Oh, I kind of did it there, didn’t I? Oh well.

I confess, my health has really crashed as of late, both physical and psychological. Things are crazy around my house on top of that, and on top of THAT, I’m finding the work for the newspaper to be really challenging and much more time consuming than I expected. I suppose that’s a fair trade off, considering how much more it pays than the work I’ve been doing. The extra work would be why! It’s also tough to interview people during the holiday season — they’re all busy too, and it’s hard to pin them down! So I’m constantly asking for extensions that I’m sure my editor is getting sick of.

Unfortunately, with all the chaos, I pretty much… no, I DID give up on NaNo. I just couldn’t pull off the daily target, and once I started slipping from the target, there was no way for me to catch up. I was never in love with the novel premise to begin with, so that didn’t help. I’m going through one of those fallow periods where I guess I just don’t feel like writing at all. I just want to chill out and watch holiday specials on TV or online. I’ll have to be prepared for the fact that I’ll be broke after the holidays for a bit until my productivity picks up again.

One of the new things I’ll be taking on after the first of the year is tutoring a young person with Cerbral Palsy in writing. We met the other day, and she is just the most awesome, beautiful, cool chick, but she’s gotten royally screwed by the education system! (I know, those of you who are teachers understand how this song goes — the system just isn’t set up to help special kids flourish at their highest potential, you know?) She needs help getting through the freshman English classes so she can move on to other stuff she needs for her degree. She has no problem with math, but she’s lacking the basic skills she needs for English. And it doesn’t sound like her college English professors so far have really been willing to help her out. So voila — tutor, which would be me. I’m really looking forward to working with her. Just in our single meeting it was clear that she’s got the intellectual capability and the drive to learn what she needs to learn, she just needs guidance and feedback to get there! So while I’ll be making extra money doing that, I’ll also be helping someone else, which makes me feel good.

Anyhoo… I’m off to try and get some writing done (I’m so far behind on the blog posts I wanted to write for Yeepet.com this month, and I’m going to see if I can take on a few copywriting jobs for a few bucks each) and watch some holiday specials online.

Hope everybody had a good holiday, and continues to enjoy the season. Oh, hey, leave your pepper spray at home when you get in bloody fights for cheap crap merchandise that neither you nor anyone else in your family needs, okay?

DAY TEN TARGET:

Total So Far:

Onward and upward tomorrow!

1. Community Spa Nites – The local Cosmetology school holds three fundraising nights, where they offer spa services for a great price to help them raise money to travel to an international beauty conference in New York City!

2. 10 Makeup Mistakes You May Not Be Aware Of! – Just what it says. The experts share cosmetic mistakes women commonly make and aren’t even conscious of.

In sadder news, Jack the Cat, who had been lost by American Airlines in their JFK terminal for two months, finally had to be euthanized, as his injuries were just too serious for recovery, and he was suffering badly. RIP Jack. I’m glad at least his person was able to be there with him when he passed away.

~
And now that we’re all thoroughly depressed…

As far as NaNo goes… Day 7, I did exactly NOTHING, novel-wise. Not a single word, even on the outline. It was a cross of feeling like crap health-wise, not having slept enough the night before (thanks, stupid Daylight Savings Time!), and struggling even to get work-work done.

NaNoWriMo DAY SEVEN – NADA. BIG, FAT, GOOSE EGG.

NaNoWriMo DAY EIGHT

Day 8 Target:

Total So Far:

I am so never going to catch up. Today’s Day 9. By the end of today, I should have 15,003. I am officially 6002 words behind. SIX. THOUSAND. AND. TWO. Not good. So let’s say I spread those words out over the next 21 days — that would mean an extra 273 words per day. So the new target would be 1667 + 273 = 1940 words/day.

I dunno… looking at it that way it doesn’t seem so bad. Problem is, I have barely hit the 1667 on any particular day. How can I be sure I’ll hit an extra almost 300 words a day? Oy.

Well, I’m not giving up. Even if I don’t “win” this year, I will have at least given it a shot!

Can’t wait until tomorrow — my first cover story for the local magazine comes out. W00t!

Okay, on to the count (ONE, ONE thousand vords, Two, TWO thousand vords…):

Day Six Target:

Total So Far:

Crap, I’m still over a thousand words behind! I’m going to have to amp up my target for the next few days. Oh, NaNo, why do you vex me so?

Anyway, my problem is that I did a ton of writing — working on the outline sheets, finishing up the character portfolios I always fill out for stories. Now, I think that should count — it’s related to the novel, and it’s a TON of writing. I don’t know exactly how many words, because sorry, but I’m not sitting down and writing every longhand word I wrote. It’s at least 2000. But then, it’s not text within the story, so on that front I’m not sure whether it should count.

But guess what? I’m giving myself credit — NaNo encourages you to count every word you write during November, even nonsense words, as long as you make the target. And these were NOT nonsense words, they’re helping me move forward with the story. SO.

Yesterday’s count –

DAY FIVE TARGET:

TOTAL COUNT SO FAR:

I’m going to take the next few hours before bed to finish up the outline so I don’t have to stop and think about where I’m going when I’m writing the chapters. So for today:

DAY FOUR TARGET:

TOTAL SO FAR:

More tomorrow!

BlogBlast for Peace 2011

November 4, 2011
Bloggers from all across the globe
will blog for peace.
We will speak with one voice.
One subject
One day

While I’ll still be posting the regularly scheduled writing and NaNo related material later on, I saw this going on on several blogs I read (I think it was Daisy the Curly cat, because, yeah, I’m addicted to blogs starring cats.) and I thought I would take a chance to be part of it.

For those of you who don’t know me well, I’m a big, fat pacifist hippie Buddhist. You wouldn’t think so, considering my potty mouth, penchant for vampire smut, and joy in writing gory stories, but honestly, I think fiction is a perfect way of expressing our darker sides while still living a decent life.

I’ve been asked in the past, why (and how) I write both romance and horror (and dark fantasy, which is a mix of both)? And my answer is this: Romance is about finding the sublime in the horrific (or at least terrible) world that we live in. Horror is only its mirror image — finding the horrific in the sublime that life truly is. Frightening stories help us express and face our fears, indulge our socially unacceptable thoughts and nightmares while doing no harm… and yet, it seems as though our own “real” world becomes more and more like our frightening fiction every day.

And even worse. The monsters are human, and the damage done is far more than even our most twisted imaginations can conjure, because they’re real. War consumes so much of the planet, destroys so many lives, so much land, so many resources. The United States is close to bankrupt at least in part because of endless sanctioned violence that leads ultimately to nothing.

I am unashamed to be a pacifist. I don’t believe in *real* violence for any reason, toward any creature. It diminishes us as a species, makes us hypocrites spiritually/religiously/politically, and brings into question whether we have evolved at all beyond the “animals” we so disparage as unnecessary and unimportant — remember, we’re destroying them and their world too. (And worse, if you take into account cosmetic testing, animal cruelty, dog fighting — I’m looking at you, Vick.)

What does violence ever really achieve? More violence. More death. More destruction. It’s sad, and the modern world’s culture of hatred and war, be it the kind fought with guns, drones, and tanks, or the kind fought with words, with laws, or with destructive practices meant to elevate monetary profit above all else, including life, the sustainability of our planet and even basic safety, will eventually lead to the end of us all.

That is my blog blast for peace. Please try to be kind to one another. It’s truly as simple as that. Keep your violence and horror restricted to paper.

(A side note: I’d like to make it clear that I support our troops and their families — they are doing the job which they’ve been trained and commanded to do. My problem lies with the so-called “leaders,” who sit safe and comfortable in their offices and mansions, destroying the world and murdering these brave women and men (and millions of innocents besides) from a detached distance. They should carry the horror, the nightmares, the shame. They should be the ones losing limbs, suffering from PTSD, not the people who ultimately carry the burden. It’s disgusting that world leaders are playing what amounts to violent chess with people who ultimately have to choice in the matter at all.)

I was going to stay up a little later and get some more words in today, but I’m just too tired. SO, here’s today’s only slightly better count.

Day Three Target:

Total Thus Far:

As I’ve mentioned like, a billion times already, this is my first real foray into horror. I write dark/urban fantasy as a rule, so yucky, scary things happen all the time, but… it’s weird that without the romance/action piece that’s my comfort zone, I’m having such a problem getting the gorey/scary out. Of course, it’s NaNo, so you’re sort of encouraged just to write things like, “The creature went BOO! and the guy went OMG!” Which I’ve sort of done. And there’s a lot of completely unnecessary swearing. And stupid pop culture references, some of which people under 35 would have NO CLUE about. But hey, that’s the joy of NaNo, right? Let your inner word slut go wild with whatever nonsense comes to mind.

Maybe some catch up tonight or tomorrow, depending on if I take another project or not. I’m trying to get ready for the holidays AND save up for My Precious (the Kindle Fire).

So ANYhoo…

Day Two:

Total:

Today:

Total

More tomorrow! How did you do?