Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

It’s like manna from Heaven

Musings, , ,

We have a friend, Glenn, whose mother loved to cook for his friends. That was great for us because we liked to eat, and she was a good cook. However, you couldn’t finish your plate at her house because as soon as it was empty Freida would say, “Oh you’ve finished, here, have some more,” and plop down another helping or two of the main course and/or side dishes. I feel like that now, with volunteer stuff. As soon as I clear my plate of one job, another job shows up. And it is not as if the kids help around the house more – actually they help less than before because of their own schedules. Dean does more, but he’s been travelling a fair bit.

I’m not really complaining – I actually like volunteering. I get more satisfaction out of that than I do with work-for-pay. (so much so I didn’t collect money from folks that said they’d pay me — how do you take money from a friend?)

 I am breathing a little easier now though. I have a high proirity project that I thought was due COB today, but was told Monday was fine. Since I work every weekend anyway, this is no burden whatsoever.

Not that I am finishing my NaNoWriMo project though. I gave that up after the first couple of days. Even getting an email from one of my current favorite authors won’t lure me back to that hell.

Thoughts of Freida’s cooking has made me hungry.

Things that go bump in the night.

Writing, , , ,

Years ago when I was enamored with Stephen King’s novels I read in an interview that the only book of his that scared him when he was writing it was Pet Sematary. I found that a little hard to believe. I didn’t think that someone could write something that scared them any more than they could tickle themselves enough to really laugh.

Last night, in my attic office, I was up late finishing up my alloted word count for my NaNoWriMo story. Everyone else in the house was asleep, or nearly asleep. In the story the main character has a seemingly irrational fear of something common in all homes and I was at the part describing this fear. I suddenly got a little nervous myself and when I heard a noise that seemed to come from the closet near my desk, I jumped and my heart began to pound. We live in an older house, that has creaks and groans all the time, and the night was a little windy, so the noise was either the house settling, a twig falling on the roof — only a couple feet from my head — or something dropping off my daughter’s bed (directly below my desk). Even though I told myself those things, I was shaken and when I checked that my word count was adequate, saved my work, closed down the computer, shut off the attic lights and hurried downstairs to bed.

Until last night I didn’t realize that I was writing a novel in the horror/thriller genre. Sorry Mr. King – I’ll never doubt you again!

In for the what?

Blogging, Writing, , , ,

What’s that saying: In for the something out for the something else? Oh – In for the penny out for the pound? In for the penny in for the pound? That’s gotta be it!

Whatever it is, it is what I thought about when I chose to write this post right now instead of work on my work-for-pay stuff. I am monumentally behind in my “files” and have made some probably poor choices recently like the Hiptop Halloween Hunt yesterday and Costco the day before. While there are some valid reasons I’m behind, I really should be concentrating on those files rather than on writing novels and blog posts.

That said, I’m glad I’m back and doing some of this posting on a daily basis. I miss writing – copying text from PDF and Word files and pasting it into an HTML editor may sound like a blast, but it’s not as fun as you may think. It can be mind boggling tedius and it sapps the energy from my brain, making me want to do nothing but watch television at night.

So, to get back to the title of this post, I figured I’ve already gotten behind in my work, I might as well get this post for today done.

I wrote over 800 words on my NaNoWriMo novel this morning – I had no idea what I was going to write about until I actually started writing. Now I’m kind of excited to find out more about my characters and the plot. I’m pretty sure I know where it is going, but it keeps changing in my head.

The kids have today off and I was supposed to go to a free 508 conference in DC, but because I’m behind in work and because the kids are home, I figured I’d not go. I went last year and the section I attended was nothing more than a commercial for Adobe.

Ok, enough procrastinating. Off to copy and paste and format.