to go up on the blog yesterday, but some time-bandits nabbed Camille and me and wooshed us off to Orlando to solve some problems and get some Christmas shopping done. So, blogging didn’t happen.

If we’re Facebook friends or you look at the full blog on a website you probably already noticed that I won NaNoWriMo. But here’s the “official” announcement.

I am a 2011 NaNoWriMo Winner

with a grand total of

50,406 words

Greetings from NaNoWriMo

I actually finished on November 27th. And then I didn’t know what to do with myself for a couple of days. I must be learning some really good habits from my friend Jenna because I already had my next goal lined up before I finished NaNo (reading 15 books before 12/31) so I didn’t lose too much time in my indecision.

I finished the fourth book I’ve read since I decided to do 15 so that leaves 11 in 31 days. The challenge comes in with the fact that I’m teaching LG updates the first three weekends of the month… so that will take up a lot of my time (preparing for it and such). But I think I’ll be able to swing it. I’m going by the library today to pick up a butt load of books and I’m really excited about it. I have 7 books waiting for me there and the one I bought from Inkwood a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway, back to NaNo… Of course the most obvious question I get after telling people about doing it, or finishing is: when will I get to read it? And to most of those questions I kind of shrug, wince a little bit, and respond, “Never?” I mean it’s in a VERY ROUGH form at this point… the way they encourage you to keep up the word pace is to throw editing to the wind… and I mean, I wasn’t able to do that entirely… but I know there are inconsistencies and such in it that I need to work through.

However, I have decided to share at least one part of it that I wrote at the end. Writing the end was probably my favorite part of the whole process (not because it was almost over) but the last 10,000 words or so really started to become the thing that I wanted to write… and I realized I like to write these terribly sad things much more than anything else. One of the last nights I was writing I was actually in the living room by myself crying as I wrote. My poor main character had just found out that her best friend and boyfriend were in a car accident and as a result were in comas at the hospital. She didn’t know yet (I did) that one of them wasn’t going to ever wake up.

A couple of nights later my favorite part to write just sort of fell into my head as I was doing something else entirely. I sat down and about 4,000 words just poured out of me. That was a bizarre experience, let me tell you. I think that was the most in one sitting I had written during the whole thing.

So, once I do a little reworking of that section… make sure it makes sense to other humans beside myself I’ll plop it up here to share with you. Until then I’ll tell you about what I learned from NaNo. When I started I had no real idea what I would be doing. I had a vague plan of what I wanted to maybe happen other than just hitting that 50,000 word mark. And I didn’t think I would get too much valuable experience out of it. And boy did I underestimate that.

See, I’m generally crippled with fear. There are a lot of things that I just think I’m not good enough to do, so I never try. I wasn’t the most confident kid when I was younger and these pieces of my personality have morphed into a strange sort of adulthood for me. I’m still afraid to try things. And even when I switched to English as my major I never thought I’d write anything of note. I saw it as a way to be surrounded by things I enjoyed: reading and writing. And when people ask me what I want to do I tell them I want to own a bookstore, not that I want to be a writer. It’s hard for me to admit that. I read so many books and I suffer from an insane need to compare. I often think, “I will never write anything like that.” And thus I don’t even try.

I wasn’t even trying.

And then NaNo popped up and it seemed like just as good an idea as any and I learned that it’s okay to write a bunch of silliness I will probably never use for anything because it all chalks up to practice. And here I am with a bank of way over 50,000 words (including the blog and other projects I worked on during November) and I feel like I might actually get to the point where I can do this.

It reminds me of something I read once that Ray Bradbury said. He talked about his love of certain famous authors that came before him. He used to wander the stacks in the library and see great names like Dickens and Poe and Hemingway and think… if only I can run along like a lapdog to their fame then I will be happy. I’m trying to shift my thinking… I may never write the perfect great novel. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

So Personal Growth through NaNoWriMo for the win! And almost 1,000 words for you to read on this lovely Friday morning.

Peace.

NaNo Update #4

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am proud to announce that NaNoWriMo.org put up their word count validator so that we participants can begin checking our totals. According to their website I have reached 40,123 words. I’m on target to finish before the month is over. Technically I could do it in two more days (but I will not). I have been writing a lot for the novel, for the blog, and for other personal things. I have also had several creative ideas and learned how to deal with some hurdles in story telling.

Mostly, I am excited that the end is so near in sight. Soon I will claim this shirt and I will wear it proudly for all to see.

Now, I will hunker down and churn out the last 10,000 words.

Bye!

Time Wasters this week

Having to spend time on phone calls is always a time waster. Especially when it’s County Clerk of Court offices, the DMV, and other corporate offices. So, they take the cake this week. Except I don’t want to give them cake. Ever.

Bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy is LAME.

But now for pleasant things. This website is where I spend most of my time when I want to look at pretty things

goodmorningandgoodnight

As of today there are two Vimeo videos (Don’t swim after lunch and I Look & Move) that I found fascinating. They’re under two minutes each, so go take a gander. Also, the recipes and designs put up on this blog continue to wow me. I just really love all the new things I find thanks to this blog. I will give them cake.

Unshelved by Gene Ambuam & Bill Barnes

This lovely little webcomic (and by little I mean it’s been running since 2002) has caused me several moments of mirth the past two weeks. I found it because they did a guest comic over at Questionable Content a daily indie kid webcomic I’ve been reading for a few years now.Unshelved cracks me up. Jenna’s mother was a librarian and I’ve met a few librarians through her family… I like imagining them as entertaining as this. Also, my friend Beverly is a librarian and I’m always in awe of what she’s learned in order to be so. I’d like to be a volunteer librarian (if that exists)… really I just want to be around books always.

Other than these two things it seems my internet browser history is devoted to email, facebook, and searches for information about Christmas Presents. (You can see my Christmas Wishlist here). Happy Interweb Hunting.

yesterday (or NaNo update 3)

It’s possible that you, my loyal readers, may have wondered what happened to me yesterday after my triumphant review of The History of Love. You may have suffered a brief panic attack or heart palpitations, or something like that, when you realized that THE ENTIRE DAY had passed without as much as a 100 word snarky comment about anything.

I know I did. My heart palpitations were the result of my remembering at 10:45 that I was scheduled to work at 11 am. I was en route to a great little bagel place that happened to be sort of on the way to work. Luckily, Camille was with me and she played courier for my unprepared self for the next hour or so.

So, I worked from 11-6. And then I swam a beastly 1,450 yards. The whole while thinking about what a momentous day November 15th was supposed to be.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce that on November 15th, 2011 that I accomplished to major milestones. And I’m so excited to tell you about them I don’t know in which order to type them up. I guess in the order they happened will suffice.

On November 15th, 2011 at approximately 9 pm I finished Anna Karenina, the Russian behemoth that has plagued my existence since June.

AND

On November 15th, 2001 at approximately 11:20 pm I hit and passed the goal of 25,000 words.

My official word count at the time of writing this post is 25,177 words. Yes, all about the same story. Now, I only have 25,000 words to go. And at this point I’ve made up all the words I was behind on… so I can take a slightly more relaxed pace dropping from 3-4,000 words a day to the much more pleasurable 2,200.

And now it is 11:40 and my eyelids are quite droopy. So, I will bid you goodnight. (Chalk it up to eccentricity, since you’ll probably read this sometime midmorning on Wednesday the 16th).

how to get behind in your word count…

1.  Have a sister becoming a rockstar do a really big concert the first weekend of NaNoWriMo. Friday night we had dress rehearsal and I wrote a script for the Saturday night show. I was really bummed that all that work writing couldn’t count toward my novel word count. But I decided not to stress out about it. I planned on writing 2200 words a day Mon-Fri. And then I ended up taking Monday and Tuesday of this week off giving me a word deficit of 6,600 words. Never fear, I’m on track to make them up this week and still take Sunday off as a little breather.

2. Be connected to the Internet whilst working. I checked my Gmail today about 15 times (and that’s a low number for me). I also started reading through this webcomic about librarians that makes me laugh so much. Not to mention the time suck that is Facebook. And last night I spent a fair amount of time on YouTube creating a playlist of music to get me through the night.

3. Have an iPhone. And be playing one game of words with friends and two games of hanging with friends. And getting text messages, twitter updates, and very random New York Times updates.

4. Play with these websites and watch this video:

weave silk

 

incredibox

 

t-shirt war, rhett and link

and probably my favourite video of the week

kids re-enact MTV's The Hills

NaNoWriMo Update #2

I’M A FIFTH OF THE WAY THROUGH MY NOVEL, GUYZ!

THAT’S 10,044 WORDS.

I’m still behind about 4,000 words. But I’ll make it up before this week is out.

 

all about the tunes

Well dear readers, I promised you that on Tuesdays I would list out the music I’ve been listening to whilst working on my novel. And yet Friday I promised you that I would tell you about Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist. So, today, dear reader, you are getting BOTH. Yup, BOTH. Are you excited? Me, too. Let’s do this thing.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist

I saw the movie of this first. And somewhere on the interweb, days before the movie came out I saw in some forum a disgruntled reader of the book claiming that the movie would RUIN EVERYTHING GOOD ABOUT THE BOOK. Which is a played out song in my opinion… but more importantly I read the poster’s comment and thought This movie is based on a book? Fast forward three years and I’m just now getting around to reading the book and I keep thinking they sorely miscast the lead male, but at that point Michael Cera was experiencing a bit of a hey-day… so we’ll let him have it. (If the casting were up to me, I would’ve picked this kid). But that’s the movie…

The book is a co-authored YA novel about a bunch of hipster kids in NYC bopping around from one club to another in pursuit of the perfect night… sort of. Every other chapter flips back and forth between narrators. (Sidenote: you’ll see with next week’s book that I read a string of novels about New York City all in a row AND I feel like this multiple narrators thing has been a bit of a motif for me this year as well). If Rules of Civility is the classy, glamourous side of 1930s NYC Nick & Norah’s is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Totally.

Nick & Norah are both sensitive types that spend way too much time weighing the pros and cons of their actions in their heads which causes them to develop neurotic tendencies and second-guess every single little thing that happens between the two of them. Nick’s a bassist, Norah’s the daughter of a record company exec. They both live in Jersey and commute over to the city for rock shows and good times. We’re introduced to the action by Nick’s view from the stage as he and boys in a gaycore (I mean, I thought I knew music genres… I’d never heard of this one before) band get the crowd pumped up.

Granted, this novel shows off some colorful parts of teenage-dom (unrealistic I think, but I had a totally different experience, so I’m not really an authority on this) and the indie-rock scene. Nick and Norah are smart, witty, observant, but desperately, desperately need affirmation.

They throw out allusions to classic movies and music. Try to communicate with each other using some strange form of physical telepathy. And meet in a pretty cute way. But it all makes you feel like somebody’s trying just a little too hard. Which I guess sums up teenagers pretty well.

In the end you find yourself thinking: D’awwww. And in my case: but I don’t want to do that again. It’s tough for me to decide who I would suggest this book to. The kids are both straight-edge (pretty much) and there’s just one make-out scene that gets interrupted by an elderly couple… that’s sort of funny…. They’re pretty good kids that just hang out in seedy places. And they make allusions to being sexually active.

Surprisingly, I think the movie toned it down A LOT and made Nick’s ex-girlfriend’s overabundant sexuality much more comical. (Also, the role of Norah’s best friend in the movie is what freaking MADE THE MOVIE… too bad she’s basically passed out the whole book).

It’s quirky, it’s kinda funny, but as far as I’m concerned it was missing something… a little spark of something that could have really set it off. But kudos to Rachel Cohn and David Levithan… I think they nailed the cock-sure mindset of teenagers perfectly.

And now I’ve been made curious. Apparently Cohn and Levithan have written another book called Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares. The premise sounds kind of cute. Maybe I’ll add it to the ever growing list.

AND NOW IT’S TIME FOR:

Noel’s Infinite Writing Playlist

Dispatch, NoiseTrade Sampler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NoiseTrade mom+pop sampler, vol. 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sister of Mine by Marksmen

These guys are so great! So great!

That’s all that I listened to the first day I was writing. Then the next two days I just tore up some Pandora radio stations. My two favourites are the Lilly Allen station and Ben Kweller station.

Ben Kweller station, Pandora

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lilly Allen station, Pandora

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that is all I have for you today. All of the pictures link to either youtube or pandora so that you can get a small sample of my musical taste.

Ciao

 

NaNoWriMo Update

  As of today I have a little over 7,000 words. Today and tomorrow will be the hardest to make writing happen because of the dress rehearsal and concert tomorrow night. So keep your fingers crossed for me.

  So far I’ve mostly been listening to Pandora radio stations while writing. A Lilly Allen station and a Ben Kweller station. Yesterday I wrote wearing my glasses the entire time rather than my contacts. And I’ve generally been writing at my kitchen table. I may switch it up at some point. I would like to attempt writing completely analog one day – by which I mean using a notebook and pen (or pencil). But the thought of how much my hand will cramp sort of dissuades me.

  That’s about it.

  Check out Jeffrey’s Blog today at 5 to read how he’s doing.

  See you Monday with a review of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

self-motivated?

the beautiful and damend by f. scott fitzgerald

I consider myself a self-motivated person. But apparently I’ve found my limits when it comes to Modern American Literature. Or maybe it’s just Classic Literature in general. I honestly haven’t read enough Classic Literature outside of an academic setting to know if I enjoy it or not.

This summer I made an attempt to remedy that. I picked up The Beautiful and Damned and For Whom the Bell Tolls in effort to better acquaint myself with these bastions of American Literature. I didn’t even crack the cover of FWtBT (unfortunately). And I made several attempts to march through TBaD. 

I mentioned in my review of Rules of Civility that RoC was everything I wanted The Beautiful and Damned to be: New York looking glamorous and some devil-may-care main characters that undergo some essential maturity and growth.

What I got was something like a romp through a pair of toddler’s having a screaming match. Nothing about the main characters of The Beautiful and Damned redeemed them or made them likable. Quite the contrary, they were spoiled and awful and intent on ruining life for each other (though they thought they were very much trying to make each other happy). It was utterly frustrating.

Another sort of humorous issue I kept having was confusing the plotlines of The Beautiful and Damned with the plotline of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which I know doesn’t make any sense. But reading two things by Fitzgerald back to back was the problem.

I was excited about reading this book because it was mentioned in One Day. And she was right, it’s a long read. The novel takes you through some of the less interesting day-to-day activities of the main characters. And spends quite a bit of time with them.

One thing I DO like about Fitzgerald’s storytelling style is that you feel like you’re listening to a friend recount a story about some acquaintances. He brings you into his world and reveals all the seedy things a tight knit group of friends would know about each other. (Towles echoed this in parts of Rules of Civility).

I also feel that I should admit that book covers do have a lot of impact on me. I really dislike this cover. It’s all weird angles and so much red. It’s funny because it’s very fitting for the time period with the modern art/jazz age flavor. But I found like four other covers that I thought were so great. I’m of the opinion that had I had I different cover I might have enjoyed the book a bit more.

One of the words I learned from my reading of The Elegance of the Hedgehog was autodidact.

command + space is a lifesaver

I plan on furthering my career as an autodidact in the realm of Literature. Which I’m sure means that I will again encounter the fictional works of Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald. But for now I’m glad of the break. And I feel a little bit better prepared to discuss this facet of Literature should the occasion arise.

At this point I would like to share with you that as of Wednesday night at 9 pm my NaNoWriMo word count is 4,495. That’s 95 extra words over my goal point. I’m really happy with this rate of writing that I’ve managed so far. At this point I’m writing for about 2 hours every day. I’m hoping to have a day next week that I can write for awhile uninterrupted.

Happy Thursday, ya’ll.

wednesday’s child was full of woe

I’m not, yet. At least I hope not. I am writing this from the past to be uploaded in the future, so I’m not really sure how Wednesday is going for me yet. However, I am writing to sort of explain how the next couple of weeks will roll out. Monday will have a book review, Tuesday a writing play list from the week, Wednesday any fun articles or videos or whatever I’ve found whilst procrastinating in my NaNoWriMo duties, Thursday most likely posts about me freaking out my research and Friday will be highlights of what I’ve been writing (if there are any good enough to share). With that being said, you may get double blog posts every once in awhile.

Alright, wish me luck.