Shosh

So I'm behind, by about 7k or thereabouts.

This should be crippling me with despair, or at least "I'll Never Get This Done" variety woe. But it hasn't, and so that's good. Because every time I -do- get the gumption to write, I -write-, and it flows forth and It Is Good. Basically, I just don't sit and write as often as I should, partly because I don't have much time, but even more because every time I think of writing I remember (the way you remember a sledgehammar hitting you hurts) that I have absolutely -no- clue where this story is going. It's almost a little terrifying. I mean. My MC's been sort of attacked, her boyfriend-almost-fiancee has disappeared, her mother has come to make tea and comfort, and I have no idea -why- he's gone, why her apartment was broken into, why her cat was locked in a closet - I don't even know who the would-be villain is, or -why-why-why-. And it's a little disconcerting, especially with my roommate (who is also NaNoing) clacking away behind me with cries of, "Golly gee! I have just figured out the 12th complex, life-long motivation for Character X and named her family back to the sixth generation, which is actually relevent because I have somehow linked it to my huge, complex, detailed plot! Which I have already thought up in its entirety!"

Needless to say, my roommate is on her way to being locked into a closet.

However, I got into my beginning fiction class for next term, so hopefully there will be writing galore then, even if I don't make it through NaNo. And if I do, I can be the cool girl in class who's already written a novel. Unless someone else has too. In which case... well, the school's got more than one closet. ;)

The hardest part's over. I started.

And 250 words in, my character's already blacked out on me.

This should be an interesting ride.

Well I'm off to a raring start. And by that I mean I haven't done jack.

I've got one document that's about three pages of potential ideas, but I can't really get a good grip on any of them; enough of a grip to be able to envision getting a whole 50,000 words out of it, anyway. Likely as not, I'll just end up wrangling some free time tonight or tomorrow, pick one, and just babble. And if it works... well, I'll be a very happy person.

I'm only one day behind quota, and that shouldn't be too bad. Yeah, I've got family weekend and finals upcoming, but I also have... well, no actual finals. So the three exam days will be Days of Empty And Much Writing. Hurrah for that.

Or I could just break into my roommate's computer every night, and steal pages from her. That could work.

Wow. Haven't dusted this journal off in a while. But here it comes out again, for NaNoWriMo 05. So I can rant, post writings, and whatnot, free of regular-journal clutter.

So. New NaNoWriMo. I thought I had an idea, now I'm not as sure. Originally there was this niggle of some urban-fantasy type thing, playing on the idea of vamps as status symbols. But then I realized while I could imagine the world, I couldn't come up with any characters/plot. So now I'm still waiting to see if maybe it'll decide to work; otherwise maybe a trashy, trashy romance novel, just for the mocking-value, or ...something else. Yeah, I'm so good at this idea thing. Maybe som\ething branching off "Spring Rain", only I don't think I could write 50k words in second person. Maybe I'll do a bunch of freewrites to see if anything springs up. At least I've got a few weeks till November.

Got almost 1000 done today. Not quite, but close. I would've gotten more but I kept getting distracted. Almost at 8.5k though! (Considering yesterday I was at 6.5 I'm pretty durn proud of myself).

( In Which Amanda Meets A Hairy Man )

Worked more on the assembly hall scene in school but I really don't like how it went so I'm not going to post it, and I'll just rewrite it when I get to it in the story (the two are close to overlapping now).

Current Mood: productive
Current Music: Listen To The Rain - Evanescence

Oh my god! Could it be...me? With a NaNo update? LE GASP!

But yes! It is!

Serious Stress helped keep me /totally/ off NaNo for a week or two but I'm /slowly/ dabbling back into it. I dunno if it's really even "NaNo" as much anymore as it is just a story I like and care to keep writing. Anyway.

( What I Did Today )

Then some stuff I've been working on chem. Part of the novel but a scene a bit further in...

( Behold! )

Current Mood: creative

I suck.

I suck beyond the suckiest sucky person.

I've barely written ANYTHING since...whenever I last wrote. *checks* Thursday. I think I've written a PARAGRAPH since then. Christ, I haven't even hit the main point of my story yet! I'm cutting off huge chunks of the "buildup" now because I realized it was taking over the novel.

But I'm sooo soo soooo behind and just sucksucksuck and AUGH. I haven't buckled down to write at ALL and the weekends over half gone now (which is when I was supposed to catch up in writing).

Blast.

Current Mood: aggravated

( Today and yesterday's stuff - since yesterday was only about 700 words )

I'm falling so behiiind.

Anyway. Yeah. Quick bit of Brookline trivia: Fisher Hill is pretty much Rich Mansion Hill Full of Very Rich Mansion-Living People.

Current Mood: sleepy

So I'm merrily typing away, click-clack-click-clack, slightly late but still getting it in. Then I look at the clock:

MIDNIGHT SUCKER!!

Which means I have to enter my current wordcount on my "NaNo Report Card" and it's all tinier than it should be and *mope*

Anyway. I'll probably write a bit more tonight and just stick it under Stuff Done On Wednesday.

( So, yeah. Today's shiz )

Ok so I did most of it (up until the end of the grape juice thing) in chemistry today. So if it bites, or mentions electrons by accident, that's why.

And yeah, I think I mentioned, Heather's based on my RL best friend. That sort of banter demonstrated in this section holds a very special place in my heart for it is very similar to what we do daily.

Example from today:
Hannah: Christ. I say Christ a lot. I hope it doesn't offend you Shoshie.
Me: Yes, actually. It offends me deeply. I am highly bothered by it.
Hannah: Shut up.

Or

Hannah: *mock sniff* Shoshie, you hurt me. You raise your voice at me all the time and use mean words and it hurts me...
Me: LIAR!

Ok so maybe it's just fun to me ;P

I'm also trying to keep Amanda from sounding too much like me since Hannah says I always make my characters sound like me when I write them in the first person. Anyone else have this problem? And, if you know me well enough: Am I succeeding?

Not very productive day, due to studying for an uncomfortably large history test. I think the story moved a bit though, which was good. I'm really bad at dialogue, hence the yuck of yesterday's stuff.

And the MC (whose name is Amanda Elyse Gunther, for clarification) keeps wanting to still love David, which is very inconvienent and goes completely against my plotting of their PURELY PLATONIC current relationship *grumps*

( Today's measley 800 words )

Behold! Family! Isn't that exciting? And a bit of trivia: Heather is loosely to not-so-loosely based on /my/ best friend Hannah. She was going to live on the third floor but, at Hannah's insistance now has to schlep up 8 flights of stairs a day.

Also, everyone thank Bridget (who's still ahead of me - hrmph) who taught me today how to write/format dialogue without looking like a massive twit. Yay Bridget!

Current Mood: weird

Today my story went no where.

That's always fun.

( Today's dose of verbal vomit )

I realized that I want to have some "days before camp" scenes, to establish her friends and family and shiz, but I also have nothing for them to do/talk about in these scenes. WHOOPS.

That is all. I am now off to panic over the project and essay I have due tomorrow morning that I did not work on due to contemplating about NaNo.

Current Mood: Vaguely paniced

To all those with 5000+ on their word count bars: I hate you

Unless I don't, which is also entirely possible.

I've decided to post what I have, just for shits and giggles, 'cause life and NaNo is fun like that.

So here it is. I know it sucks, I'm fully aware, so please,
( Mock me not )

Why is it November? Whyyyy? Whywhywhyy?

I REALLY wanted November to come and now I want it to GO AWAY again. Hannah's already got 3000-some words. I mean, she's like, a day ahead of us (Australia) but STILL. WAH. I know my story but I don't know HOW I want to write it, I just realized. First person? Third person? Past tense? Present tense? Narrator style?

AH! HELP!

Current Mood: panicy

Wow. Two more days. Eeek! Until NaNo that is.

I can't belieeeve it. I've been doing lists like /mad/ (especially in chem class, just 'cause that's convienent). Working out who's who, characters, etc. Still have no idea what my plot's gonna be, but /damn/ do I have characters!

*beams*

...I'msodoomed

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Some Pink song

Goats have always been my favorite animals. I suppose that’s a little weird, really. I mean…goats! Who likes goats? Well, besides other goats. My best friend in third grade, Tracy – this little girl with huge green eyes and this tendency to screech a lot – used to tease me about it. She’d call me Goat Girl Georgie (my name is Georginia) and run after me on the playground making goat noises.

Yeah. We didn’t stay friends for too long.

But really, I think more people should like goats. They’re incredibly misunderstood. Everyone loves horses or puppies or dolphins – oh /god/, dolphins. If I hear one more girl squeal out that she just loooooves pretty blue dolphins I’ll smack someone. Ahem. Yes. Not the point.

Goats on the other hand aren’t pretty, like most of us (and if you think everyone’s pretty, you’re deranged. Ugly people exist, deal with it). They’re stubborn, make obnoxious bleating noises, can be rather vicious and have really big noses. They’re a bit like me, come to think of it. Except I don’t head butt people. Well. I did when I was three, but who doesn’t get the urge to ram their heads into people’s knees when that’s what’s at their eye level?

When I was little, eight probably, I asked my Dad for a goat for my birthday. Dad’s always traveling around for business, especially to Greece, so I figured, hey! Everyone gets key chains for souvenirs, I want a goat!


Wrote it on the NaNo forums, on the Exercises thread (5 minute writing on a word - 'goat' in this case). It made me giggle, re-reading, so I'm saving it here.

Current Mood: silly

NaNoWriMo's coming again!

Er. In like...over two weeks. But y'know. Time to start planning! Or nosing around the forums again, at least. Bwuah. Have also been working at suckering in others to do it too, like Yiyi. Eeheehee.

Ack. We're supposed to be Hemmingway-imitates and shorten the essay we wrote (that I posted last entry) to 126 words (only one over 3 syllables) and 4 sentences. I can't, for the life of me, get it over 88 words. I'd forgotten the sentence requirement 'till just now. I managed to make it into a haiku though!

Dead branches surround
Wood walls and a paper roof
A haven: friendship


I'm really fond of the 88 word version. I really like the ending and don't want to change it:

It’s nestled between backyard drab and fairy garden beauty: rusty latch and dusty inside making it plain to the eye. A rocky path made of a wobbly stump and a sprawled lunge leads above the smooth wood walls to the tar sheeted roof-peak. Bare branches – lightening struck – drape like spindly veils through which the house can be seen through though the house can’t see back making a haven of shared peace. Shared in the name of friendship, of closeness, of life, laughter, love and the simple promise: “Anytime.”

Current Mood: working

( It's long )

I like it, I have to say. Wrote it for an assignment in English. Write about a place and the emotions it evokes in you, etc.

The gnats don’t go here. That alone makes this possibly the best place on campus. Maybe the nicotine embedded in the air kills them, left there by the hundreds of smokers who favor this spot as a refuge, wearing the wood down to a silky softness and scattering discarded cigarettes in the dirt where they’ll lie for years and years, refusing to decompose.
As refuge is an accurate word for it. If you’re here no one notices you. Even though it’s on a path and facing a field people’s consciousness’ seem to slip right over it. It and you. And so you can hide, sitting on the roofed table where the bugs don’t dare venture, and be alone in the middle of everyone. Life hums on all sides: bike riders gliding down the road, the snackbar ladies on their cigarette breaks which never seem to end, gossipy girls going to the laundry, boys daring each other on the pogo stick – but no party intrudes to ask why you’re sitting on a picnic table staring at nothing. They don’t ask what they already know. Two days later you will walk down the path to collect clothes from the dryer and see two friends sharing life woes, or someone reading, all with the unacknowledged confidence that they will remain unbothered.

Possible beginning of my place essay for school - we were supposed to pick a place that means something to us and write about it. Sort of. It's a cool assignment. One of my places (the one that this bit's about) is the covered picnic table at Bennington. It was just off the path that led to the laundry room. I went there three times or something - once Katie and I went there and had a great, Huge Serious Discussion and twice I went when I was in a bad mood. One of the most peaceful places ever.

"You want me to WHAT?" I demand, turning so sharply in my chair that I only narrowly avoid sloshing Coke all over the place. Heather, my housemate, is standing in my doorway shaking a slinking, read beaded dress at me, which I happen to know she bought two years ago for the soul purpose of seducing her boss who was about to fire her.

"Come out to dinner tonight - in this - with me andmyclient." She says the last very fast and I stare at her. I can feel my eyebrows creep towards my hairline.

"Why??" I pause before starting up again, plowing over her feeble start of a reply. "No, no, let me guess. His is an utterly crucial deal to close so you figure if you bring some scantily clad pal and flash her cleavage around he might be more agreeable to you and whatever you're trying to pitch him." I'd like to say I'm just that wise and psycic but truth is this is a gimic she and I cooked up - as a joke, I'd thought - one very drunk night. Obviously Heather had hoped I'd been too pissed to remember.

Meekly she nods, fixing me with pleading brown eyes.
"Please, please, please? It's just this one time, I swear! You won't even have to sleep with him or anything, unless you want to of course." She barely falters at what I consider my best withering look. "I'm begging you 'Lis, do it for me. This deal's my big break, I swear, this is it. Please?"

I started this thing when I was in Scotland with more time and boredom on my hands than any human being should suffer. I'll admit the plot line (well...that's hardly a plot line...but even just the momentary one) is really dinky and ditzy. I blame it on the sheer mountains of light, junky novels I read while I was there. Really good ones, like stuff by Sophia Kinsella (I think that's her name - Can You Keep A Secret? and the Shopaholic series) and that calibre, lovely to read, but not exactly Shakespeare. But besides the unrealistic, ditzy happenings I sort of like it.