Within You

I finished NaNo the  day before Thanksgiving! :)

I still have quite a way to go until I'm finished with the actual novel. And I'm forcing myself to "get it done, not get it right."

I will post more details when I'm home. Right now I am in the Atlanta airport waiting to get home...

I'm not sure if I should post the rest of my novel here or not until I've edited.... What do you think?

I am continuing with my novel, but I will be away from the computer ... I just wanted to let everyone know that I am not quitting ........

On Friday night, I went to the all night write-in. I wanted to be a bit fashionably late, but I ended up being later than I wanted to because of traffic. Anyway, I was kind of nervous walking up to the church where the event was held. Would I be the only "uncool" person there? Umm... as soon as I opened the door to the over-stuffed, narrow room that we started out in, I felt completely at home. Lots of teacherish/writing/glasses wearing nerds populated the couches that lined either side of the room.

All the couches were full, so found a link to a powercord and squeezed myself into the back corner of the room. After a while, some others came in late and set up shop back there with me. It ended up that about five of us were crammed into a tiny space as we waited for the wedding rehearsal elsewhere in the church to finish so we could move and be more comfortable for the rest of the night.

After we moved into a more spacious room and set up tables and power outlets and such, it turned out that I sat with two of the people I had "bonded" with in the crevice of the other room. One of them was wearing a shirt that said, "Geek." When I commented on it, she said, "Well, I'm a librarian, so I think it fits." It turned out she graduated from the same online program as me at TWU and just obtained a library job in a small district nearby. Small world.

Soon we were joined by a woman with a huge fistfull of pencils and a notebook, and the three of us had a wonderful time acting like complete idiots.

I ended up writing over 6,000 words that night and left around 1:30 to go home because, well, the stress of the rest of my life outside this novel was encroaching.

Basically, yesterday and today I had to finish grading essays, complete the CSS project part of my webpage for a class, help my mom babysit my nephew and niece (that was the fun part), go to church (which I skipped a lot of today), clean up the house a little bit for when my husband gets home from out of town, do laundry, and plan stuff for what I'm teaching tomorrow.

All of that is done now, and hubby is home! YAY!

In order to bolster my word count while Ryan is at a wedding this weekend, I am going to a NaNoWriMo "all nighter" taking place at a church in the Dallas/Fort Worth area!! It sounds really fun, and I could really use the 7pm-7am time frame to MAKE myself write. I've never done anything like going to an event like this all by myself, but I guess it is officially time for me to step out of my comfort zone. I doubt I will stay the full time, but if I can knock some words out between 7pm - 12 am or something like that, I will be so proud of myself, be that much closer to finishing, and will possibly be able to recover from fatigue over the course of Saturday and Sunday. I'm going to wear the nerdy NaNo shirt I bought!

I'll let you all know what happens!

The higher my word count gets, the easier it seems to be to keep going.. I guess it's just a confidence thing. I am getting into some areas of my plot that are kind of vague. I know basically what I want to happen, but I'm not sure how much of each thing I want... I'm not used to pacing myself for this...

Also, guess what I found myself writing today? Oh, yeah, that's right. Visions of Greatness. I can't count any of those words for NaNo, but I had a little extra time at work ... and did I grade some extra papers or try to get a few hundred more words on this novel? NO! I suddenly became unblocked on Chapter 16 and just wrote for a while. Weird, I know. I decided I'm not going to do it again, but that probably means that I will...

My goal is to get to 15,171 today... Don't ask about the random number.

I'm realizing now more than ever that I need to write like crazy because I can't count on having much writing time that last week in November. My husband seemed a little cranky when I mentioned writing at night after we'd gone to bed while visiting the in-laws. I'm glad he does understand how important this is to me, though.

When discussing NaNo and our Thanksgiving trip, he let me know that laptops are overall too bulky to use on a flight. Maybe in first-class it works, but it doesn't work where the rest of the peons have to sit. I was starting to hyperventilate because I was counting on the flight there and back as some massive writing time. What else am I going to do.

So, based only on the sheer fact that he loves me, Ryan got on Ebay and bought me an infrared keyboard that will attach to my Palm phone so that I can write on the plane. I have a small version of Office on my phone (that I've never had a reason to use), so I can just type it into a document there and then transfer it over. His one condition is that I can't get to typing at a loud, lightning speed because: "I love you, so I can tolerate just about anything. But I think everyone else on the plane will want to kill you."

MWAHAHA! I have the best man in the world! :)

Today I broke 10,000! That was my goal, and now that I have reached it, I feel such power (mwahahaha) and definitely must continue on. I am going to try to step up my game this weekend because my husband is working midnights. We'll see how many words I can get done tonight. I wanna get ahead on the weekends because of how busy I get during the week. Also, I really am not sure how much I'll get to write during Thanksgiving break in Indiana.

My morale went down hill last night big time, but today it is back up. I'm reading some little teeny-bopper books in this genre this month as I get time.. and the one I'm reading right now (Perfect You) is within range of what I think the quality of this will be when it's done. I don't think it's brain science to publish in that genre. No offense to anyone...

ANYWAY, I met my word quota for today which makes me feel good. I'm going to try to do that every day.

When my husband is working this weekend, I'm going to try to get a little bit ahead. My little spreadsheet I have REALLY motivates me when I see all the stats. Let me know if you want it, and I'll send you the link to it.

As of today I have 5660 words... I worked on my novel a little during my advisory period. I had said that I wasn't going to write and work, and I think this will be my last foray into it. It's kind of annoying when people start throwing paper balls. It makes it hard to really get in the zone. I was able to get out 590 words then, though.

Tonight, my writing just came so easily. I just go off on any tangent I think of, and I'm trying not to reread too much so that I don't start thinking I just massively suck. I kind of already do, but this is fun... so I'll just go with it.

On November 14 (Friday), I am going to try to pull an all-nighter. My husband is leaving town to go to a wedding, so I'll have the house all to myself and Saturday to recuperate if necessary. Also, when we go to visit the in-laws over Thanksgiving break, I'm going to take my laptop on the plane so I can write during all those flying hours. If I need a break from in-law stress, I'll just go hide upstairs and nap/write. :P