From Deadlines to Nanowrimo

At 11:07pm on Friday, October 2nd, 2009, I finished my novel, Anemone's Song. I finished two days past my self-imposed deadline, but at least it is complete. What can you do about a child who suddenly gets sick with pink eye and a bad cold, after all? Even after I put her to bed in the evening, there simply wasn't enough time left to write to completion. So, I worked myself half to death, but I did finish it two days later than scheduled. Now it can't hang over my head during NaNoWriMo. I don't need distractions like that.

In terms of NaNoWriMo, I am still contemplating what I shall write. I have some stray ideas, but nothing solid yet. I'd like to write something with Native Americans, maybe a historical fiction of some kind, but I'm still researching and trying to decide what I want to do.

What is everyone else doing for NaNoWriMo? Have you decided yet, or are you like me and still without a clue?

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@$#!$*^! Deadlines

Two days. Several chapters. 5 hours of sleep. Gallons of caffeine!

I will finish, I will!

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When Life Gets Tough...

...get to writing! Or keep on writing. Either way, this is what I'm determined to do. I missed my deadline to have the book finished by August, so now my goal is to finish before the end of September. I really don't need this book interfering with my ability to write during Nanowrimo, and I'm certain that it will, if I know that it's sitting nearby, aaaalmost finished, but not quite.

Mostly, the reason I missed my own deadline was due to a lot of craziness and stress in my life. Perhaps it's understandable if one knows my circumstances, but to me it isn't. Instead of writing through the pain and emotions, I stopped writing, which only magnifies everything and makes it worse.

I also haven't heard back about my short story that I submitted, even though it's been over the 6-8 week span the publication estimates for a response. I've determined that if I don't hear from them by the end of this week (week 10), then I will write a prompt letter.

August was my month of bad, horrible luck. Each week got progressively worse than the one before, culminating in finding out that my father has an incurable brain tumor, and leaving me ultimately unemployed again (knowing that it is a temporary position does not help in the slightest when one is laid off). I am hopeful that September will be my month of good luck--or at least be my bend in the road toward one that is.

I'm not yet optimistic about life again, but I'm going to write toward it.

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Finished!

This is going to be a really short post, as I'm very tired and need some sleep. I finished my story today. Editing was touch and go, because I was trying to do other stuff around the house as well, so it took me pretty much all day to do. I basically edited sections of it on and off, until I finished at about 11:00pm. Then, I printed out a hard copy and double-checked my work. I caught one or two minor things that I wanted to change, such as a comma where I didn't need one. Other than that, the piece was definitely finished, and as polished as it was going to get.

I'm just very thankful to my friends and my husband, who proofread my story and offered their input. My poor husband read about five or six drafts, I think. He saw it go from very rough and messy to something much more coherent and polished. I don't think it would have turned out half as well as it did, though, if not for my friend, Maria. She suggested some structural changes that I wouldn't have thought of, and my story is much better for those changes.

Anyway, I turned the story in around 11:30pm or slightly later, and then I took the rest of the evening off to knit and watch TV with my husband. Tomorrow I will decide which writing projects to tackle next, besides my fairy tale re-telling. I can start scribbling out some rough drafts of the fairy tales and see which ones I think have the most potential, but I have some time before I need to make a final decision on that. In the meantime, I want to finish the book review and perhaps turn my attention toward my poetry. I have some ideas for new short stories that I've written down, but I'm not sure when I will begin those.

The important thing is, I met my deadline by the date that I wanted to--a day earlier, even. So I'm happy. And my future is filled with many other projects, stories, and poems to keep me busy and help me develop my writing career. It's a good start.

Edited to Add: I'm going to travel down to my hometown for my baby shower this weekend, but I'm leaving a little early to avoid bad weather, so it may be almost a week before I'm able to update this blog.

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Drafts, Editing, and Weaknesses--Oh My!

Well, today I typed up my rough draft of that short story. I'll begin editing it tomorrow, but I can see already that I need to add some more description here and there. The middle is kind of narrative-heavy in some ways, although with what little dialogue and action takes place between the characters, I think I captured the emotion pretty well during the middle of the piece. I just need to work on my description and expand upon things a bit. Description has always been a weak area of my writing.

It's not that I can't do it, mind you. It's that it takes work, for me. See, my problem with description is that I get so caught up in the plot, dialogue, and action, that I tend to forget to describe the setting or much of what's going on around my characters. I'm better about this flaw than I used to be, but it's still a weakness I have to watch for and catch--usually during the editing phase.

I'll turn a keen eye on the piece tomorrow, though, and mark it up properly, nasty comments and rare compliments to myself and all. I'm too tired to start right now, though. I'm sure I wouldn't catch half of what I needed to, even if it is only a first editing.

Didn't write any fresh material today. I'm concentrating on this story, since the deadline looms near at the end of the month. So, I'll probably be working almost exclusively on this piece for a while, with only a few scrawls toward other projects in the meantime. I may try to continue my research on the fairy tales, though. I have my list narrowed down a lot more, but I'm still unsure as to which one I should re-tell. I may just have to play with some of them after I finish my current piece and turn it in.

Well, I'm off to get some sleep, no matter how interrupted it may be by the cat, who wants to cuddle every few hours, and several nightly bathroom trips--which are frequent enough, being pregnant, but are now guaranteed to be even more so, since I was stupid enough to drink an entire pot of decaf tea by myself today while working on the short story. *sigh* But tea helps me to write when I'm having trouble getting started, or when I'm stuck. And it's just plain comforting.

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Busy, Busy Day

In stark contrast to yesterday, I accomplished a lot today. True, I spent most of the day cleaning, but I did manage to do some writing and writing related stuff today. First, I researched some writing markets and publications a bit and found a contest with a theme called "Goodbye to All That," which I think I'm going to enter. The deadline in January 31st, however, so I need to get to work on it soon. I think I can do it, though. I'm going to rewrite an old piece of mine for the contest, and I already started some notes on the different changes, deletions, and edits I'm going to do to it. Plus, I'm going to completely change the scenery, and change the ending a bit, plus add a whole new beginning. Sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but I'm going to keep the essence of the original piece while making the necessary changes to the piece to make it a short story and fit the guidelines of the theme for the contest.

I'm hoping to begin work on it tomorrow.

While I was going through my writing files looking for the aforementioned piece, I came across one of my old sheafs of poetry. Long story short, I found a few good or relatively decent poems among them that I might try to submit for publication. And since looking at the poetry put me in the right frame of mind, I finished up a poem tonight that I had started a week or so ago.

I also did some reading today on those fairy tales, and I'm starting to narrow the list down a bit. Some of them simply aren't suitable for a humorous re-telling (or at least I can't think of any way to make them so, given the subject matter inherent to the stories. I mean, how do you make something like the story of the Ugly Duckling funny? Not in any good way that I can think of). So, I'm crossing some off of the list here and there. Besides the Ugly Duckling, I'll probably eliminate Little Red Cap, simply because the story of Little Red Riding Hood might be a popular one to submit. But, I'll reread it when I get to that place on my list, and give it a thorough consideration anyway. Rumplestiltskin, which I thought might be a good candidate for a humorous retelling, was crossed off my list today. I'd forgotten how creepy the end of that story was, somehow. But I do recall vague memories of that ending as a child, so they must have read the original version to me from that old book of fairy tales we had when I was a kid. But, I digress.

The story of the Frog King, or Iron Heinrich, has possibilities. I don't have any specific ideas in mind on how to implement the humor, but I think, given the structure, and stuff, it COULD be done. I might have to just mess with it and see. I have a feeling that when I get my list narrowed down to the last candidates, I'll just have to try writing them to see what happens and if they work out or not. Good thing I have until the end of March for this deadline. I'm going to need all that time!

Finally, I wrote a bit more on my NaNoWriMo novel (yes, it's not November, and all of that is over by now, but since the story still lacks a title, that's how I'm going to refer to it until then). I've been doing most of my writing to meet my daily word count on this novel. Tonight, I only wrote a little bit on the novel, but I did meet my word count, because my word count was split today between the preparatory notes for the short story I'm going to rework/write, the poem I finished, and the NaNoWriMo novel.

All totaled, I reached 551 words today.

And now, I'm going to sleep because I'm tired and I have an appointment tomorrow.

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Unproductive Day

I'm in a very bad mood today. And by bad mood, I mean everybody duck for cover, it's going to be worse than World War III.

Why am I in such a bad mood? Well, the short of it is that I didn't get any writing done today, and that really, really irritated me. Now, why didn't I get any writing done today? Because I decided to finally start undecorating our Christmas tree and taking down Christmas decorations because it's been put off all too long, despite assurances otherwise that we would get around to it soon. So, annoyed, I hauled the boxes up from storage myself, undecorated the tree (which was an irritating experience in itself considering our tree is beyond dying by now, and kept shedding millions of pine needles as I took the ornaments and then the lights off of it), and took down some of the other decorations.

But even all of that wasn't as bad as trying to put the stupid Christmas lights back in their packages. It's much easier to get them OUT of the box than back IN to the box, I've discovered. So, I spent hours wrestling three separate strings of lights back into their boxes, and got no writing done whatsoever. Thank goodness we had a smallish tree and I didn't have even more lights sets to put away!!!

Anyway, I failed to reach my 500 words for the day, and I didn't get a chance to read fairy tales to retell for that contest, either. The most I managed to accomplish today in terms of any of my goals was to apply to a job position that I've been considering for a while now. Today was the deadline for application, so I finished getting all of my materials prepared and gathered and faxed it all over to my potential employer's office. Now let's just pray that by some miracle I get the job...

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