amatyultare

The move to the new office is scheduled for this Friday and looks like it will go relatively smoothly, knock on wood. Packing is going to be annoying, but what can you do? I'm looking forward to the new space. Also, my annual review at work was today (I actually haven't quite been there a year, but they apparently do everyone's review around the same time for convenience's sake) and it went well. Yay!

...holy crap, I've been working at this place for eleven months. I mean, I like the company overall and I'm glad I'm working there, it's just a weird thought. I've been in P-town almost a year. Huh.

Which reminds me, tomorrow is the first day of September. And you know what that means? NaNoWriMo is only a couple of months away. Yes, I am absolutely doing it again. (How can something so seemingly masochistic be so fun?) However, I have not yet come up with any idea of what I'll write - no plot, no characters, nothing. In lieu of planning, I've been popping over to the NaNo forums, which is nearly as entertaining. I'd forgotten how amusing the NaNoers are. Especially the LitFiccers, for some reason - perhaps because their genre is so serious but they don't take themselves at all seriously, leading to hilarious contrast. Like the writer who summarized his/her entire novel as: "A man walks around feeling a bit sad".

(Of course, the Plot and Character Realism forum takes top billing during the actual event, as it hosts gems like mystery/suspense/horror writers who realize their entire intricate plots rest on such questions as "how much volume would a human body take up if one were to blend it into a liquid?")

There was a point to this post, I swear. I just...don't remember what it was. Ah well. Off to bed. Perhaps in a day or two I will write up my percolating rant about Piers Anthony (which was not the point of this post, but deserves ranting about). Later, all!

Current Word Count: 41,135
Chapters left to write: 3 or 4
Amount of the so called 'main plot' left to write: at least two thirds. (Yeah...to be fair, the longer I drag it out, the longer one my main characters looks kind of crazy.)
Randomness level of the random romantic subplot that suddenly popped up: really, really random. I absolutely did not intend it to exist, but now I kind of like it. But now I need to drag my characters out of that apartment and INTO THE PLOT.

In other news, I still really like my job but our printer/copier/scanner is the current bane of my existence; one of the things I have to do is scan all of the application for the day into one big PDF and send it to Enrollment. Except tonight it kept jamming after, oh, four pages. Again and again and again. I got so wrought up that I almost started crying, and so I decided to go home. Hopefully it will be more cooperative in the morning. *sigh*

And now, to bed.

To be fair, our wireless network is still not really working at my house, so posting on LJ and updating my word count is difficult.

But! I made it to 30,000 words today (30,452, to be exact). This is the most words I've written in a single day so far (over 5,000). And my plot is finally moving forward. Score!

I should probably keep writing, but my wrists are aching just a bit (Panera Bread tables are not ideally positioned for ergonomic typing). Maybe I'll go home, watch a movie or something to relax, and then write a bit more.

My internet at my house is sort of screwy, so getting online is a challenge.

Current wordcount for NaNo: 21,649. My goal is to get to 23,000 tonight - we'll see how that goes. (I totally missed my words for the day yesterday; I made the mistake of typing while laying on my stomach in bed and accidentally fell asleep.

Also, I highly encourage everyone on my f-list to go watch this. Even if you've never heard of Twilight. Even if you love Twilight. At least make it to reason #3; it cracks me up every time. (Although if I could get the song they actually used from the Twilight trailer, I would; rip-off or not, it's a good 'movie soundtrack song'.)

(Also, I'm too lazy to find the links, but Robert Pattison - playing the male lead in 'Twilight' - has publically stated on at least two occasions now that he thinks Stephenie Meyer is insane and 'Twilight' is a self-insert quasi-sexual fantasy. The anti-fans are SWOONING.)

Onward and upward towards 23,000!

Edited to add: I made it to 23,000 at 11:57 PM and was too tired to update this post before going to bed.

So I didn't expect that I'd be able to vote today. I hadn't switched my registration/residence to Portland, and I had forgotten to request an absentee ballot.

But I didn't remember one thing, which my coworkers helpfully reminded me of today. Maine's standards for voting registration are ridiculously lax.

After work today, I went to the polling place nearest to my house. I told them I needed to fill out a new registration card to update my address, and showed them my Maine driver's license and an 'electronic pay stub' from work. Now, no offense to my company, but the electronic pay stub is very much less than official-looking. I could probably make something that looks like it in about fifteen minutes in Photoshop, and I'm not even good at Photoshop. But it had my name and a Portland address, and that's all that mattered. They checked it, had me fill out a new card, and gave me a ballot. ^_^

This meant that I also got to vote on Portland town issues, except I don't know anything about Portland town issues. So I guessed randomly. Yay democracy? I'm such a bad citizen. *sigh*

And now, I return to my usual blatherings about NaNoWriMo.

Word count as of today: 14,037. Woo-hoo! My goal for tonight was actually to reach 15,000 but I was purposefully aiming high so I'm reasonably pleased.

The plot of my story, and keep in mind that I'm using 'plot' in its very loosest sense....this is something deliriumdriver asked about. I choose 'mainstream fiction' as my genre as it's basically about wacky college hijinks, but with some random urban fantasy elements involved as well.

Tessa is my heroine, a freshman education major (with a possible minor in Poli Sci) going to school in a mythical liberal arts university in southern Maine. Her roommate is Brianna, an English major, aspiring writer, and huge bookworm. After a mutual all-nighter in the middle of their first semester, Tessa and Brianna are trying to get to sleep when Brianna confesses something:

She's clairvoyant. And an orc.

Tessa is still trying to deal with that particular revelation when second semester classes start and Brianna declares that their mild-mannered Business Culture professor (an abstract math professor who basically spends every class shouting combinations of business buzzwords in an excited fashion) is a twisted genius with an Evil Plot (which they, of course, need to thwart). Unfortunately, she doesn't know what that Evil Plot might be....

And now, to bed.

Word count: 8,519. Yay!

Chapters completed: 2.5 of approximately 15. Yay!

Point at which my plot gets really, really hazy: chapter 6. Oh dear.

Approximate number of days before I will seriously need to start worrying about where my book is going: 8 or 9. (Hmm).

Current speed of the NaNoWriMo site: molasses in January (this is actually an upgrade from last night, when it was the speed of molasses going UPHILL in January).

Person on the NaNo forums who most intimidates me: a user named Kateness who has already written over 36,000 words. (?!!?!!)

My side on the intra-Maine war: Lobster (vs. Moose)

Current state of the intra-Maine ware: Lobsters are kicking (moose) butt. GO LOBSTAHS!

The next trick is to write my daily quota's worth of words on a weekday evening, after work and the gym and cooking dinner and all. But with luck and some hard work (and possibly a little bit of typing during my lunch break at work), I'll be over 10,000 words by this time tomorrow.

This ended up being a pretty active weekend. Not entirely restful, but hey, I can't have everything.

Friday night I drove up to the DFC to visit Mom and Eric. I attempted to sleep on my waterbed, but a waterbed's internal heater really needs to be on for a few days before the bed is comfortable; otherwise the cool water just leeches body heat right out of you. I eventually gave up and slept on the sofa.

Saturday I neatened up my room because I had left it in a complete mess, helped Mom with a few chores, ate some delicious blueberry pancakes, and reread Parliament of Whores. (P.J. O'Rourke <3) I packed up a few more things to bring back (like my manga and my winter coat) and headed back to P-town Saturday night.

Today I slept late and had the most bizarre dreams (as I often do when I sleep late). I wonder if it's odd that my dreams almost never are 'stationary' i.e. taking place in one location. They almost always involve running/driving/flying/etc. from place to place constantly. I think that's part of why I feel tired when I wake up after a long dream. ^_^

I went over to Westbrook for the NaNo kickoff party - good times. In between activites, I made myself a book cover (now that I have a title and all). It's less than amazing and very monochromatic (a picture of a whiteboard, on an off-white background, with black writing on it...yeah), but I'm reasonably satisfied with it.

The late afternoon/evening was devoted to a small shopping spree (mostly for cleaning supplies and a few groceries) and reorganizing my room. I brought back my box of posters and wallscrolls - besides making it feel more homey, I figured that putting them up would cause sound to be absorbed and take away some of that empty-room echoiness. The funny thing is that I now am back to having a ridiculously geeky room covered in anime wallscrolls (plus my Labyrinth poster, which as per tradition is on the wall directly facing the door - the first thing you see when you walk in is David Bowie staring at you). I cleaned the bathroom, did my laundry, and called it good for the evening.

Now I really need to get to sleep - my goal is to NOT have to drag myself out of bed every morning while internally cursing my alarm. We'll see.

You know, guys, I never seriously wanted to be a novelist or writer. Actually, I don't remember ever wanting to be a writer - professionally, I mean. The closest I ever got was wanting to be an editor (I'd still rather like to be an editor, but that is a tough job market to break into). I don't do plots. I don't write fiction at all. The last 'story' I wrote was in maybe the 8th grade. And it was historical fiction (based on the life of Anne Frank, and hideously depressing. Don't ask. I was an emo child).

So. I'm not a writer and don't particularly want to be.

WHY in the world am I determined to participate in NaNoWriMo?

Is it the challenge? That's probably it. *sigh* And there's really no going back now; not only have I signed up on the NaNoWriMo site, but I have my two main characters. They're unnamed but I already love them, ARGH.

However, frustratingly, I don't actually have a plot. I know what the setting will be (in a general way) but I don't know what the conflict will be. Or...wait....okay, maybe I do. Sort of.

Granted, this is a good year to do it since I should have plenty of free time after work and so forth. But...but...still! Why?!?

Sorry, just wanted to get that out of my system. I'm going back to my very rough outline now.