Just a quick update for y’all: the writing retreat was a success! We arrived at the little cabin by the lake in Indiana later than we anticipated. Tired and hungry, I put forth a poor showing of 791 words before I closed the laptop and indulged in pizza, wine, board games and poker [...]
Archive for January, 2008
Writing Retreat: Days 24-27
Posted in Writing- NaNoWriMo, tagged NaNoWriMo on January 29, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Limen: Days 22 and 23
Posted in Writing- NaNoWriMo, tagged Entropy, Limen, NaNoWriMo, Power Hour on January 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Today’s nifty NaNoWriMo daily noveling brief explains “you’re in a period of limen right now…in these neither-here-nor-there periods…where levels of energy and disorder run high.”
Right on, dude. My total word count is over 47,000 and I’m nearing the end. I might well hit 50,000 words tomorrow. But I’m definitely not completed with [...]
Back to Work: Day 21
Posted in Writing- NaNoWriMo, tagged coffee, NaNoWriMo on January 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
And plow I did!
Today was my third-highest day ever: 2, 972! (Why didn’t I write 28 more words to get 3,000? Silly).
After staring at the blinking cursor for well over half an hour, I finally just plowed, not thinking too terribly hard about getting all these threads I threw out tied together. [...]
A Loooong Weekend: Days 18, 19 and 20
Posted in Writing- NaNoWriMo, tagged NaNoWriMo, Power Hour, Speed Writing on January 22, 2008 | 1 Comment »
It’s getting a little harder. With about 42,000 words I know I’ll hit 50,000 words soon enough but I won’t be done with the whole project then. Curses! I realize I’ve thrown out a loooot of stuff on whatever magical whimsy I felt that day and now I don’t know what to do with [...]
Paris is Burning: Days 16 and 17
Posted in Music, Writing- NaNoWriMo, YouTube, tagged NaNoWriMo, Paris is Burning, St. Vincent on January 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve decided this song is my favorite of St. Vincent’s and am using it as a theme song for my January Project. Helps get me in the writing mood. It’s strange and playful. I imagine myself in a stylized version of early 20th century Paris, wandering the streets of Montmartre in [...]
Half Way to Victory: Days 14 and 15
Posted in Writing- NaNoWriMo, tagged NaNoWriMo on January 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Someone recently said that this whole NaNoWriMo thing was a bad idea. I chuckled. Because it does sound like a bad idea. What insane person wants to devote their mental powers to hammering out a reeeeeeeeealy awful 50,000-word novel in a month?
Me! What I’m learning is that this is, maybe counter-intuitively, conducive to creativity. Why? [...]
Competitive Writing: Days 10 and 11
Posted in Writing- NaNoWriMo, tagged NaNoWriMo on January 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
So yesterday, Friday, was the first day I didn’t meet my word count. Only 1, 146! But, that was just what I wrote in the morning. I decided to take my night off because my fellow NaNos and I got together in the evening to vent about our projects, drink some wine and play some [...]
A Character Takes Over: Day Nine
Posted in Music, Writing- NaNoWriMo, tagged Mistaken For Strangers, NaNoWriMo, The National on January 11, 2008 | 2 Comments »
An amazing thing happened. Something clicked in my brain as my fingers scurried across the keyboard- one of my characters spoke up! Where before I’d poked, prodded and demanded that she do something. And finally- she did! She steered the scene in a different direction than what I’d intended (and my fingers [...]
The Plot Thickens: Day Eight
Posted in Writing- NaNoWriMo, tagged Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo on January 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“The decisions of Week Two will make this the most exhausting of all four weeks,” Chris Baty proclaims. Because this week we need to find something to do with the fun/quirky/evil/do-gooding/robot characters we created the previous seven days.
Enter: Plot. Oy. Seriously, what are these evil robots going to do?? Launch a massive [...]
