Spoiled!

Christmas has come and gone, and with one wonderful family get-together around one succulent turkey feast. Presents unwrapped, wine sipped, rolled home stuffed like the birds of yore and tumbling into deep, comfy sleep.

Today is Boxing Day, the day after. In communities across Canada, people are lining the malls and spending whatever money they either have left or received as a gift. But not in my home town. No, Boxing Day keeps its malls all boxed up. No shopping for this northern Ontario town!

Which suits me fine.

It’s a day of lounge pants and chai tea, a Top Chef marathon running on the TV while I spread out on my bed surrounded by the animals of the house. And while I lounge and goof around, I’m playing through my new toys: Notebook by Circus Ponies and a shiny black Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch tablet!

*dances* Nerd life! *dances*

Notebook I’d tried (and loved) before NaNoWriMo. I know I mentioned it near the end of October. What I didn’t mention is that, after a week of messing around with it and with NaNoWriMo LOOMING I knew that if I didn’t remove it from my hard drive, I would end up messing around with it all month and not actually write anything.

So I wiped it from the hard drive and put it on my Christmas list.

The tablet was a surprise addition to that list, once I realized the Notebook offered that sort of functionality and when I realized how affordable tablet add-ons are these days. Tablet basics have been covered, so now I’m knee-deep in Notebook tutorials. It will still be a massive undertaking to move the mountains of data I have into Notebook, but I have a week to do so. Starting January 1st, I’m back on the writing wagon, as well as the pack-up-all-my-stuff wagon.

Which, in turn, will lead to the unpack-all-my-stuff wagon, which will then become my make-my-place-a-creativity-den wagon. Booyah!

Back to nerding out! Hope your holidays were all they could be!

Raising a Glass

As of around 11:30 am yesterday, relief came texting through in a note from Todd advising that the final counter offer on the house was accepted.

It’s done.

After a week or so of dickering back and forth, a mutually acceptable agreement has been reached. We are to be out as of February 1st, and this portion of my life will be at a close.

I was going to type “will be mercifully closed,” but that would be both unfair and unkind. Todd and I have had a spectacular ten years together and I’m sad, maybe a bit wrecked, to see the end of it. The merciful part is only in that the ending, now that it has come, is quick. Breaking up is hard to do, even for the right reasons. Hell, I think that makes it harder. Plus, there were concerns that selling the house would be a dragged out process. If the final counter offer hadn’t been accepted we would be forced to wait even longer, starting from scratch when we had already made arrangements to be out at a certain date. We both want to move on.

But no worries now. All engines are go. We are cleared for take off.

And I’m excited, truth be told. While the technical aspects of getting all my stuff out of here before February 1st will be a challenge, I always did like a good move. Gets the blood pumping while you focus on the task. Gets you looking at all your junks and treasures again, giving you a chance to redefine and rebuild yourself. I will out of necessity have to put on my space economizing hat, as the apartment is much smaller than the current sprawl I’m used to. But if there was one thing I got out of my summers away is that I don’t need, or even like, a lot of space. Concise, functional, and whimsical — that’s what it will be.

So I opened up a bottle of wine last night and toasted to the selling of the house and to the New Year ahead.

And to writing.

It may be a skoosh early for a retrospective of the year, but why not?

2009, up until about the beginning of November, was the best year I’ve had as far as my writing is concerned. I’ve connected with a group of writers who have become very important to me. I wrote more words this year then ever before. I finished three short stories. (“Drafts only!” my inner critic shouts from the back of the room.) I finished my second novel. (“Only a draft!!” she squeals again before I lob a pillow at her.) I even submitted a short story for publication. (“Edited, I might add,” I say to the critic, who is giving me the silent treatment.)

But most importantly, I see the path ahead. Writing isn’t a magical process, something impossible or something other people do. It only took twenty years, but now I see it for what it is. Like cooking, writing is one part science and one part art. And I can do science. I can do art.

I can do this.

Here’s to 2010. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas. May you find yourself at peace, surrounded by family and friends. And may the New Year be as fantastic as you make it to be!

Holding Pattern

Came home early from work with a pretty delicious headache. I had every intention of napping after popping some pain killers, but the caffeine in the migraine pills is keeping me annoyingly alert. Oh well, fuzzy slippers and mint tea for the win.

Still waiting to hear on the house. The inspection took place on the 18th, and we’re waiting on pins and needles for the final answer so that we can either move forward or get back to pounding the pavement for another buyer. I hate waiting.

And Christmas, as it always does, is rearing its head. I’m ready for it, as melancholy as it will be this year, and know where I will be on Christmas morning. A relief, because up until yesterday I didn’t know where I would be waking up. I’ll be bundling the gifts, the groceries, the cat and my computer to my parents for a quiet, reflective holiday.

Did have a writing-group shindig for the holidays. Our normal meeting spot was booked out for the night, so we relocated to my place for pizza and Rock Band. We were supposed to write — even had the old Writing Toy Box out — but we ended up just rocking out. Great time had by all. Mental note: a glass of wine does nothing for the singing pipes. I was rocking out with Queen up until that glass of Pinot Grigio.

This is just a touch-base post. An “I’m alive, if not writing…” post. I may be more discouraged at losing the draft of the most recent novel than I thought I was. May need to do something else instead. May need to just force myself back at it, a day of writing and nothing else. Perhaps the weekend following Christmas.

Just hate being in the house alone. It’s not mine anymore. I feel like an interloper and long for the resolution that February will bring.

Timelines

We have a tentative sale for the house. Things can always change and if conditions are not met the house will not be sold, but right now, we have an offer, we have accepted, and we have a date to work towards.

February 1st, 2010.

It’s both too far away and too close. So much to do. Not sure if we will keep showing the house during this next week or so. We might be. I don’t know. I think we talked about it but it’s such a blur right now. Everything’s all running together.

I’m supposed to be excited.

Yeah. About that.

I have about a month and a half. Not sure how things will work on first of February. We have to be out, we have to be settled, but will I have the apartment ready? Nothing will be ready. Living out of boxes labeled with black marker. Missing simple, stupid things, like hair ties and toothpaste and slipper socks. Making do with what’s at hand, like you’re trying out for the poor man’s MacGyver. Learning all the new ticks of a new apartment, the sounds of the pipes, the texture of the floor, the angles and the places where your elbow will bounce and your toe will stub.

The cat will be interesting. He’s been to the place where my apartment is, but not the apartment itself. Not sure how he’s going to handle things. He may be lonely. (Metaphor much?) I’ve toyed with the idea of another cat, but not right away. There is a cat upstairs that may provide all the extra entertainment he can handle.

Not that any of this has anything to do with writing.

Last night was somewhat productive. I’ve discovered that doing prep work away from home is a little challenging, because invariably I don’t have the ability to lug around the books I want to use while I’m world building. Still, I managed to free-write what I remember of the first six chapters or so. (Why is it always six chapters?) I haven’t yet re-started the actual draft. Well, except for the first line, “She ran.” Bit of a cheat, really, but at least it’s a start.

I have the weekend ahead of me. Turning inward, working on my own little projects and the novel will be one of them.

Still looking for some joie de vive, though. If you have any to spare . . .

Building a Raft

After one final attempt with Carbonite customer support, I have come to terms that the novel I started for NaNoWriMo is gone for good.

A moment of silence for the lost novel.

(. . .)

Okay, that was enough time.

Monday night was the first time I got to go to the Monday night write-in and I decided to begin again there. No actual words, but rebuilding the cast list, finding my name list, and knocking down the basic scenes. Taking the debris from the sunken ship and lashing it together into something that floats and orienting myself back to the island where I saw that story. It was a short session — we were driven out by Christmas carolers — but it felt satisfying to get back to it, even peripherally.

It was strange. It was upsetting, to lose the words, but not crushing the way it would have been even a couple of years ago. So I write it again. So what? It will be better.

Tomorrow night is our Thursday night get-together. More prep work and also phase outlining of what I can remember having written. I’m feeling good. Confident. Happy.

And The Ship Goes Down

Remember life exploding?

Yeah, it did that. It’s better now.

For the most part, I stopped writing for the remainder of November. I did get about 1,500 words written here and there at a few of the meetings. I still liked the novel, and still planned to continue it once I got back on my mental feet. Even managed to figure out the next scene and gotten half way through it. Cast another character as well, finding a picture that I added to a separate file folder and then put all the pictures into the Scrivener file proper. Felt good. Very productive.

That was the second last meeting, November 26th.

In the meantime, I’d noticed significant slow downs on the Macbook. No longer the svelte little number that booted nearly instantly, the Macbook was chugging far more than it used to. I figured it was because the hard drive was damn near full, so I thought I’d best do something proactive. I picked up a terabyte and a half external drive on November 28th. Like a good girl, I let the Mac run Time Machine on the external drive and then moved over the podcasts and movie files off the computer and onto the drive and made sure iTunes knew where everything could be located. I thought I was such a clever thing. Everything was working perfectly, and now not only did I have Carbonite running in the background, I also had Time Machine, including a scan of the hard drive before I started moving things around!

Thursday past was our regular meeting, and I was ready to get back to it. Had my notes, had my last (and unfinished) scene in my head, ready to go.

Only the novel was no where to be found.

I didn’t panic. Not then. Had this weird giddiness take over. Ended up chatting with my fellow writers as I methodically searched the hard drive for any telltale trace of the file. My folder of graphics was there, but the Scrivener file? Like it never existed. I tried searching on Carbonite’s off-site web interface but found it similarly empty, which I expected; Carbonite passively backs up what’s there, and if it’s not there, gets removed (as I understand it).

But I still had the new drive, which had taken a complete snapshot of the entire Mac just two days after the meeting when I’d last used the file. Don’t panic, I told myself. Look when you get home.

Well, I looked. And it wasn’t there.

I have to say that while I cried and shouted and then went numb, I did react better than the time I thought I lost 6 chapters of the last novel (tho’ I ended up recovering those…) where the crying and the shouting had lasted a lot longer. I contacted Carbonite customer support and we’re still trying to see whether or not they have an older cache of my files. For Window’s users, they have backups going back three months that you can access through their program. For Mac users, not so much, but I am betting (hoping, really) that it’s only because as a new release for the Mac, the interface doesn’t support it but the system still passively keeps three months of backups for every customer. After a half an hour through live chat, I’ve since sent some emails back and forth with the pertinent details, so there is still some hope.

Tonight, ironically enough, is the NaNoWriMo Thank God It’s Over (TGIO) party. I not only failed to complete NaNoWriMo, but my measly 13,000-word effort is now gone. I really don’t deserve to go. The only reason I’m going is because I made my super macaroni and cheese and it’s lonely in my house that won’t be my house for much longer. I was really looking forward to this weekend, but I’m getting more melancholy as it wears on.

Yes, I said I was holding out hope, but I’m not really.

It’s gone.

The best that can be done is to phase-outline what I remember ASAP. But I’ve got no spark for the work and tomorrow will be a series of interruptions, both welcome and non-welcome, which will fracture the day in a half dozen pieces that won’t be good for much of anything.

See? Melancholy. I gotcha melancholy right here.

Hiatus

Life has sort of … well, as’ploded on me.

I’ll be back.  Just gotta lick my wounds a little.

There has been no writing of any kind being done.  (A lie.  I managed 750 or so odd words at the last write-in I attended.  But nothing else.)

I’m casting out for solid land and hope to find some rest in the coming year, so the sub-heading for this blog will remain appropriate for one more year.

And then?

 

I don’t know.

A Full Day Ahead

Before I have written a word today, I have hit 10,007 words. That’s the expected minimum on day six and it felt good to get that done last night. The goal is to get today’s word count again so that I will only be one day behind when I get back from my little weekend getaway.

That said, I’m up stupidly, annoyingly early. Since 5:00am, more or less. We dropped off the cat last night in hope of getting a full nights sleep but it’s backfired, at least for me. So here I sit, groggily sipping peach and mango white tea while I clean off my desk and get ready for today’s session.

What’s been a pleasant surprise has been the book itself.

As I think I’ve mentioned else-post, every NaNoWriMo that I’ve participated in has been with, at the very least, a sensible outline. Specifically:

1st NaNo — I had characters and cultures and maps and magic and a beginning, middle and end. Sure, I deviated, but the bones of it were there.
2nd NaNo — I had characters and world building a beginning, middle and end. This one sort of plays out like a horror flick in my head. I should have been able to complete it, but I had a massive two-week trip in the middle of November and I couldn’t get past that.
3rd NaNo — I used NaNo to work on the WIP, again with characters and detailed world building and a beginning, middle and end.

This year? Not so much.

Before NaNo, I sat down with a notebook and listed all the ideas I could recall off the top of my head that I’d had that had novel-size potential. I was about seven or eight down, going from the most outlined to the least outlined, when a setting more than a plot scampered through my grey matter. It was a just a single image in my head, conjured up years ago when I was coming up with a Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM) RPG setting for a corner of the world I wasn’t going to use right away. Essentially — gothic church, dangerous wood, stained glass, running girl. There was slightly more to it than that for the RPG setting, spun from that image then, but that initial picture came back to me very strongly.

And then the image stood up and down, waving like a spaz. Didn’t really give me much choice.

A few things came quickly after that. I did some mind mapping and decided on three characters. My protagonist cast herself right away, like she’d been hiding behind a curtain waiting for the right time to come out. Same with her father. Her love interest/co-protagonist followed, though casting him visually took a bit of doing. I brainstormed on the words gothic and wolf and found myself with several conflicts that would blend well together. I also decided, early on, that unlike the first two novel-length works I’ve managed to finish (at least in draft form), this story would have the romance be a primary element. I dashed down about ten scenes that came to me, including the opening scene, which was a gift.

I have no idea how it ends, but that’s not bothering me. That has gotten me in trouble before with previous unfinished novels; I didn’t know where I was going, so I stopped writing. But I’ve gotten much better at asking why and how and who hurts, so I feel confident that I can figure it out with enough elbow grease. And little surprises keep popping up, like a severed hand. I love when that happens. (When writing fiction, of course!)

Since I’ve started, the rest of the main cast has revealed itself and I am dutifully taking notes. I’ve transferred all that initial brainstorming work into a notebook dedicated for the NaNo Novel, which I have lamely code-named Blood and Roses. (Please refer to “I am shit at titles.”) I’m also letting myself sprawl in each scene. On tap for today is a big confrontation that should set a lot of the primary conflicts in motion.

So, I suppose I can say I’m half-pantsing it. I certainly don’t have an outline, or an ending, but that’s okay. In fact, not knowing exactly just yet makes me more eager to get to the writing to see what happens. This is new for me. I’m kinda excited and I’m enjoying the buzz.

Anywho, back to it, eh?

The Gauntlet is Thrown!

For the next thirty days, one of two things will happen here on my blog.

1.  Things go fantastically, stupendously well with NaNoWriMo, and I easily mount ever higher word counts in the quest to reach 50,000 words of new prose by the end of the month.  If I succeed in reaching that goal before November 30th, I’m treating myself to an all-you-can-eat sushi night.   If this happens, I’ll be way too busy to be updating here regularly.

2.  Things go wretchedly, dismally poorly with NaNoWriMo, and I never reach the goal.  Not only will I be deprived of all-you-can-eat sushi celebration, I will be denied sushi until 2010 and a more horrible punishment I cannot imagine.  As a result, more time will be spent here on the blog instead of  writing the novel.

I feel really good about this NaNo.  Really good.  Even though my plot is somewhat nebulous, I feel like I can get these 50,000 words.  Sushi will be mine — oh yes, it will be mine.

However, removing distractions are a must, and one big one for me is keeping up with the blogs about town, many of which are also covering, if not outright participating, in NaNoWriMo.  And one of the non-writing blogs I read, Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders, made a very salient point:

When I’m reading about writing, I’m not writing.

Read the rest of the article.  Just the one.  He summarizes the plethora of writing advice that will run the web-gamit this month — or at least all the advice that’s worth a damn.

Then get back to writing!

(And that goes for me, too.  I’m outie!)

I Swear, I’m Allowed

With the first draft of my second novel done, I looked forward to spending the week before NaNoWriMo prepping for the next one. “I have a week,” I gleefully told myself. “Plenty of time. AGES.” I laughed heartily, smug and satisfied that everything would fall into place without much effort.

Silly, silly girl.

Sunday? Spent mucking around with Notebook.

Monday? Some more mucking around, before I realized that to get Notebook completely (and satisfyingly) set up would involve a great deal of time that I really didn’t have. So, a project for down the road. I will likely end up dropping some coin for a license, just bad timing that I won’t get a chance to really put it through its paces before I do.

Tuesday? Well, I still have a lot of time, I figure at this point. I try returning to the well reviewed Princess of Roumania but still find it a bit of a slog. But I’m halfway through. Shame to give up. I really like the antagonist’s P.O.V. but find the main character, and her passages, dull by comparison. Maybe I can finish it before NaNo?

Wednesday? By this point, my morning hours that are supposed to be dedicated to writing, which were so productive the two weeks prior, become a bleak, unproductive blemish on the day. I’m cranky at work, and because I’m carting notepaper and pens for the scant bits of actual NaNoWriMo work I’m doing, I’ve left Princess… at home. I turn to the e-book edition of Club Dead by Charlaine Harris and found myself caught up in it.

Thursday? Let’s not talk about mornings. I’m sleeping in. At this point I wonder if it’s just post novel laziness or if the new schedule has finally caught up to me. I certain seem better able to stay up later to write (last weekend being a great example) than getting up early to write. Problematic. Even at the writing group night I am wholly unproductive. In the course of two hours, I manage to type in about ten Post Its of scene ideas and do a smidgen of web research. Once home, I finish off Club Dead. I try going back to Princess… but know that it won’t happen.

Friday? Put Princess… aside, and pick up Naomi Novik’s Black Powder War, one that’s been in my to-read pile a while. Went out that night after my shift ended, but then turned in early. Sleeeeep ….

I was starting to get anxious about this, but then I figured, “Hey, you just finished a big ol’ draft with a huge word count push at the end. Give your bobble-headed brain a few days to come up for air and don’t kick yourself over this. At least, not yet.”

Where does that leave me for NaNoWriMo?

(hahahahaha)

I have my log line. I have the two main characters. Sorta. I have the supporting cast. Sorta. I know it will be 3rd Person P.O.V. limited, possibly alternating between two characters. I have a mosaic of images in my head that visualize the setting. I have the conflicts fuzzily arranged on the periphery. I have about ten concrete scenes in mind, one of which is my starting point. I have an iTunes playlist, which is slow low on the To Do List, it’s embarrassing. Yet done.

This afternoon is wide open for NaNo prep, but the truth is I’m still procrastinating, not least of which is blogging instead of brainstorming. I’m trying to at least type in the notes I’ve made by hand in hopes of sparking new work. But all I can think of is that I’m cold, that I’m sleepy, and that tonight my folks are coming over after the Halloween candy’s all been given out to either give the new telescope a spin or watch scary movies if the clouds roll back into town.

The only think that’s stopping me from going into a full-blown panic is that tomorrow a few of us are getting together to start NaNoWriMo at a private write-in at someone’s cottage. It will be five hours or so of do-or-die NaNoing, and my procrastinator’s brain keeps saying, “Ah, you’re going to get so far ahead tomorrow. Don’t worry about being ready. Ready will come the moment you start.”

GOD I hope she’s right.