Slightly Behind, but Hanging in There

I can't believe it's been five days since I last updated here. Lately, everything has been about catching up.

I spent a great weekend at home, where I got to see my brother do an astounding job at playing the part of Gaston in our high school's production of Beauty and the Beast, and it was just wonderful talking to a lot of my old friends from school who were involved in the production. I especially enjoyed seeing our former drama teacher, who flew in from Amarillo just to see the play. As much as I'm enjoying college and I was ready to move on in life just a few months ago this spring, I realize now how much I want to savor everything about life; being back home really makes me wistful for the good times there, and seeing the play this weekend brought back good memories from when I was in Annie, Get Your Gun two years ago.

On Saturday, I slept in, having stayed up until almost 3:00 the night before. I only had just enough time to cobble together my little presentation on writing before scrambling out the door for my afternoon at the Wells Branch Library where I used to work. I passed the whole afternoon there hosting a write-in in the meeting room. Only four other people came, and we barely socialized, but even without talking, I still fought to eke out every word that afternoon. All in all, I felt kind of sad that I spent half the day somewhat alone in a small meeting room at my former place of work, but it wasn't a total waste because I did make progress, no matter how painstakingly.

Saturday night on my way home, I happened to see some familiar cars in the parking lot at church, so I poked my head into the youth group's office to see what was going on. It was a good thing I did since there was a retreat planning meeting going on, and I was able to see several people from my youth group that I missed on my last visit. I spent the next couple hours with my friend Patrick, talking about life and vocations and faith, and it was really good to be able to share my feelings in words with someone else at the same stage of life.

Sunday, I again slept late, trying to catch up on sleep lost at the end of last week, but it was just as well since I ended up going to the youth-served mass at 11:45. This time, I was able to see my former piano teacher and her adorable baby, as well as our pastor at my home parish. I couldn't believe that I had forgotten that November 15 was the feast day of St. Albert, the parish's patron.

I didn't do much the rest of the afternoon except go out to Half Price Books to use a 50% off coupon, netting me a Berlitz Intermediate Italian course for just about $7.00, plus two other workbooks, Russian and Arabic in 10 Minutes a Day. Since I was near SuperCuts, I also got a haircut, which feels much better, although with the cold front that came in last night, my head is cold now!

As for words, I managed to write about 2,000 today, although ideally, I should be about 1,000 further. I'm not sure what it is, but I have faced this problem almost every year where I just absolutely hate my story and want to trash it. Before November started, I made around fifty notecards with scene ideas on them, but the only thing that was really cemented in my head was the introduction to the story. When that was finished, the plot kind of fizzled out, and I have been making up absolute rubbish in the meantime to fill the gap. Still, I managed to cross over the halfway mark (whoop! ^_^) today, and if I can bang out at least 10,000 more words, it ought to be smoother sailing from there. Too bad these words don't count! ;)

Current wordcount: 25,392 and counting

2,000 words = Much Better Day

So, I'm definitely going to be trying to write as early in the day as I can; today, I got 2,000 words more written, and while it started off slowly at first, I ditched the scene that was going nowhere and jumped ahead to something I actually had planned on a plotcard. Sure, it was almost all infodump, but those words can be cut later. They all count now! Every, last, precious one of them ;)

So now, I'm just a tad shy of 20,000 words!

The Words Are Barely Flowing... But They Are Coming None the Less

I think I need to go back to writing in the morning and not late at night. These past two nights, I have struggled to put out even 1,000 words, which I can normally knock out in a good, productive 30 minutes. I think I have just been too tired mentally to be very creative, not to mention I am in the slogging grounds nearing the middle of the story. I also happen to realize that I'm currently in a doldrums area where my plotcards don't cover, very well, but fortunately, I have a lot of good scene ideas to use later.

I feel like I'm behind, even though I'm managing to hold my position at just barely beyond where I need to be. Hoping tomorrow goes better.

Current count: 17,169

A Hard 1k More

I don't know what it was, but I was so tired tonight, that I barely managed to eke out 1,000 more words. I had to adjust the time zone on my profile due to the time change at the beginning of the month, but I fortunately am right about where I need to be.

I'm too tired to write much more, so I'm off to bed. Hopefully, I can make use of my lack of both Anthropology AND Shakespeare lessons tomorrow to get some more inspiring words written.

Current wordcount: 16,150

No New Words Tonight, but A Midsummer Night's Dream for Inspiration

I spent most of the day doing chores and then working on homework/reading, so I didn't write at all today, which makes me very sad. But, I did get somethings done, and this is what the word cushion is for. Hopefully, tomorrow, even though I still have a lot to do, I will be able to add another 1,000 words on.

As a side note, I went to see the drama company's presentation of A Midsummer Night's Dream since I just recently studied that play in my Shakespeare class. It's a good thing I'd just read it since the director went in a quasi-futuristic direction with the costumes and set (which included flying robots playing some faeries, engineered by the computer science department). At first, I wasn't sure what to think of it all, but by the end, I really enjoyed it, and the space atmosphere actually made me look at the traditional faeries slightly differently. Who says they couldn't also be futuristic beings from another world or time?

Anyway, I'll get around to writing my extra credit review sometime, maybe as a warmup for a writing session tomorrow.

BIG Day and the Widgets Are Working!

Today was a good Friday. I was sad that I missed my French class, but it was because I won the "lunch lottery" with my Shakespeare professor by sending him an email of less than two sentences saying I wanted to talk about his dog, Roselyn with him, and I ended up being one of the four students chosen by his wife to go to lunch with him. He drove three of us in his nice BMW (with plates that read, SHKSPR, of course) to a very nice restaurant called La Riviera, where we had a great lunch there, and I got to know my teacher and a couple of my classmates better.

Then, on the writing front... I worked in the library after a fascinating Linguistics class today (we're finally getting into historical- and sociolinguistics (which involves finding common ancestors of language families). Anyway, I was feeling a little depressed because it was that time of day when the sun is going away, and I realized that almost all of my friends are gone for the weekend: My roommate, my next door neighbors, my high school friends, and my friend Anna is here, but her parents are visiting. I was thinking it was a little sad that I had nothing to do on a Friday night, but I was able to get out about 1,000 words before dinner, where I fortunately ran into my Sbisa friend Steven. Interestingly, he was going to the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream tonight, which I had planned on going to alone, but while I would have loved to join him and his friends, just prior to dinner, I learned that some wrimos from the area were having an impromptu writein at the local Barnes and Noble, so I ended up going there, and it was great.

It's funny how writers are often "strange" people, but isn't everyone a little strange if you think about it? They weren't anywhere near as "weird" as a lot of the Austinite bunch, but it was immense fun to write with four other wrimos and learn about similar interests. We had two "word wars" (in which everyone tries to write as much as possible within a set time limit-- in our case, 30 minutes-- before comparing totals), which helped me get another couple thousand words written. Then we had fun browsing the sci-fi and fantasy section of the bookstore and giving our input on various authors and series, after which we left because it was closing, only to stand outside for another half hour talking about video games and programming.

I know, it was kind of a nerd fest, but I haven't had people like that to talk to forever, and it was a lot of fun.

Anyway, as you can see my by nifty widget, which is *finally* working, I now have a grand total of 13,282 words, which puts me where I need to be by the end of Sunday! Good thing, too, since I have a lot of work to do this weekend.

Nearly 1/5 of the way there already?

I just ran out of time to cross the 10k mark tonight, but I got darn close at 9,741 words total. Today was a very good writing day: the protagonist can't leave the village, effectively subjecting him to my every whim and fancy; the villain has been introduced, though only vaguely, and he's even more repulsive than I made him in the outline; and the protagonist has met his fey protagonist counterpart, which I can tell you was quite the candybar scene to write!

How exciting! It's already been almost a week, and we're steaming along quite well. Here's to keeping the forward momentum and racking up the words this weekend!

Daily Quota for Tomorrow Reached Tonight

Today, I had no Anthropology video lecture, so I had a free hour in the library to write about a thousand words. Then, later, after much searching the internet for a suitable "controversial" article for my French class, I came back to the room and, hoping for at least 500 words, actually put out almost another 1,000, bringing my total up to 6,326 so far, and that's about how much I need to have by tomorrow night!

Good thing, too, since I have French club AND a history test to study for tomorrow...

But hooray for being ahead of schedule. If I can just keep this little buffer up, and increase it little by little, this just might be more doable than I thought this year.

Slightly Ahead of Schedule

I added almost 3,000 more words today, bringing me to just slightly over the brink of 4k at an exact count of 4,054, which puts me about 700 words ahead of schedule.

The protagonist has arrived in the village and inspected the mansion he inherited from his eccentric, late uncle. Oh, and some of the local boys made a gruesome discovery to kick things off (that would be ironic if you could read the draft-- they were playing soccer at the time).

Nothing like a murder mystery in a sleepy, countryside village to get the ball rolling (oh, I'm just full of these puns tonight!) ;)