Tag Archives: Twixt

Just Stuff, NaNoWriMo, Thoughts, Twixt

Just Keep Swimming… Just Keep Swimming…

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Ever feel like Dory? I don’t usually post videos here but I’ve had Dory stuck in my brain an awful lot so far this month, so I thought I’d share the expirience.

I feel rather a lot more like I’m drowning than swimming these days.

I’ve fallen behind on my psych course and frankly, I don’t know what I was thinking taking it in the first place. It’s a history of psych course which requires more memorization without context than my brain is used to handling. I read things, I understand them, I move on, I forget them. It’s horrible. So it’s taking me far longer to wade through than it should, but I’m still trying.

It’s also NaNoWriMo month and I’m embroiled in that again. Here’s the thing. The past few years NaNoWriMo has been a cake walk for me. I type pretty fast and if I turn off my inner editor it’s ridiculously easy for me to pump out 50,000 words in 30 days. However, I’m at a stage in my writing where I’m not interested in writing crap. I also no longer type my first drafts. Since the last NaNo I’ve switched to writing my first drafts out long hand. (I think I blogged about this before, I’m not going to go into detail about it again today). While I may be able to type a few thousand words an hour I can’t say the same for my writing. I have horrible handwriting and if I want to make it legible enough to be able to read it later, that takes time (and it’s still horrible). The process is also slower for mental reasons as well as physical — I think about what I’m writing more longhand. That makes for less crap, but more time.

Time is not something I have a lot of right now.

Danica and I have fallen behind on our poetry prompts, and I’ve only done one zombie poem since the month began.

Right now things aren’t looking good LOL

Not for NaNo, not for many of my November goals. School, obviously, has to take priority over NaNoWriMo or zombie poems (and to some extent even over my project with Dani), so I’ve been giving it most of my attention. Trying to fit other things in in between. It’s been an adventure.

I considered switching back to typing for November, but decided I’d rather keep working slowly toward having a reasonable first draft of this novel eventually than writing 50,000 words in November just to keep up a record or win a .pdf certificate I’m unlikely to even print.

Wow, I sound cynical.

I’m not… at least not as much as that sounded. I’m still hoping to cross the finish line, I’m working to re-arrange things and find some more writing time and get through this coursework too. I haven’t given up yet, but I am feeling more than a little overwhelmed.

But, I’m still swimming.

How about you?

Goals, NaNoWriMo, Twixt

NaNoWriMo Goals

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Dude, where’s October gone?

It’s NaNoWriMo eve, and while I can’t get super hyped or whatever about it anymore, I’m doing it again this year, and that means I needed to set some goals. One of the best ways I find to accomplish my goals is to share them with the world — then there’s some external pressure (whether it’s real or not doesn’t matter, I feel like it’s there) and that is very motivating. If you’re me.

November Writing Goals

  • At least 50,000 words toward a first draft of my novel ‘Richter’. (I’m calling it a paranormal mystery for lack of a better genre. At least until it’s been written :))
  • 30 poems, one a day, based on prompts from the November Poem-a-Day challenge. All with zombie themes in order to give me the last pieces I need to put together a zombie poetry chapbook
  • Work with Danica on a poetry project. I’m not putting a specific poem goal here because the challenge in this will be learning to work together and have fun with it, not on the finished project.

Let’s see how it goes, shall we? 🙂

As for the picture, I just thought it looked ‘autumn-y’. I took it for a collaborative project I was doing.

See The Sky Again, Shadows, Twixt

Writing Retreat

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My critique group is holding our first (of many, we hope) writing retreat next weekend. I’m very excited about it, but I have a problem. I don’ t know what to write on it.

My first pick would be the re-write of Shadows, but I won a critique of the first 100 pages of Shadows by Deena Fisher from Drollerie Press and she hasn’t finished the critique yet. I don’t want to start the rewrite based on the critique of the first chaper I got from Jim C. Hines and then have to re-rewrite it once I get the one from Ms. Fisher. If that makes any sense. So Shadows is still on hold. *sigh*

There is a paranormal drama/mystery novel bouncing about in my head, but I’m going to be taking a novel writing course this fall (mostly to have deadlines. I NEED deadlines in order to have focus. More about this later) and I was going to use that plot as the novel I’d work on for the course. I got the impression the course was going to have a specific novel writing system it wanted to teach, so if I’m going to give it a fair try, starting the novel ahead of time seems like a bad idea.

The collaborative project I’m working on will take up some of my time on the retreat, but because of the nature of the project, it won’t fill the weekend. Not even close.

That leaves ‘See The Sky Again’ which is a fantasy novel set in Aphanasia that I am looking forward to writing. I was going to do it for my NaNo novel last year but decided against it because I hadn’t sorted out enough of the details yet. I think I know enough to write it now…my only hesitation is that I’ll be starting this novel on my retreat, then starting the other one for my course in October. Think I can get the first draft of See The Sky Again done before then?

I guess we’ll find out…

In other, picture-related news, I think I’m going to put the bulk of the rest of my vacation photos up on My Facebook Page rather than taking this blog over with them.

Except for this picture I took at Alcatraz that I love.

And maybe a few more inserted one at a time into blog posts.

🙂

Alcatraz