I did it..i did it...i did it!

You are looking at a first time winner of NANOWRIMO :-)

Yippee.

The last ten or so pages are delirious nonsense, but nobody said they had to be good words. It's enough to make the baby jezus cry.

Beautiful.

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled NANOWRIMO cram session...

...to bring you the following announcement:

Check out a new take on the old expression "when pigs fly," at Strange Horizons -- Cat Rambo's Magnificent Pigs, is available on the website.

In other news...I'm just passing 40,000 words. Sweet baby jezus I might actually make it this year. Keep your fingers crossed!

Holee Shit!

I woke up this morning to see an inch of snow on the ground. It won't stick, but I've been told it doesn't snow often in Seattle, so it's one of those "once in a blue moon" occurrences that makes my little heart believe in luck, hope and blue moons.

I swear it was the best "Welcome to Seattle" present this city could give me.

I LOVE YOU SEATTLE!

NANO Crunch

I'm at a little over 30,000 now, and I can see the homestretch. With eight days left the prospect of another 20,000 words seems a lot less daunting than getting to 30k did a week ago.

Funny how that happens.

I'm nowhere near the end, which is kind of scary and means editing is going to be a biatch -- but hey, can't worry about that now. Must push on.

Mom is here but being awesome about not minding my scramble for words. We've decided to ditch cooking Turkey Day dinner in favor of finding some place open that will cook for us. Yeah, mom! Plus I'll be home for Xmas and able to stuff my face full of good home cooking in the best place to do it: home!

Hehe.

Busy today...

But here's a fun diversion...(Thanks Rachel for the link)

You are The Lovers

Motive, power, and action, arising from Inspiration and Impulse.

The Lovers represents intuition and inspiration. Very often a choice needs to be made.

Originally, this card was called just LOVE. And that's actually more apt than "Lovers." Love follows in this sequence of growth and maturity. And, coming after the Emperor, who is about control, it is a radical change in perspective. LOVE is a force that makes you choose and decide for reasons you often can't understand; it makes you surrender control to a higher power. And that is what this card is all about. Finding something or someone who is so much a part of yourself, so perfectly attuned to you and you to them, that you cannot, dare not resist. This card indicates that the you have or will come across a person, career, challenge or thing that you will fall in love with. You will know instinctively that you must have this, even if it means diverging from your chosen path. No matter the difficulties, without it you will never be complete.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Lest I forget...Check out Fantasy Mag

Issue Five in December for Cat Rambo's "The Dead Girl's Wedding March."

CW 05 Takes on Sci-Fi Cliches

Check out the latest issue of Subterranean Magazine #4 the Sci-Fi Cliche Issue.

(why wouldn't you, it's FREE!)

More importantly, it features work by my fellow Clarionites:

Scene from a Dystopia, by Rachel Swirsky
Hesperia and Glory, Ann Leckie

Leonids are back...

This weekend, my favorite astronomical phenomenon will be taking place in the night sky. The annual Leonid Shower is promising to make a great show this year in North America and Western Europe. Unfortunately for those of us on the west coast catching the meteor shower that takes its name from the constellation Leo means getting up extra early tomorrow morning...like pre-dawn early.

Not my favorite time of morning to be conscious. However it is a once a year event so I think I can make an exception.

Anyone know of any great stargazing spots outside of Seattle?

Also of note:

• The birthday of the amazing Cat Rambo! See, Cat, even the cosmos puts on a show in honor of your day :-)
• Ski and Snowboard Expo at Qwest field this weekend...world's first stadium zipline (guess who WON'T be sailing accross the top of the stadium strapped in by her woo-woo)
• "Hip Hop: Back to its Roots" happens this weekend at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center here in Seattle. Three days of music, speakers, spoken word. Not to be missed.
  

Sixteen thousand and counting...

Today's total: 6,618
06 Total Word Count: 16,720

So my new nano strategy is, "write through it." When I get stuck or hung up on something i need more details (read: research) I create the nanowrimo equivalent of "..and god said let there be light, and it was..." (no "and it was good" necessary)

The nice part is I could probably do this six or eight times and still have plenty to write about to get in that 50,000words.

That's why December is going to be Ed(die)NoEd(it)mo.

Dinner time, now back to work.

Today, coffee. Tomorrow...well, we'll see...

It's officially NANO crunch time. To stay on track with my mid-late month goals I need about 20k words in the next few days. At least.

(I refuse to say I am behind, that does crap for the moral)

Excellent timing, considering I was looking for a diversion from the rest of my life anyway. However, this does require bringing out the heavy artillery: the Black Death, surefire lubricant of words stuck deep in my brain and deliverer of said words to my fingertips.

Reminder, nobody said they had to be good words.

Echo hadn't heard a bean grinder in so many days he jumped away from his food bowl and went back to bed. Smart dog, this could get ugly.

Today's schedule is a follows:

9-11:30am- Nano'd*
11:30-1p Dog park/feed the writer break.
1-4p - Nano'd with accompaniment
4-5p - Sanity/food break

This evenings festivities may change considering I offered to accompany S to some live theatre (something I had no business doing, trust me) but as it looks likely she may not even make it, I'm not counting on it. So Option A: No Theatre

5-10p Nano like hell.

Option B:

5-6 Nano like hell.
6-10 Keep promise
11-1a Nano

Okay. Deadline set. This is the fun part. Coffee's ready.



*Nanod: (verb) No email, no tv, no blogging, no phone in order to facilitate completion of NaNoWriMo project. Syn. To isolate oneself completely while dragging words kicking and screaming from one's brain.

Why the bed will never be 'made'

So my very nifty new Ikea duvet for my very nifty (very warm) down comforter really does look best when it's stretched tautly over the bed.

With Echo's gianormous crate at the foot of the bed and against the wall, my secondary bed access point is cut off.* So every time I have to get at something stashed on the shelf side of the bed (my phone, laptop, journal, box of Kleenex, etc.) i have to crawl across the comforter.

Which seems to come immediately after the "bed making" takes place. So it always looks like someone made a bed, then did a jig on it.

Damn.







*Yes, I have tried several different arrangements, but as this is not really "my" room (rather space under extremely generous loan) my probability drive is limited in terms of possible setups.

Things to do today:

1. 5-7k words.
2. Call mom.
3. Make bed.
4. Eat.
5. Nurse aching head.

I love it that #1 is writing. Yeah!

Yes, I am still bitter...

...over the lost words. I promise to get over it after this post, but at the moment I still can't even look at the damn program. One thousand plus hard fought, hard won words. Gone.

Damn it!

(and don't tell me I should have been saving more often -- Cause you'd be right)

DAMN!

Ohhh I hate you microsoft word runtime error. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. At least 500 words lost in one fell swoop

Time to go for a walk before I throw my laptop out on the lawn.

NANOWRIMO Word Count: 4,500

So just in time for my second week wall, I get a nice little note from the folks at NANOWRIMO reminding us not to quit in the second week. Apparently week two is when a host of different obstacles batter the intrepid writer. For me, it's that old feeling of getting behind again.

Let's face it, I've always been terrible at the "write a little bit every day" strategy. After all, that's what I've been doing for the last 9 days (give or take, minus travel dates and hanging out with Na) and I'm ONLY 4,500 words in. I've always been more of the "give me a deadline and I will wait until the last minute and spend the last 48 hours sleepless, hopped up on caffeine and writing like my life depends on it...Which it does."

Yes, this is unhealthy. My goal now, write a little MORE every day. I'm hoping I can eventually break years of my journalistic writer under deadline style. God knows if I don't actually publish something that way, it just might kill me.

Hell, it probably will kill me anyway.

Okay okay, off to work.

Reading: Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie

Yeah! Back again.

I can post again! A good thing cause with NANOWRIMO starting (actually it started two days ago) I might actually have something to say.

As usual I'm in transit, with regular posts to follow as I get settled in the great Emerald City. Coming to you today from the lovely wet city of Portland. Finishing my first novel crit, and getting some writing done (okay that's a lie, I'm ebaying a real winter coat right now) while my lovely host finishes working for the day so we can go play. (Powells here I come!)

The current crisis in my life: replacing the little rubber "footie" on my lopsided laptop. You know, the round little do dad that cushions your laptop from the table -- there's one on each corner, except New Delli's bottom left corner at the moment. So if I put any weight on the left side at all the whole laptop rocks. It's gotten so bad I keep a little wad of paper in my laptop bag to place in the missing rubber nubbin spot, which is, alas, the most ghetto quick fix I could come up with on short notice.

The upside: my laptop "posture" has improved (no more naughty wrist resting on the keyboard)