Melonade

Last night at approximately 11:30 p.m., I was given one of these:


I passed the 50,000-word mark and the good robots at NaNoWriMo officially declared me a winner.

Whew.


That's pretty much how I felt about it. I was thrilled to have made it a day early and to have a draft with a beginning, middle, and (most challenging of all) an end. But after 30 days of madness, I'm really just glad the pressure's finally gone. The story's good (I think) but the current state of the manuscript is definitely not.

Well, after the holidays are over, it will be back to editing my other novel. In a few months, I'll dust off Novel #2 for editing.

I have a feeling there won't be any more writing today. Yesterday was rough, as I have surmised all Sunday writing will be. My brain just doesn't work as well on Sundays. At least we had gorgeous weather and I could sit outside Panera after they closed. Everything was going well until the elastic band on my Moleskine notebook caught the N key on my laptop and popped it off! For a few seconds, I just stared at the overturned key on the concrete and wondered if I would have to bow out of writing my story. C'mon, my main characters are Jane and Andrew. Definitely need the N if I'm going to stay in nanowrimo.

Luckily, the key wasn't broken and I snapped it back into place. Whew. Everything was great until this pregnant lady started smoking. That's right. Pregnant. Smoking. Uncool. That's when I retreated to Starbucks and got next to nothing accomplished.

Since my story deals with time travel both forward and backward, I've been thinking a lot about the Back to the Future movies lately. It didn't help that two of them were on TV the other day, or that the box set is sitting mere inches away from me and can be viewed at my leisure. But I've decided that rather than fight it, I'm just going to embrace the fact that there may be similarities. Not intentional, mind you, but similarities nonetheless. And that's true of just about everything I've ever written; halfway through I will inevitably think of some book I've read that shares elements with what I'm working on. That frustrates me, because I don't ever want to think that I'm a copycat writer.

Good things about today:
1. Met my word count plus a little extra.
2. Figured out my main character's last name.
3. Wrote a scene I was thinking about but couldn't write yesterday.
4. Managed to do this all before 11 p.m.

Bad things about today:
1. Beginnings of a sore throat. I always get some kind of throat/ear/sinus problem this time of year, so I'm just hoping this will be something mild that won't fight me while I'm writing.
2. Still struggling with the beginning of the story. I know there is a conflict between the main character and her best friend, but I have no idea what that is. Also, best friend's brother has the possibility to be an interesting character, and I didn't see this coming. Perhaps he is a catalyst in the confrontation? I can't tell yet.

It's almost midnight, so as I look out my the window of my apartment (and see a cat looking back at me!), I'll examine today's writing accomplishments.

At 9 a.m. I started writing. The sun was pouring in my open window, and the late night revelers were still quiet. I didn't mean to start so late, but it was past 3 a.m. when I finally got to sleep, so an adjustment was necessary. The novel started pretty much like I expected. Churned out about 1600-ish words in the first couple of hours, followed by several mini-sessions throughout the day. The last couple of hours has been spent helping my sister rearrange her furniture, 'cause I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.

My other novel has several iTunes playlists. Each of the main characters has a personal playlist (save one) of songs that either have some connection to their part of the story or is music that they would actually listen to. These lists were honed over months after many more months of becoming acquainted with them. I've tried to replicate that for the new book, but it's impossible when I don't even know the main character well enough to know what music she'd listen to. So instead, I made a quick-n-dirty playlist of 52 songs that's been on repeat all day long. Not sure where I was going with that...I'm sure that sentence will make several appearances this month. Jane's voice is still foreign, so I guess until I grasp it I'll just have to write her words in mine.

As of now, I've got 2692 words under my belt. I could, and probably should, try to get in one more session before I call it a night. Or before all the neighbors start being noisy and I can't get to sleep.

Here's a copy of the challenge email I sent out announcing my involvement in nano. If you didn't get the email but want to participate, leave me a message.


Friends,

As most of you know, I have devoted much of the last few years to writing a novel, Gifted. At times, this has meant losing sleep and sanity, declining invitations, and generally being a nuisance to those in the real world. Many of you have encouraged me. Some of you ask if I am "still writing" with a spark of doubt that I will ever finish, but to me, this still counts as motivation. After all, the whole thing started as a bit of a dare.

Now here's where it gets interesting: I'm about to do it again, and I need some help.

While for some people November 1st means throwing out shriveled jack o' lanterns and counting the days until Thanksgiving, for others it is something else entirely. For the last 10 years it has been National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo or NaNo), and crazy people all over the world will once again choose to write a first draft of at least 50,000 words (roughly 200 pages), or 1,667 words per day.

You may ask, "What's this got to do with me?" Here are some answers:

1. Place your bets. One of the NaNo motivational tools is making bets with friends/family to nudge you toward your word count goal. For example, you might propose that if I don't make my word count, I buy dinner for you. Or clean out your garage. Or walk your dog. As long as it's a) legal, and b) not against my morals, I'll probably agree.
2. Make it more interesting. If you want to go beyond standard betting, you can propose something more extreme/expensive/ridiculous and also provide me with a minor character that must be used in the story. I'll ask you for a few simple details (name, age, and a couple of other things), and fill in the rest. Of course this probably means that I will have to provide actual proof of your character's presence in the story.
   
3. Send out good thoughts. NaNo requires seclusion, but I know the only way for me to succeed is to have support. There will be days when meeting the word count is a breeze. Other times I will be tempted to type, "This was the dumbest idea ever!" 278 times. Even if you don't want to participate in the first two options, you can check up on my progress and/or harass me when there isn't any via posts to Facebook or Twitter, or check out my NaNo page if you want to delve a little deeper. Share this message with other potential supporters.
4. Come celebrate with me. I fully intend to finish by midnight on November 30th, and I want to make a big deal about it. I hope you'll join me in December for a celebration.
   

Now you're thinking, "That's great and all, but what about that other book that's still not finished? Why stop now when you're so close?" While my first story began by the guidelines of NaNo, I wrote the draft in April because I couldn't wait for November. I've let three other Novembers pass without participating, but this year a lot of new stories have been stirring around in my head, and it's time to put at least one on paper. I'm not finished with the first story, and it's not finished with me, either. It's been pretty patient so far and is willing to wait until I get back.

One more thing, and I'll be done: NaNo is sponsored by the nonprofit Office of Letters and Light. If you're a fan of reading, writing, or people who read or write, and you've got some spare change, please consider donating to the cause. $10 will keep those servers serving for 3 hours. $25 sponsors one classroom in the Young Writers Program...you can click the nano link above and go to donations to see more.

All right, you made it to the end! Thanks for reading. Happy November!

Mel

This November will be the 10th NaNoWriMo, and they've designed a nifty tee to commemorate the occasion. Being a lover of NaNo and t-shirts, I naturally want one now.

Oh friends, the writing juices are flowing again. Let's all rejoice. Things were clogged for far too long. I must say thanks to all the people who ask me if I'm still working on it without even the tiniest bit of sarcasm. Also, I just heard about an exciting opportunity that might get me closer to publishing the darn thing. If you're a praying person, send one up for me and the novel, would you? Thanks.

By the way, it's almost September. Which means October knock on your door any day now (make sure he wipes his feet before you let him in). And that means...NaNoWriMo 2008 is almost here! If you have ever said to yourself, "You know, I'd like to write a book," then you need to know about NaNoWriMo. Come November, people around the world will be torturing themselves to finish a first draft of 50,000 words in a mere month. It's like the Olympics, except everyone wins, and you don't have to lie about your age to get in. If you're a teacher, you can sign up your class for the student version of NaNo. Adorable.

Your result for The Director Who Films Your Life Test...

Woody Allen

Your film will be 58% romantic, 41% comedy, 22% complex plot, and a $ 24 million budget.

Take The Director Who Films Your Life Test at HelloQuizzy

Has it really been a month since my last post? Doesn't seem that long, but I guess blogger wouldn't make it up. Yeah, probably not.

Well, I've been taking a mini vacation from working on the book this month. I didn't plan to, but that's what happened. And I'm okay with it. Really. No, really. Okay! So I get a little cranky when I don't write. There, I've said it. And what have I been doing instead, you ask? Not a lot. Video games. The occasional movie. Finally jumping on the RSS bandwagon. Tennis and nerd games.

I've given myself July, but come August I will be back to writing. I've cleared off the desk, and it's time to get back to work.

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Now playing: David Crowder Band - A Beautiful Collision
via FoxyTunes

We interrupt this new music week to bring you an exclusive bulletin:

Much to the delight of my music-loving self, I (and my sister and two of her friends) have secured tickets to go see Great Big Sea in October! The closest show to my current location? 8+ hours away in Albuquerque, NM. Awesome.

Hopefully, the new GBS CD will be in my mailbox tomorrow.

My webiness has waned in the last few weeks, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was just 'net overload that made me back off from facebook, twitter, urbis, and this very blog. The thing is, I didn't really even realize that I was doing it, and I didn't miss them much. I'll try to remedy that by stuffing as many links as possible in this post.

Tuesdays are climbing back up on my list of favorite weekdays. Since we've got fancy cable now, BBC America is my go-to channel. Besides Gordon Ramsay yelling at every chef in the UK, they've got comedy night on Tuesdays. The 1st show is Coupling, which I've seen before, followed by my current favorite show Not Going Out (I had an instant crush on Lee Mack and am still trying to figure out exactly how that happened.), with Absolutely Fabulous bringing up the rear. Apparently AF was a very popular show in its day, but I've got to admit that I just don't get it yet. I'm still watching to see if I will understand it one day. If someone told me they arranged for me to live in England, I'd take the offer in a second.

The other reason Tuesday are great? New music! This morning before work I picked up Coldplay's new cd. I saw Coldplay last time they came to the city, and they're coming back this summer. Friday night is the KC Clifford concert/cd release, and next Tuesday Great Big Sea's new cd should be arriving in my mailbox from our northern neighbors (Canada, not Kansas). I would love, love, love to see them live, but I have a feeling that would require a special trip north for my favorite Canadians; they don't seem to do much touring outside of the Northern states.

It's full-on storming here today, with lightning and thunder and flooding roads. My favorite weather, actually. And today's soundtrack is brilliant.

This week mental_floss has got a guest blogger- a grammarian! She's written some really nice refresher pieces on grammar and punctuation, and an interesting etymology piece. Tomorrow she's answering reader questions. Check it out. Your commas will thank you.

By the way, June is shaping up to be a lovely music month. Well, late June, that is, as both Great Big Sea and KC Clifford are delivering new music to their fans and soon-to-be fans. Let the countdown and change collection begin!

Another week, and I'm looking back thinking, "Where did it go?"

I got some work done on the book, but not enough. Last night we had yet another tornado scare, and I had to rush home from the grocery store to make sure my sister had stopped panicking. And it's hard to concentrate when you know the weatherman could tell you to seek shelter at any moment. Hopefully tornado season will be over soon.

I've gone back to editing a hard copy rather than directly on the computer. For now, I think it's best. I'm working on the first 12 chapters, and I've posted the first 8 on Urbis to get some stranger feedback. This is where the frustration kicks in.

Urbis is a great writing community site. If you're a writer and you want to get useful criticism on your work, I recommend it. The only problem is that you have to wade through some of the less-than-helpful reviews to get to the good stuff. Lately I've been longing for some specific criticism, and I get fluff that doesn't help at all.

Am I going to stop using Urbis? Certainly not. Several of my submissions are the top-rated in the YA category, and I intend to add to that list. If nothing else, there is the thrill of seeing that someone new has read my work, and the tension of wondering whether they will like it or not.

All week I've been trying to get back to editing the book, and all week I've been failing big time. It's not a lack of desire. I've got that in abundance. But when I open up Copywrite, I just end up staring at the words and wondering where I was and how I get back there. So I printed the twelve-ish chapters I had seriously manipulated in the last 3 months and started reading them again. I didn't know what to expect, but it was a decent way to start.

Today I had lunch at a little mafia-themed pizzeria in Edmond. Armed with a slice of pepperoni, I disobeyed the direct order on the pizza rules list and ate most of it with my fork while I finished reading and marking up chapter one.

I felt good about my accomplishments, strangely enough. I didn't take much out, but I added a few bits, and none of it felt like fluff. I'm going to see if I can copy that success in a few more chapters this weekend. Wish me luck.

Well I should really be writing or reading or something non-laptop related, but I wanted to stop by the blog before I pry myself away from the keyboard.

The truth is, this blog is boring.

There are a number of reasons.

1) I am a boring person. Ask anyone who knows me in real life.
2) When I think "Internet time!" I rarely think "Blog time!" Sorry, but it's true. What else is occupying my attention? Oh, just this and this and this.
3) The readership of this blog is slim. I know it was bigger back in its heyday, but that was about 2 years ago(!) and it's my own fault for neglecting it.
4) My next door neighbors are smoking, Nickleback-lovin' boys who play their music at teeth-rattling levels and fill our apartment with the stench of their nicotene habit.
5) #4 doesn't have anything to do with the blog, but it's taking up a lot of my thought space. (Here it comes again. I'm going to have to close the window...Somebody get me a candle!)

So I've been thinking, maybe it's time to shake things up. Maybe even (gasp) move the blog elsewhere. Meet new bloggers. Waste my time on other sites. Blogger, you've been good to me, but maybe we need to see other people...

No firm plans yet. If I load up the posts and move somewhere else, I'll let you know.

Goodnight, and don't pollute your neighbors' air!

Confession: I usually start the day by inking in a few answers to a crossword puzzle. I find it helps my brain get from that groggy dreamworld to the real one where I need to operate a moving vehicle and talk to people in complete sentences. Various puzzle books are scattered around my house, car, and purse. I like doing them while waiting in the drive-through line or in the theater before a movie starts. Wednesdays mean a new NY Times crossword in the OK Gazette; they're by far the most difficult, and also the most rewarding puzzles to complete.

I just stumbled across this little tidbit of crossword history on Neatorama. Click and learn.

You may have heard the joke that there's really only one fruitcake in the world, and it just keeps getting passed around every Christmas season.

As I was carrying yet another cardboard box this afternoon, I thought the same might be true of cardboard boxes. Not that there is just one, as I currently have several scattered throughout my house, but that their numbers are fewer than we might think because we keep using the same ones over and over. I didn't have to buy a single box; I got them from offices and friends' offices, and after we empty them this weekend, my sister's friend is going to take all the good ones so she can use them to pack. Who knows how far the boxes will travel before they become too broken down and re-taped to be used again?

I'm moving tomorrow. After a few months of thinking about and planning for the moment, it's finally arrived. I will spend the rest of the evening packing, because my genius plan to be finished a week ago somehow didn't happen. I'm debatin whether or not I can/should go without sleep tonight, if the need arises.

I'm looking forward to getting back to writing. I've really missed it the last couple of weeks.

It's been a rough week all around. Writing's been kind of slow and not consisting of progress that word counts can measure. Instead of adding, I've been cutting a lot of fluff this week. Sure, it means better quality, but the quantity is down by several hundred or even a couple thousand words. I know it shouldn't mean a lot, but it's somewhat disheartening. I can see the end, but I just don't know how to get there. And I think I've actually put up a few obstacles for myself. Plus, I've still got lots of packing to do in the next 3 weeks. I'm looking forward to being in the new place, but the transition is rough.

Trying to soothe myself with movies of the literary ilk this week. Finding Neverland, Stranger than Fiction, etc. If you can't read books, at least watch TV that's book-related, right?

If you haven't heard of KC Clifford or been lucky enough to hear her music, I am sad for you. Her music is AMAZING! Sadly, I do not have enough words to describe it.

But what I can offer you is your own taste of KC! At her last concert at the Blue Door in OKC, she recorded a live CD (woo hoo!) and taped a song for a little thing called YouTube. You may have heard of it. My friends and I are in the second row on the right, singin' along.



This is only a teeny, tiny slice of the greatness that is KC. Ooh, I cannot wait for the live CD!

Rock Band was a major success, people. I'm not sure how many folks we crammed into Blake's house, but it must have shattered the non-holiday record. There is even video evidence of the shindig on Stephen's facebook page, because it would be difficult to believe how much fun we were having if you weren't there to see it.

The morning after Rock Band was a killer. I woke up Saturday morning (and by that I mean 10:30 after going to sleep around 2:30) with the kind of headache that makes me want to stay in bed. I pounded out a few hundred words on the story before giving up and spending a few hours on the couch watching Some Assembly Required on the Discovery Channel and learned how to make Tennesse whiskey & barrels, cat's eye marbles, cheese, and some other stuff I can't remember right now. Informative and entertaining. Just how I like my TV to be.

Please forgive me; I just laughed (heartily) at my own joke.

Co-worker (looking at coffeepot, toaster over): Do we not have a microwave?
Me: (pointing to the other side of the kitchen) We do, it's over here by itself.
Co-worker: Oh.
Me: It didn't play well with the other appliances.

The worst part was that I started laughing somewhere in the middle of the word "appliances" because I realized what I was about to say, and I almost ruined the whole thing. But my co-worker laughed just as heartily at the same time, so I didn't feel as bad. It turns out that I work in a pretty funny office. They are beginning to see that I can keep up.


I'm a little nerdy when it comes to grammar. I haven't figured out how to look at something without proofreading it at the same time- that goes for TV commercials, websites, song lyrics, and anything in print. If I see it, I see what's wrong with it. On one hand I think it's good that I know this stuff because someone out there doesn't, and needs to, and I might be able to help them. On the other hand I think, "Why don't people know this stuff? And who is letting these people write when they don't know how?"

I don't know why I'm such a grammar geek. I remember that in middle and high I could finish my English assignments before most kids could crack open their books. Finding this website the other day made me very happy. Now I may not remember any algebra or calculus or understand most scientific stuff, but grammar made sense to me.

Language, to me, is a lot about respect. The way you speak to your grandmother and the way you talk about the jerk who just cut you off in traffic are probably very different. It's not just about what you say, it's about how you're saying it. And that rolls over into how you write it, too. If you're not taking the time to make sure you're putting out something that is correct, how much do you respect the people who have to wade through your mistakes?

I was editing some text for a newsletter this morning, and it almost gave me fits. The basic rules of capitalization are simple; capitalize the first word of a sentence, titles and proper names. I know you can find documents from a few hundred years back in which every "important" word gets the same treatment, but we got away from that. At least, I thought we had. There were capitals everywhere! Between the capitals and the unnecessary commas, I spent most of the morning on a job that could have taken an hour or two. Arg.

I'm not saying I am mistake-free. I tend to add letters to words that don't need them, and I always have to think about words like 'sentence' and 'independence' when I type them. But for a girl who is a fan of prescriptive grammar, it's hard to live in a world of text message shortcuts and disregard for basic grammar rules. We don't let people go around believing that 5+7 is cupcake. Why should this be any different?

But enough of that. Tonight we're having a devo to kick off the MRCC 24 hours of prayer and playing Rock Band afterwards! If that isn't the weirdest combination ever, I don't know what is.

Enjoy your weekend!

Well friends, after several days of consideration, I've decided to renew the ol' blog. Why, you ask? (Yes you did. I heard you.)

1. Although I've recently been putting myself out on the 'net in various forms lately via Facebook and Twitter and Urbis, there is something to be said for having a place to jot down completely random thoughts in the manner that blogging allows (FYI, this used to be done with a couple of things called 'pen' and 'journal').

2. I've been more dedicated to actually finishing my novel lately, and it's would be a good idea to chart my progress, rant, and what-have-you instead of driving a few people crazy with my constant talk of the book. Some people are already miles past Fed Up With Me. It may be too late for them.

3. I missed it. I missed the kind of writing that I can do when blogging. And even if I have a total readership of 1, I know that one person will enjoy what she's reading.


So, for the first time in a long time, I get to type this:

Enjoy your day!