November 2008 Archives

Got my green bar today, ahead of schedule.

Now I just have to finish this sucker. I have no idea how it is going to end!!!

The joy is back! After absolutely loving the feeling of my first NaNo (I wrote 64K words in 21 days with no idea what I was going to write until the characters started yammering in my brain on 3 November), the magic was gone. I still loved NaNo for what it did for me—got me writing with no excuses—and loved that I had a completed novel at the end of it.

But it was never the same as that first NaNo.

Until now.

And I think I have Chris’ Golden Rule to thank.

I've accepted and completed the challenge. Please join me.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3129303

The Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator is addictive.

My favorite so far?

"Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Blue's Clues and M*A*S*H. The story should use Arbor Day as a plot device!"

Arbor Day??!?!

So, I've got two society girls in my NaNovel this year. I know NOTHING about society girls! :) Matt and I were hanging out last night, cuddling with the puppies on the couch, and the show we were watching finished. So, I started flipping through channels and found an E! True Hollywood Story episode called "Society Girls." Heh. I told Matt that we HAD to watch (totally not his cuppa!) for research for my novel. I wasn't sure I'd really learn anything in the 20 minutes of the show that was left, but it was worth a shot.

And I did actually get some insight! AND one of the society girls in my story--well, I didn't like what her dad was currently doing to keep the family fortune alive, and I didn't like what she was aspiring to be when she graduated from college. It just wasn't quite "right". Well, thanks to the show, I realized exactly what her dad was doing AND what she wanted to do, too!

Yay!

I can shut off many of my Inner Editors. My spelling/punctuation editor I have to beat to submission, but I can generally wrestle that one into its cage.

The one I cannot control--at all--is my Research Inner Editor. I. Can't. Do. It.

It's really annoying me knowing that if I had all of my characters set before November 1, I could have gotten this research out of the way in October.

Oh well. I am sure that RIE and I will learn to co-exist and work out a compromise soon.

Thank God. I was starting to get worried!

The final verdict: original fiction!

It's almost 7:30. I still haven't written a word. I keep vacillating on what I want to write. I think a lot of the problem is that I started thinking of my 2003 NaNovel a few weeks ago, and all I want to do is work on that. I also have no ideas for an original plot. I have a bunch of ideas for fanfic, but I am soooo burnt out on fanfic right now after killing myself to post before my Jixaversary and trying to get the Halloween story out at the last minute. Plus, I really want to do original. But then I think of how nice it was to have a stockpile of fanfic waiting for me so I didn't go inactive.

Argh! I hate writer's block! If I've been struck by it this early, I'm dead in the water.

...I've decided to do original fiction. That could change, though--despite the fact that it is November 3, and I should have decided already. Had an insanely busy weekend and decided to start writing in earnest today. We'll see what I come up with!

I also just calculated how much I wrote in the last couple of weeks between all of the meeting summaries and the Halloween story. Between October 20 and October 31, I wrote 34,638 words. And two of those days I didn't write anything. So, I basically did 70% of NaNo (wordwise) in one-third of the time. I'm not totally burnt out on writing or anything!

I also got a call at 5:30 pm on Friday asking me to write a summary this week because the person supposed to do it couldn't, and the person who promised to do it for this other person decided at the last minute that she couldn't either. So, I thought I only had one summary to write this week, and now I've got two. I'm sick to death of summaries!