I'm surprised at how excited I'm becoming at the thought of settling down tonight with my book in my hands, reading from page one all the way to page two hundred and thirty-five. With a cider within reach, and a cat or so at hand, perhaps. Some candles; good music; maybe a little bit of incense... mmm.
The 1/2" binder, however, is definitely way, way too small. Methinks I shall meander over to the pharmacy and buy a 1" binder while dinner cooks.
So I’m printing out my novel as we speak – er, as I type. I’m also handling a ton of communication for the magazine at the same time, plus researching. The ability to multi-task is a good thing to have in my life. As for the printing, well, most people would hit the Print button and then ignore their machine for a while. I, however, have to print in twenty page increments. I know what happens when you hit the Print button and walk away. I wrote a thesis and printed it at two different times – namely for first submission, then after my defence with three words changed, for the printers to bind. The potential for disaster is unreal.
I picked up a new package of paper, and a binder, and a whole slew of plastic protector sheets, and I have a sneaky suspicion that the binder is already too small, looking at the stack of paper growing steadily beside it.
I notice that my printer is pausing for longer periods of time between pages. I wonder if it’s getting tired. I miss my old printer, the trusty workhorse that transformed my thesis into a physical, tangible entity. I thought it ate ink, and the cartridges were increasing in price so I got a new one. Ha. The new one consumes ink at an alarming rate, and the cartridges are even more expensive. Well, live and learn. I keep being told by people that small laser printers are more than affordable now; well, that’s something to think about in the future. Far, far in the future.
While I’m researching museums on-line (someone thought up a Société des musées québécois, and created a fantastic web site, much to my delight – isn’t that wonderful?), I’m also catching bits of my novel as it comes out of the printer, and I stack each batch on top of the last set of pages. It’s good. Know how people say, “If you’re passionate about something and you truly love it, you’ll communicate that love and that passion to others”? If I can pick it up at any point and become interested, and enjoy it, then I’ve done my job.
I’m seeing mistakes and left-out words that I hadn’t picked up before, though, while I edited the novel on-screen. I’m also seeing my ink levels plummet, so I’m keeping a watchful eye on my printer utility. Hold on, little printer, hold on… just another forty-seven pages…
I saw The Matrix again last night, and if/when I ever take on personal students for this whole spirituality thing, it will be one of two assigned viewings, along with The Empire Strikes Back. Why? Because it talks about the nature of reality, and how you can affect it once you’ve broken out of the preconceived notion of how things work. It’s all about the Force; it’s all about understanding that the Matrix is a construct. Absolutely fascinating.
I also saw SWEp2 this week, for the second time. I don’t know; maybe my expectations were much, much lower than my first viewing, but I enjoyed it more this time. Yes, the acting is horrible; yes, Lucas can’t write dialogue to save his life; yes, the two key leads have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever (gives a whole new meaning to “We’d be living a lie!”), but the overall storyline (i.e. the discovery of two armies being positioned to take over – er, help the Republic, yes, help them, I mean) is decent. Too bad the ultimate execution of that storyline is a hatchet job.
I taught the first part of a two-session class last night, and once again, I feel like I didn’t get through to them. There were questions throughout the workshop, but overall I get the feeling that they were unimpressed. The first half of this class is a lot of information, in preparation for the nuts and bolts next week, and it was apparently interesting and new to most of them, judging from their reactions… and yet, they left giving off an air of “this isn’t what I wanted”.
Teaching is an excellent way to discover that you didn’t know as much as you thought you knew. Well, that’s not exactly what I mean, but it does feel like that at times. Allow me to rephrase the thought: Teaching challenges you to redefine what you thought you understood perfectly well. There’s always someone who asks a slightly skewed question, and when you answer it you have to sit and think for a moment, and then try to express what basically amounts to a feeling or a belief in new words. It’s especially sensitive when it comes to a personal perception of magic and spirituality, because, as the colloquialism says, your mileage may vary. Actually, in such an intensely personal experiential situation, your mileage will vary. Your experiences with how your thoughts flow, and your perception of how the world around you functions, will be vastly different from the next person’s. We’re lucky we can communicate at all, or agree on anything; I think the amount of compromise we tacitly allow would surprise us all if we broke things down and really managed to compare worldviews.
The main problem lies in the fact that students expect a cut-and-dried, tried-and-true method that will work no matter what, and I can’t give it to them. I can tell them what works for me, but I have to stress that without experimentation, they won’t know what works for them as well. Most people seem to think I’m hiding wisdom of the ages from them when I don’t hand them a solution tied up with a pretty bow, and they can get quite snippy. I know the human mind is innately lazy, and I know we shy away from work, but honestly, you get back what you put in. If you take the time to meditate on your personality, and how you truly perceive the world, and how you interact with it, then you will be better equipped to choose more efficient and successful ways to make changes in your life.
Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe there is a way to “hey presto” it all, and no one’s told me yet. Wow. That would really invalidate all my workshops, wouldn’t it?
Go, NaNos! Only three days left! Write! Write like the wind!
Speaking of writing, I'd blog more, but I'm up to here with magazine stuff, teaching stuff, and work for Sunday's concert.... and a bad back again that's making computer work a literal pain.
Welcome, Tal, to the ranks of the bePurpled!
Normally I love CBC Radio Two.
But I really, really hate Peter and the Wolf.
I'm going to go put on MLG's RSW: Jedi Prophecy soundtrack (Volume One). That will erase every tiny bit of the horrible story and the irritating repeated musical motifs from my mind.
Speaking of Volume One, there was talk of a Volume Two a while ago....
Ouch.
Typically, as soon as I solve one health problem, another crops up. Now that I have new glasses and have miraculously solved my mysterious low-grade perpetual headache, my back has begun acting up once more. It’s becoming more and more difficult to move around; lying on the floor is pretty much the only way to ease it. Good thing I have those new glasses so I can get a clear view of the ceiling.
I don’t know what it is – I’m doing a lot of computer work and cello playing, sure, but that’s no different from my activities of the past two years. Is it the weather, the cold-to-warm-to-really-cold spells we’ve been having? Am I developing arthritic symptoms in my spine that respond to seasonal change?
The osteopath hasn’t done much for it the past two times I’ve seen her; evidently I shall have to really stress the pain and the precise location for her next time I see her in late December. I thought I had done so during the past couple of visits, and for the rest of the day things seem all right, but a day or so later the pain creeps back. I’d go back to her sooner, but that financial thing’s in the way again. I’m just trying to take it really easy and watch how I sit, how I carry things, and so forth.
Speaking in passing of my cello, in case I missed you in my e-mail announcement (or if you have no clue who I am and are in the Montreal area next Sunday!), here’s the concert announcement:
I know, it seems like only yesterday that I did a concert, but it's that time once again...
This Sunday, December 1 at 7.30 PM, the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra and guests will be presenting a program called "Tributes to Andres" in honour of our conductor who died in an accident almost three months ago. Included in the program are a dramatic Prelude and Fugue by Handel, Albinoni's Adagio, and selections from Mendelssohn's first symphony and the Beethoven symphony we played at the Canada Day concert that Andres enjoyed conducting so much. We will also be playing an intriguing arrangement of a Latvian folk song, arranged by our late conductor himself.
The concert will take place on the West Island once again, at St. John Fisher church in Valois (which was the venue we performed at last January). The church is located at 120 Summerhill, corner Valois Bay Avenue, in Pointe-Claire.
Tickets are $10 per person, children 18 and under are admitted free.
Both the 204 bus and the 203 bus from the Dorval station pass nearby (for the 204, get off at the corner of Belmont and Broadview; for the 203, get off at the corner of Valois Bay and Belmont); a map is always useful too.
This concert is going to be packed with people paying their last respects, so if you're planning on coming I advise getting there early so you'll have a seat!
Writers, readers, children of all ages:
Ceri is a validated NaNoWriMo winner!
Her masterwork, The 50,000 Word Novel Part V: I will never have a title, has passed 50,000 words. Purple is now her current favourite colour as well.
Update: The title has been changed and is now To Serve The Lady. I personally prefer the old title, but this one likely presents a more accurate picture of the novel's contents, as opposed to the author's humourous sense of despair...
I can see!
It is truly amazing how a small change in prescription can make such a huge difference. I put them on, and when I stood up I wobbled a bit. I have to get used to a whole new depth-perception thing now. And my computer screen is so clear!
I ended up with amber wire frames from the children’s section. It was a toss-up between these ones and a slightly larger, darker pair of frames. I love these ones, but I’ve been so fixed on black for the past year or so that I was truly torn. I spent about twenty minutes putting these ones on, taking them off, putting the black pair on… they were really tied for first place. I would have chosen by price, except there was a difference of only twenty dollars, so that really didn’t help much. I ended up choosing these ones because they were a bit less harsh. But they’re the perfect shape, they’re nice and light, and they feel fantastic! Plus I got a nifty new hard glasses case with them.
So, now I just have to remember to put them on when I get up, and take them off when I go to bed (which, yes, is often a problem because over the day I get used to wearing them and I forget that I have them on; go ahead, laugh at me).
Oh dear.
Is our small Friday night NaNo Support Group meeting happening this week?
And, if it is... am I still allowed?
Or will I have to sit home alone, with my notebook computer, lonely, with just a cold, inert novel to keep me company?
Today has been a comedy of errors, let me tell you.
I hit 50K. I logged on to find out how to get my word count verified... and the NaNo site told me there was an internal server error, and the verification process was down.
Frustrated, I tried to blog my progress. My blog template had vanished and my posts weren't being published.
Hmm.
I e-mailed the webmaster at NaNo HQ about the verification failure; it bounced back.
By this point, I was positive it was personal. What, did the gods not appreciate the dish of O'Casey's Irish Cream I had poured for them this morning, anticipating a day of excitement? (Perhaps they misunderstood - I was expecting a little bit of excitement, as in butterflies-in-the-tummy, not asking for nail-biting tension.)
I called Ceri for support. She soothed me. I saved all my chapters into one text file to use up more time.
I used another e-mail address and got through to NaNo HQ; they cleared things up for me. I verified... and my browser crashed just as the congratulatory page with the links showed up.
And my blog still wasn't publishing.
So I tinkered a bit, and disconnected, and turned things off and on again, and dialed up once more, and lo and behold, Blogger's got my publishing system functioning again, and I have that grape-alicious bar with the sweet word of "Winner" above my word count in the NaNo tables. Which, incidentally, was higher than I thought - after pasting all twelve chapters into one document, the overall word count was about three thousand higher than I had calculated individually. A pleasant surprise. It means that I actually hit 50K last night, I believe.
So now what?
Well, it's not like this is the first novel I've finished. I've written two or three others: one of which was destroyed when I was about eighteen; one of which I'm too fond of as an early teenage work to burn, although it will never, ever see the light of day again; and my thousand page masterpiece that I began in college and finished in university, which scares me every time I think about redrafting it. I've rewritten the beginning dozens of times in an effort to get to where it starts improving, namely the middle. It defies me, though.
This NaNo novel, though, is pretty much complete. I think I might write one finishing chapter, an epilogue, really, to decorate it a bit. Then I can revise it. Scanning through it, though, when I had pasted it all into one document, I found myself rather surprised at how much, er, "accidental quality" had slipped in. Yes, there were characters in my original notes and outline that never showed up, whom I had created with certain things in mind; evidently they weren't needed, and writing something/one in just because s/he/it was in my outline, even if it doesn't add to the story, is a lousy reason for including it/her/him.
I'm going to do a final spell-check, then print it out, sit down, and read my novel.
Ahem.
Fifty-four thousand, one hundred and sixty-six.
Thank you.
Sick. Headache. Tummy ache.
Must work. Must do freelance writing stuff to pay for kibble.
Novel, only 3000 words away from 50K, voices its siren call from my notebook computer.
Torn.
Novel wins.
I have a new inhaler to counter the evil effects of asthma. It's a powder, like the bronchitis medication I had last year that had me paranoid. You're just not supposed to breathe in solid matter. I kept expecting to choke. Anyway, I tried my first dose of this new stuff last night; not dead yet. Go me!
Dropped into another shop to try on more frames; more disappointments. Many almosts, no perfects. Drat.
Sigh.
Catch the twistedness while you can - Lord of the Peeps: The Fellowship of the Peep
You know Peeps - the little marshmallow horrors that emerge around springtime. One of the funniest things ever brought to my attention when I still worked at the F/SF shop was a site devoted to Peep research.
The LOTP site has already moved once. It's only up to Chapter Four, but it shows promise, having already done the Isildur flashback scene during Gandalf's research of the Ring at Minas Tirith quite amusingly. The battle at Mount Doom from the Prologue was good for a laugh, too.
So the bedroom’s now a pale cream colour, and the furniture has been rearranged to create a nicer feel. We like it.
There’s also about a foot of snow out there, which means that my husband is home today, and, coincidentally, snow tires must be put on the car. I just love it when a plan comes together like this. I think Ikea is in our future, too. We need a new stick-and-board shelf to put next to the fireplace for videos and DVDs so we can use the existing stick-and-board shelves for, er, books.
And… this morning when I downloaded my e-mail, I was offered a section editor position on the staff of a new entertainment magazine slated to debut next spring. Paid.
Blink, blink.
And it isn’t even eight-thirty yet.
Oh, great. Now it's freezing raining. (What's the active tense for that, anyway? Without saying something dreadfully formal such as, "Our current precipitation consists of freezing rain", I mean.)
Hmm. My site meter seems to be down.
Going to check it out, I discovered some interesting referrals for this owlyblog, such as:
- bad writers (fourth hit out of 1,400,000, alas; this is hardly encouraging for someone who is a writer by profession)
- dip pens
- owl costume pattern
- inflatable pony popped (for which I am number one of only two hits)
- Peek Freans cookies (number 57 of many, many, many - why on earth did they click on me?)
- Alice in Wonderland mythic forest
Unfortunately, when you do a search for "good writers" I'm nowhere to be seen...
Whoa. When did it become winter?
Quickie review of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
1. Geez, I'm glad I don't go to Hogwarts. Big snakes. Screaming roots. Willow trees that think playing Whack the Student is a jolly time.
2. I so wish I went to Hogwarts! Or at least lived in that world.
Good film - well-paced, good acting, good dialogue, fabulous new set designs. If asked to compare it to the first in the series, I'd say apples and oranges. The first one established the world and characters. This one plunged right in and didn't really explain anything, expecting you to have read the books, or at least have seen the first film. I like that. Why waste time re-introducing places and people?
I will see it again. Not, however, at the Paramount, although since the copy of the film we were watching snapped (right before the exciting bits) we got vouchers for a complimentary movie ticket, so it's sort of like we saw it for free; thirteen-fifty is just too pricey. I did it for The Chamber of Secrets on opening night, and I'll do it for The Two Towers premiere, but that's all. Any subsequent viewings will be done elsewhere.
Tomorrow, we paint the bedroom. Updates as events warrant.
Good news, good news, and bad news.
Good news: I am no longer near-sighted in my left eye! Woo-hoo!
Good news: I have a new prescription that will ease the fatigue I get working with paper, print, and computer screens! Woo-hoo!
Bad news: I need new glasses.
Yes, I could just replace the lenses in my current frames, and I intend to do it. However, I want another pair as well, since I’ve developed a bad habit of taking off my glasses and leaving them next to the computer, which does me no good at all if I’m out watching a movie or something. Today, I discovered that I had evidently blocked the horror that was shopping for new frames two and a half years ago out of my memory. I have a vision: thin black wire-rim frames in a narrow rectangular shape. Does anyone make something even remotely close to this vision? Yes. Sort of. But never, it seems, in a size that fits me. I’m small, okay? I wear small sizes. I know damn well the rest of the world is big, so something labelled “average” actually translates as “too big” in my world. I hate, hate, hate shopping for frames. It’s as bad as shopping for new bras. I went to four different shops in two different malls, and nowhere did I see frames that leaped out at me and said, “I’m perfect!”. Or even, “I’d be bearable if I wasn’t a size 10.”
Frames are so expensive! Dear gods! A hundred dollars for the lenses, at least one-fifty for the frames – ouch! I refused to even try on any frame that was priced at over $170. That’s sheer insanity. Even so, I have to wait for my next EI cheque to arrive, and then hope that when I go back to the first Lenscrafters I went to, they still have the frames I hated least of all, in a size that can be adjusted down to fit me. (And yes, I even tried the children’s section. Poor kids all have to choose from round and round-ish frames. Round looks horrible on me.)
I need to wear these for “any precision work that will be undertaken for any period of time”, the optometrist says. Which for me means pretty much everything except making tea or eating. Writing, working, reading, TV or movie watching, sewing… I just need to get into the habit of putting them on in the morning, and remembering to take them off again at night (which, yes, I’ve been forgetting to do, growing so accustomed to wearing them for computer work as I have been, which results in putting my cheek on the pillow and jamming the frames into the side of my nose). Both eyes, I was informed, are astigmatic, so glasses are just an easier solution than contacts, especially since I technically don’t need to have some sort of vision correction on full-time. Yeah, right; live my life for two days and then tell me that my everyday activities aren’t “precision activities”.
I'm in the home stretch.
Yes, last night I sat down to write. Two hours and eighteen pages later (no, I don't know how that particular time-bending miracle occurred), I'm a breath away from 40K.
Now, my chapters tend to the 4,500 word count. Assuming I’m aiming for the 50K mark as a finish line (which I’m not – it will end when it ends… so long as there’s a minimum of 50K involved!), that means I have about eleven hundred words for two longish chapters, or three shortish chapters, or two regular chapters and an epilogue, which is looking like the best solution at the moment. And the wonder of it is, the story's actually at the right point for two chapters to end it at the correct pace.
I'm really stunned that everything seems to be falling into place, because I certainly didn’t plan it. It's like, er, magic. Or something.
And speaking of magic... only twelve hours until Chamber of Secrets! Before that, though, I have to keep an appointment with my optometrist in the wilds of the West Island, to figure out if my prescription needs updating or whether I just have to wear my glasses full-time now.
Bad, bad sleep last night. On the other hand, there's only one more sleep until we see The Chamber of Secrets on Friday night.
Good rehearsal, though. Take that, Handel. And the conductor finally suggested that the celli play every second note of those pesky sixteenth-note legato runs in the Mendelssohn.
Got an e-mail from Ceri this morning talking about her NaNo project, which alas, like me, is on hold til tomorrow, since both of us work today. She said that tomorrow she would "write like the dickens", which I found highly amusing in the NaNo context. I can just imagine a Victorian editor saying, "Quantity, Charles, not quality! Accidental quality is acceptable."
Scott and MLG bring you The AlphaGeeks, an essential part of this well-balanced lifestyle.
Because deep inside, we are all geeks. Every one of us.
Whoa!
So this is what happens when you don't check in at the NaNo site for a couple of days. Everyone's word counts increase dramatically!
Nice work, all!
Yesterday, quite simply, sucked.
Oh, the day was horrid. Evil was afoot in my life. Things went from bad to worse.
I did not blog, I did not write; I did not practice. I did, however, buy funky new shoes.
I shall not depress you all, however, with gloomy details. Instead, rejoice, for today was a wondrous day!
Highlights include an hour and a half of brilliant cello, where I spiked that irritating Handel quite nicely, thank you very much; a terrific wrap sandwich made with thick slices of ham roast and Monterey Jack cheese, toasted under the broiler; leaps and bounds of progress on freelance work; and a satisfying few thousand words added to my novel count.
A rest is as good as a change. Voila. I am renewed.
And I have new funky shoes. Go me!
More snapping and growling from the NaNo Cage of Doom, featuring the match of the century, Tal vs. Serinde:
Just checked the word count... pass me will you?! We'll just see about that!
(Actually I'm kidding, I know it's not a race, and congrats Ceri!)
Tal
Talyesin | Email | 11.08.02 - 2:14 pm
Psssh. Not a race. Eat my dust, turkey.
Ceri | Email | Homepage | 11.08.02 - 4:37 pm
Can't you just feel the love?
From Ceri's comments, regarding the NaNo site being down and word counts un-updated:
Poor baby.
My frickin' heart bleeds for you.
Talyesin | Email | 11.11.02 - 9:27 am
Quiet, you!
Ceri | Email | Homepage | 11.11.02 - 9:42am
I love it when the real writer emerges, snarling and showing its teeth, don't you?
Ceri and I took in the Remembrance Day ceremonies this morning at Place du Canada, and I saw a schoolgirl pass out in front of us. I am quite ashamed to say that the first thing that ran through my head was, "Would my NaNo protagonist pass out at a Remembrance Day ceremony?" The second thing, of course, was, "Is she okay?" Looked like her teacher had it all under control, and I know the last thing I would have wanted if I were fourteen was to have a bunch of strangers crowding around me. It was well-handled.
I was stunned by the reports of anti-war graffiti on the cenotaph, though. It had been cleaned off by the time we arrived, but I saw some on the park benches nearby. Defacing public property on the day the country commemorates the senseless deaths of our citizens in unwanted battle - great way make a point, whoever you were, and to encourage us to admire your skulking ways and your whiny protest. No, war isn't the solution. I agree with you there. But attacking the spirits of hundreds of veterans who risked ther lives in confrontations beyond what most of us can envision - that's low. Your ways do not justify your means.
Sorry. Rant over. Stuff like this just sets my teeth on edge. You honour your forebears for the courage to stick to their beliefs, whether you agree with them or not.
Ahem.
I have broken 30K mark.
Thank you.
By the way, guys - everyone who was aware of the cute little switch Tas did with my Auto-Correct while he was over last weekend can quit snickering into your sleeves. Joke's on him - I don't write on the big computer. I use the notebook. Remember?
My lead in the Montreal NaNo Word Count Derby has been threatened.
I should explain something. I write as fast as I read, so when I sit down for a couple of hours to write, yes, my word total goes up rather quickly. I'm not steamrolling forward with the intent of finishing first; I'm just writing, and enjoying myself. This isn't about having the highest word count, not by a long shot. I type fast, I think fast (at least, when I'm on my own - put me in a RPG situation and I'll wait for someone else to initiate action), and I work at home, so I can fit novel-writing in with less trouble than most people.
When Ceri, with whom I lunched and attended the Place du Canada Remembrance Day ceremonies, informed me that (a) I was universally and cheerfully hated by the other Montreal NaNos at the coffee meet yesterday (which I missed, as I was writing!), I laughed. When she then told me that someone had passed me in the Word Count Derby, I was all prepared to groan dramatically and shake my fist at my agreeable rival Emily (nothing personal, Emily, you know that, right?). However, I was stunned when she told me that, no, it was someone who had been somewhere between seventh and tenth on the list who had skyrocketed up all of a sudden.
Well.
See, I was fine about this word count thing up until the point where Tal mentioned that he'd love it if the first Montreal NaNo to hit 50K was someone he knew.
This, coupled with Ceri's news... well, let's just say that all of a sudden, it's personal.
So I'm off to write. I should be preparing for a class that I'm teaching tonight, but I can wing it.
Maybe I should corral my cats and them start writing from the end of the novel, so we can meet in the middle. Heck, next year, I should just let them write their own novel.
Calloo, callay! I have a new monitor! Yes, hard on the heels of discussing the eventuality of my father purchasing a new computer, I visited a friend last night, mentioned the need to have a new eye exam and how monitors were bothering my vision, and walked away with a new monitor. (He had two. And he says he was planning to buy another one this week anyway.)
Ceri thinks that I've drafted my cats to write my novel while I sleep (little does she know that sleep is a rare luxury in my life these days). MLG posted this URL in a comment, and I just had to share it with you:
PawSense, the software utility that catproofs your computer.
From the web page:
When cats walk or climb on your keyboard, they can enter random commands and data, damage your files, and even crash your computer. This can happen whether you are near the computer or have suddenly been called away from it.
PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from cats. It quickly detects and blocks cat typing, and also helps train your cat to stay off the computer keyboard.
Every time your computer boots up, PawSense will automatically start up in the background to watch over your computer system. Even while you use your other software, PawSense constantly monitors keyboard activity. PawSense analyzes keypress timings and combinations to distinguish cat typing from human typing. PawSense normally recognizes a cat on the keyboard within one or two pawsteps.
In my experience, one or two pawsteps have already done damage that will take at least one to three minutes to undo.
The most priceless bit was the warning screen they've developed, which announces CAT-LIKE TYPING DETECTED, locks down the system, and requires authorization to un-lock it so you can keep typing.
Yep. Good thing these people developed this software instead of, oh, I don't know, using a keyboard shelf under their desk or something. Yes, indeedy. Where would we be without them? Overrun by illegible cat novels, that's where.
Goodness, where did four thousand words come from?
On to chapter seven!
Okay, now I have the seed of a new terror deep inside me.
I'm going to be hit by a car or something, and be unable to finish my novel by November 30th.
Anyone else ever wake up and know you must have had really weird dreams in order to have been subconsciously instilled with such unbased fears?
In my regular circle of friends there is a disproportionately large number of NaNoWriMo participants, and most of us got together last night for mutual support. (That proportion is complemented by the frustrated artists, who were not with us. We're a very creative bunch when we're given the opportunity.) It's a good group, and we discussed a lot of really neat stuff while enjoying some good food. One of the things we talked about was the Cheesy Fantasy Epic, which Dez claims writes itself because it's formula, formula, cliché, formula. Sounds like his material is marketable already! (Don't mind me, I've just worked in the book business for eleven years, and cannot believe the crap that gets published. This of all things assures me that someone I know, if not myself, will be a published author some day, because our worst is still better.)
We discovered things in common, such as people trying to sneak in novel-writing at work while on the phone, people forgetting to eat, working late at night, writing huge blocks less often, and so forth. One of my friends, when we pressed him for his word count, was remarkably stubborn, and he finally admitted that he'd begun a novel and it had hit a brick wall, so after arguing fruitlessly with it for a couple of days he'd abandoned it and begun a new one a day or so ago. We were stunned, but cheered when he told us that he'd written a few chapters already (although he still didn't share his word count!). It takes guts to abandon something you've put time into, even if it's dead in the water.
Everyone's optimistic, everyone's having fun, and the only damper on the evening was when the waitress told us that they had run out of cider.
This morning I teach, we read Shakespeare this afternoon (which keeps growing no matter how hard I try to keep a limit to it; if everyone shows up we might have a seating problem!); tomorrow, I will write. I called it quits last night an hour before I had to leave for the meeting; I could have stayed and hacked out more, but I was tired. This left my word count just a thousand shy of half-way to 50K, which was a bit frustrating, but it's good to know that when I sit down on Sunday that milestone will be passed.
Oh, dear gods.
She drinks tea, too.
I have a brand-new wide-mouthed mug with herbs all over it. It fits kitten heads quite nicely, apparently. Kitten heads attached to bodies which evidently like the taste of lukewarm Twinings Lady Grey.
Enough, you cat. Shoo with you. You are distracting me (a) from my freelance work that pays for your kibble, and (b) from my novel.
Go play with your Auntie Maggie, or chase Roman's tail, or something.
I'm having a bit of difficulty typing this morning, because there's a kitten sitting in front of my monitor.
Yes, she has discovered the computer. At first, she just wanted to sit on my lap and purr adoringly. Being with her human was enough. Then, she wanted to see what all the clicks were about. Keyboard; okay. Then, ah then, she happened to look up as I moved my mouse across the screen, and it was love at first sight. Now she climbs from my lap over the keyboard (adding Xs and Ks and the odd Q, deleting other stuff, pulling up a couple of screens I've never seen before in my browser) and sits right in front of the monitor, watch my pointer as I navigate, or my whirling propellor "working" icon.
Okay, she's moved to the stack of NaNo reference book I have piled next to the monitor. Gads, she's cute. This is teeth-rotting cuteness. You're lucky I don't have a digital camera, or it would be, "here's my kitten being cute", and "here's my kitten being painfully adorable". (Please don't knock the books over, darling, or you will plummet from cute to gaspingly laughable, and I'm drinking tea, here. That dictionary balanced on the very top may look solid, but it has two mass-market paperbacks underneath it.) She's managed to lie down so that she can look down and crane her head around the edge of the monitor and watch the words appear on the screen.
Gah. Who needs honey in their tea when they have a kitten?
I'm still working on the seasonal gift list my parents asked me for a couple of weeks ago. I'm terrible at brainstorming a list of stuff I want. Evidently I shall have to take an afternoon and wander through a large bookstore and make notes of what strikes my fancy, and then do the same at a music store. Ikea gift cetificates are always good too, I suppose; inevitably I end up needing at least one more bookshelf per year.
I'm having dinner with Ceri, Marc, and Annika tonight (anyone dares to make a Marc's Angels joke and they're toast)... maybe I'll go downtown a little early and do some browsing. All in the name of finishing these gift lists, of course.
So there!
My last word count two days ago was around seventeen thousand something, so when I sat down to write for a couple of hours tonight my goal was to hit twenty thousand, and I needed approximately twenty-five hundred words to do it. I was still writing tonight when our friends showed up for our appointed evening of film-watching. I typed furiously at my notebook computer, and finally said, "Okay, please humour me by allowing me to run to my big computer and post my word count." I was confident. I was satisfied with my achievement. I logged on, grabbed my calculator... and was two hundred words short.
"What?" I cried at the screen.
"Everything okay in there?" my husband called.
"No," I said through gritted teeth. "My math was off. I don't know what number I used, but it was the wrong one."
I logged off and we proceeded to watch Spider-Man, and I was rather impressed. This film just sort of got away from me while it was in theatres. I enjoyed it immensely, apart from the slight issue I had with Peter not telling anyone he'd been bitten by a blue and red spider like those fourteen other genetically altered spiders, you know, the ones where there's supposed to be fifteen, but one's missing? We no-prized it by deciding that he was shy, and he'd already been bullied in that scene, so if he said, "Hey, a spider bit me," the other kids would probably make fun of him: "Oooh, poor baby, did a spider bite him?"
So the film ended, and our friends left, and my husband started turning off lights... and I sat down, determined to hit twenty thousand words before I went to bed.
It's done.
So there.
When taking a bath in order to think about your novel, take a pad of paper and a pencil in with you, just in case, so that you can make notes when bombarded with good ideas and perfectly phrased lines.
I avoided my novel yesterday and sat down to do some serious book research, which consisted of going through two novels with an orange highlighter, a pencil, and a pad of sticky notes. Now I can press onwards, confident, using these texts to inspire my protagonist as she makes connections between these novels and the world around her.
That's why my word count hasn't budged. That, and practicing, and orchestra.
I've had better nights, but I've had worse nights, too. Two of our best cellists were missing, so Walter and I were struggling to fill in sound-wise and technique-wise, with our last two cellists alternately playing the bass part (which really threw me off a lot) and attempting the cello line. For some reason I didn't move up to sit with Walter in the first chair (actually I know exactly what the reason was, it was avoidance of being close to the conductor for the Handel and the Mendelssohn disasters I foresaw looming), so both he and I sat alone, one behind the other, which meant we both felt unsupported because we couldn't hear anyone else's line to lend us psychological support. Next week I've promised to sit up front with him.
There were good parts (namely the bits I really, really practiced) and bad parts (the bits I practiced but became severely thrown off by the presence of the rest of the orchestra as we passed around the fugue theme of the Handel at breakneck speed). I'm really going to have to buckle down and do some serious work on these pieces in the next week or so. I don't feel tremendously defeated, however, because there are some bits I can play that no one else can. So you see, I'm not a complete failure, which is a blessed relief, trust me. I still can't get into the music, though; I'm finding it very difficult to create any sort of positive emotional attachment to it. I'm rather neutral about it all, which bothers me. Music is a very emotional art for me, and if a piece doesn't make me feel something, I'm going to have difficulty playing it. Technical difficulty is a seperate negative stumbling block for these pieces.
This afternoon I'm going to do a couple of hours of freelance work, then I'll novelise for a while. Can't have my fingers losing flexibility, or my creative juices drying up, now, can I? (I believe I used the phrase 'drooling language all over the page' in encouragement to a fellow NaNoWriMo, and you know, it's quite the apt metaphor...)
A public congrats to Ceri for not only hitting her goal of 8,900 words, but surpassing it for a running total of 9,115.
Yay, Ceri!
I was out last night and I picked up a couple of books that my protagonist examines closely over the course of my novel. I already own copies of these particular books, but there was no way I was going to use them as reference. So, new copies were purchased (I did try to find them second-hand, but five second-hand stores later, I knew I was out of luck) and I brought them home to break them in.
My mother (this is related, honest) trained as a documentation technologist, which is to a librarian as a dental hygenist is to a dentist: they do all the work, and the university graduate gets the credit and the plumper paycheque. One of the things she learned was how to prepare new books for the shelf, and for library binding. She taught me how they do it, and it simultaneously fascinated me and horrified me.
Here's what you do: you hold your book spine down, find approximately the middle, and crack it open. Yep. Bend that virgin spine to the book lies completely flat. Then choose one side or the other and divide that section in half, and snap it open again, then do the other side. You keep diving the sections in half and snapping them open so finally, the book will flex smoothly and you'll have no trouble turning pages. As a rule of thumb, there should be a snap every fifty pages or so.
I'm obsessive about my personal library, and in my world, to snap a spine is to break the book. It's interesting to note that of all the people I used to lend books out to (it doesn't happen often any more, trust me), those who handed them back with broken spines are no longer in my circle of friends. Hmm. Coincidence? Maybe.
So to sit down last night and snap these spines ruthlessly so I could mark them up with pens and markers and sticky notes was a big step on my part. I mean, I didn't even do this to my university texts, although I did finally concede defeat and begin making light pencil marks in them. You can see why I had to have second copies, though.
Then I went to bed at about midnight. I woke up at around five (we think) to my husband sitting bolt upright in bed to say, "The power's out." Sure enough, I could hear the slow beep of the fire alarm battery in the front hall, which, when you're still partially asleep, really sounds like a delivery truck backing up. Then he said, "Wow, it's snowing." So I pulled the curtain aside, and it was a winter wonderland out there - at least three inches of snow was piling up. "Pretty," I said, and lay back down.
And then, the realisation that if the power was out for long, there would be no NaNoing today, despite the fact that I had a new adapter for my notebook computer.
Was the power outage city-wide? Would NaNos all over Montreal shake their fists at Hydro-Quebec and wail? Was the problem local, i.e. a snow-laden tree leaning against a power line, or distant, i.e. James Bay has been snowed in? And then, as I fell asleep, a most heartfelt feeling of gratitude for not being caught at the computer when the power failed welled up in my heart.
Although when I woke up at eight the snow had stopped, it's begun again. My husband the Weather Channel addict tells me that by Saturday it's supposed to be 13° C again, which means rain and mucky messes for a few days. Ah, November. Changeable, fickle, and you don't even have the redeeming factor of a holiday in there somewhere....
I would like to take this opportunity to state that I am fully aware that I am surrounded by men who flock to my rescue each time I am in any sort of need, and that I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.
MLG, you're a hero for coming up with that adapter so quickly. My eternal thanks. If it hadn't suddenly become winter overnight, there would be a short skirt in the near future for you. Let's put it on credit to be cashed in next spring, shall we?
Well, I've had just about enough of Tori Amos' Boys for Pele today.
I think I'll go put the soundtrack from Titanic on. Heh.
My optimistic and idealistic goal today was to double my word count. I hardly expect to do it, but I'd like to try.
I don't know who Emily Horner is, but we seem to be keeping pace with one another word count-wise in Montreal. Like Ceri, I have a sneaky suspicion that my work is severely lacking in the subtlety department, and my insecurity is wailing that Emily is probably writing a tidy, flowing, subtlety-laden manuscript, so that even though our word quantity is approximately equal, hers is likely of higher quality. Fortunately, my insecurity is wrestled down and gagged 99% of the time by a toughened, thesis-experienced editor, who says that if you don't write it, you can't make it better. You need an actual draft before you can improve it; you need thoughts down on paper before you can shape them. No one writes perfect prose as a first draft.
So, hats off to you, Emily, and to all the other NaNoWriMos in Montreal. Write on!
Okay. I went out for a walk. I bought offerings. I'm back. I'm okay. I think.
For those who are asking, yes, I have back-ups. I'm paranoid enough to have done that. And yes, I have another computer; gods, I can't think of anything worse than writing longhand for a few days and then having to transcribe it all.
It's just not the same.
Fortunately, I am informed by MLG, underground hardware supplier and all-round mental/emotional support guy, that the solution is as easy as taking a trip to Radio Shack. Assuming, that is, that he doesn't have a spare adapter lying around.
Well, it's slowed me down, anyway, which ought to make other Montreal NaNo writers happy on a deep, guilty level. I've already been informed that my word count has me up for a severe review of my membership in the Friday night writers' gathering, as I am evidently not a drinker with a writing problem.
More realisations that make me feel sick:
Ceri, didn't I write about this in chapter August of the Great Canadian Novel? Except fortunately enough for me, the laptop didn't die while I was actually writing...
Life can stop imitating art any time now, thanks.
Sheer panic!
My laptop won't recognise the AC power source!
Yes, this is dire, how dare you smirk. I don't write at my desktop computer; I use my laptop. My desktop is for work-type work, and for e-mail, and internet work. I sit elsewhere in the house to novelise with my up-till-now trusty laptop. Yes, it's a mental thing. Yes, I know that logically I could write at my desktop. It's just not the same, though, and there's so much to distract me here.
Aaaauuuggghh!
The seige is over. Maggie-cat is romping with the kitten.
How...how, I ask you, do my fingernails get so darned dirty? It's not like I dig around in potted plants. I type all day, for heaven's sake...
It's snowing again. Wet, messy snow that's sticking to cars and sidewalks. The roads are wet, and I can hear the sticky hiss of tires on Sherbrooke street.
Ladled up from Ceridwen's Cauldron:
She [meaning me] told me that after the first day she had gone to friends' blogs to find out how the first day had gone. She was disappointed with the result. Sure, some of us had posted word counts, but that's no indication of how the day actually went.
It was an awkward time of day to call people, I didn't want to e-mail anyone and put them on the spot, so I surfed web logs instead, and no one had really said anything. I mentioned this to Ceri in passing, and now that she has blogged about how she felt on her first couple of days of NaNoWriMo, I figure that I should, as well. She credits me with the stimulus to talk about the first day or so, after all, so unless I wish to be subject to tomato-throwing fans, it's only fair that I do so, too.
It was good. It was comfortable, and I felt like I was accomplishing something. I didn't clock-watch; I wrote what I needed to and just let new thngs unfold, as if I was reading someone else's story. It can be tidied up later. Better words can be carefully chosen some other time. I haven't really reread it all from beginning to now, but I'm fairly certain it flows.
Not that it matters. This is about hitting a quota, of discipling yourself to sit down daily to do something, and, of course, to say at the end, "I have a big gloriously messy novel" and then say, "neener, neener" to anyone who asks to read it.
I mentioned to a few friends that I wouldn't be comparing word counts; this project is for me, it's not a competition. When I went to post my word count the first time on the official site, though, I wandered around a bit and looked, because I was curious. I didn't want to beat myself up, I certainly didn't want to gloat... I was just interested in seeing how others' works were unfolding. Yesterday I discovered that three people claimed to have hit 50,000 words already, and that one actually claimed to have reached something like 999,999. In three days. Right. I went back this morning to check it out again, and found that the individual in question has been removed. Good to know the organisers thought it as unlikely as I did.
This leaves two people who have achieved their goal already, one of whom joined on November 3 itself. Which would mean s/he likely registered after she wrote the novel, because I checked late morning on the 3rd, and s/he's in Virginia, so the pretext of a vastly different time zone can't even be used. What gets me is that the word-count programs don't go on-line until November 15th, so these counts and claims can't be verified until then, which gives anyone claiming to be finished the morning they joined a two-week buffer to actually hit his or her count.
No, I don't care. It doesn't affect me. What bothers me is the idea that some people don't care about the rules. I have no way of verifying if this person has a novel or not; s/he just might, and that would be great. If s/he doesn't, then s/he's just cheated him/herself.
Back to me, though.
I love writing, and I love being able to write. The two days I've sat down and written for three or four hours straight have been terrific. As Ceri says, I felt like a "real writer". I feel like that already, though. I don't need (another) novel, finished or in progress, to prove that to me.
However... this is the first novel I've written where I actually feel like I might be able to do something with it afterwards. I have a context imposed upon me from the outside, so I won't be too sprawling. I feel more focused in my efforts. The Great Canadian Novel feels similar; I'm focused, not reaching out wildly on tangents, but I'm letting it unfold as it wills, too. I think the difference lies within the knowledge that there's an ultimate word count goal, so I'm just letting the NaNo novel run on. I don't really edit myself in the GCN, either, but there's still a difference, and I can't quite put my finger on it. The GCN is more complex, but I'm assuming that comes from the less-frantic approach. The GCN has time to breathe. I do write primarily for myself, but in the back of my mind I've been thinking about attempting publication sometime in the future; I just need a likely manuscript to sacrifice. The NaNo script will likely be that sacrifice, since the GCN is too precious. I'll cut my teeth on the NaNo novel, and then we'll see how things have gone before I go leaping into the publishing fray with the GCN. Publication is not validation, not by a long shot. If you have a finished novel, though, why not try? The worst they can say is "No". (Which is plenty crushing for any author, thanks very much.)
I won't be writing as much as I'd like to be today, because my fellow professor e-mailed me to remind me that I had volunteered to teach two-thirds of the class tonight. I had agreed do it last week, and then in the next seven days my free time sank spectacularly in Kingston television performances, rituals, teaching, NaNo writing, and crisis-handling. This leaves me today to finish reading two books and to prepare a seminar on them. In addition, with all this snow, I have a sneaky suspicion that my husband will be home by early afternoon. Now, if only I could work those books and seminar into the NaNoWriMo novel somehow...
The Montreal Pagan community is an odd beast. It eats its young, and displays apathy in most respects except griping and back-biting and, well, being apathetic. Coming into the community at a time where knives were still being sharpened, grudges were being held, and politics were raging, I decided I wanted nothing to do with it and stayed a solitary practitioner until such time as I slowly started to talk to others of like mind, and then, well, it was teaching and working in the local esoteric shop, and opening Canada's first drop-in Pagan resource centre, teaching, doing interviews on radio and with journalists, more teaching... and somehow, like it or not, I was a public figure, although not of the community. Like others who had no time or patience for histrionics and back-stabbing, I shared with personal friends and kept myself to myself. I dipped a toe into the community with the resource centre, but the commnity bit back so savagely that I withdrew. When generousity of energy and effort is rebuffed so often, you learn your lesson. (Fortunately, the centre still functions, due to the enthusiasm of several volunteers, whom I pray do not burn out community-wise, as I did.) So I kept myself to myself.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday was one of those odd coincidences that you can't wriggle out of. I make it a point to tell as many people as I can about the city's public rituals so they can get an idea of a variety of traditions and meet other people involved in this path. So when I told my students two weeks ago, they became quite excited, until we realised that our weekly class would overlap with the ritual. "Oh, well," I said, "never mind. Sorry."
And then one of them said, "Well, couldn't we all go together? Like a field trip? We can come to class an hour early, and finish an hour early so we could go."
"Yes, yes!" the others cried, excited. "We've never been to a ritual!"
Uh-oh. These men and women were now looking to me, their teacher, to lead them into a public ritual and share the experience.
Gulp.
I've led many a ritual, public, private, you name it. I've attended many aritual, here, elsewhere. I teach a Designing Rituals class. The irony of it is that I've never actually attended a specific Montreal Pagan community open public ritual.
So off we went yesterday, the first time for everyone. And it was a wonderful experience. I was unaware, and subsequently delighted to discover, that one of my past students was playing a key part in the ritual (her first such performance), and I was bursting with pride for her. My current students were nervous, but they enjoyed themselves immensely - so much, in fact, that I think we'll start making this a regular outing.
I must also extend a huge thank-you to the core people who were involved in producing yesterday's ritual, especially my personal friends. Your efforts were truly appreciated. So was the welcoming attitude displayed by those same people who had been in the community way back when I first sent out tentative feelers, about seven years ago. They recognised me, and they welcomed me. I'm not quite sure what I expected; after rebuff and nasty comments in general from the community for the projects I was involved in, I was a bit timid. All fears have been allayed, now, however.
So you see, yesterday was quite the series of achievements.
And then I wrote a few NaNoWriMo pages, and we had dinner, and we watched some old Muppet Show episodes, and we went to another Hallowe'en party. So all in all, it was a pretty amazing day. Except for the fact that Buffy was a repeat already, alas...
5,312 words.
One-tenth of the way there. Twenty pages. Five hours. A chapter and a bit.
I'm fairly certain that there's no way I can keep this up, as easy as this seemed. It's too good to be true.
Yawn. Good night.
(Ssssh… don’t look now… but it’s snowing.)
It’s November. Start your engines! Let's see... 50,000 words divided by thirty days is 1,667 words per day, or approximately 6 double-spaced pages, or 3 1/2 single-spaced pages. Ha! My problem as I lay awake last night was that I couldn't remember of it was six single-spaced pages, or double-spaced. I'm fine. Three to four single-spaced pages daily? That's a slow day for me. I am feeling much more confident about this project now.
I forgot to say “white rabbits” this morning, so heaven only knows what I’ve done to myself. Good thing I’m not a superstitious person.
Last night’s live TV studio performance of The True Story of Dracula on COGECO 13 in Kingston by the Midnight Players went brilliantly, if I may say so myself. I saw the opening prologue, which is just me doing a trance-like monologue with our eerie violinist and smoke from the smoke machine, and it was fantastic. In fact, I have been informed that if we ever do a Buffy thing for fun, I get to play Drusilla. Yep, spooky and trance-like; I've got it down pat. We have all been promised copies of this tape within the next two weeks, and I can’t wait to see the rest of it. I did have the fortune to catch a bit of JDH’s interview in his folklorist persona, which comes right after my trance prologue, and he looks slightly crazed and very intense as he talks about Vlad. His use of his hands in the clip was fantastic, and those shadows created by the lighting from beneath… brr! I saw it live, but seeing it on tape is a completely different cauldron of apples.
It was an odd experience, actually. I’ve done live theatre; I’ve done film work; I’ve live done radio work. This was a strange amalgamation of the three, and at times it was hard to figure out where to aim: Am I acting? Am I reading a script? How much am I allowed to move? Where do I look? Evidently I did just fine. I looked fantastic, I sounded fantastic, and if they ask us back for a Christmas special, I’m there! (With a few differences – like times get confirmed with us, and we know weeks in advance that we need to come up with our own costumes, and so forth...)