Wordle #1

NaNoWriMo 2009 WINNER

What?  You didn't doubt me, didja?  If you did, well, you know me better now.

WOOOOT!

Reflections and stuff after I get drunk.  Later.

Congratulations Blogfriends!

I'm learning right at this moment exactly how hard it is to finish a first draft novel.  Luckily, I've got great inspiration right here in blogland.

Just last week blogging buddy JJ DeBenedictis finished the first draft of her latest novel. 

Then tonight I see that Fairyhedgehog has just completed her NaNoWriMo 2009 novel!  3 days early to boot!
 
Congratulations to both of you, and thanks for all the encouragement!

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a pretty complicated holiday.

It is possibly the only major holiday that commemorates a meal.  Not a birth, death, war, tragedy, victory, or miracle.  Just a meal.  An absurdly romanticized mythical version of a relatively insignificant event in a highly controversial period of American history.

Meanwhile, it is also a crucial inflection point in the annual economic cycle.  Black Friday exists only because Thanksgiving Thursday gives so many consumers a free Friday on which to shop before Christmas.

Meanwhile, it encourages the fattest population on the planet to eat even more than we usually do.

Meanwhile, it is stressful and expensive as everyone tries to travel on the same days and cook three-ovens-worth of meals in one oven with a suspect thermostat.

Meanwhile, it is Thanks-Giving, a day in which we are all reminded to consider what we are thankful for.  I'm thankful for a lot of things, and not least among them is the surge of positive energy that flowed today.

Schedule Feature!

Oh for Pete's sake, I only just now discovered that Blogger allows you to schedule when your posts go up!  I figured there had to be some way, possibly involving a third party site or an unpaid intern, but as I have not yet had, erm, occasion to pre-write any posts, I never bothered to look it up.

Well, here's to a sunny future in which I'll have a backlog of in-demand content queued to post while I'm on a Mediterranean cruise (that somehow doesn't have wifi).

The Skids

At least, it feels that way.  The first 30k words have been a lovely romp through the woods, but now I'm tired and I still have to find my way home before it gets dark.

Why Didn't I Marry A Rich Doctor?

The most depressing publishing blog post I've read yet.

Caldera-Size Plot Holes

Totally against my will, a mental list has been coalescing in my hindbrain - the various phases of revisions this NaNo project is going to need.

If it isn't already obvious, I think there is enough good stuff here to warrant further work.  But holy cannoli it's gonna need a LOT of work.  The first phase is going to be nailing down basic coherence: timelines, locations, and characters' names.

That's right, characters' names.  When you make up a bunch of names on the fly, and never go back to re-read the previous sessions' work, you tend to forget the names.  So several of my characters already have several names each.  I know what you're thinking - I was supposed to make a note of these things as I was going along.  But I was in the zone, and I didn't think I'd ever see these guys again, let alone their dogs.

Now, given this problem with proper nouns, you can imagine the plot details I've misplaced.

I Suck At This, Alton Brown

I'm NaNoWriming tonight, but needed a quick break, so I thought I would share a quick confession.  I really have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to basic narrative style.  I don't know why I'm breaking paragraphs where I am, or if I'm using Jane said versus said Jane correctly.  I feel like I'm making up the rules of dialog-specific capitalization and punctuation as I go along.  Did Jane say, "hello, how are you?" or is was it, "'Hello, how are you?' asked Jane," or both, or neither?

This doesn't alarm me.  I can easily look this stuff up (in December) or just look at, you know, a book (in December.)  But it's funny, because I read a lot.  I've even read skimmed Strunk & White.  How is it I never really noticed this stuff?

I should say I've written a lot too, though technical documentation doesn't involve a great deal of dialog or narration. Or style.

Anyway, it's made me think of Alton Brown.  Do you ever watch Good Eats?  I love that show, but all the details have made me a terribly insecure cook.  Cooking and writing are two of those things you can more or less know how to do without knowing how you know, until you think about it too much.

Over Half-Way!

I just passed 51%.  I'm still about a day-and-a-half behind, but this was a lot of progress for one day with work and family, so I'm happy.  To celebrate, here's a clip that has nothing whatsoever to do with writing, other than the fact that someone wrote it.  (If you've never tooled around the ONN, I guess I should warn you that it's a terrible time-waster.)