Hellos from the works!

Well I can't say that the callers at work have been having a very happy new year. They are all pissed off... On the second I just figured it was still the hangover but today, Saturday the 5th, I find that harder to believe. In reality what I think it is is that people are broke after the holidays and then they recieve their bills and they call in and take out their aggression on whoever is lucky enough to get their call. Not everyone is mean and nasty but enough of them are that the days seem to be longer then normal. Anyway I am at work and the phone won't stop ringing and everyone wants to grill me about something that is costing them a dollar more then it did the year before and I am feeling tired. So I decided to blog about the weekon my 15 minute break....

I made dinner on Thursday and for those that know I mean I chopped, marinated and cooked. I made beef stir fry and it was pretty darn tasty. My roommate liked it too. I had red, yellow and orange bell peppers, carrots, broccoli, onion and beef (I was planning on chicken but the chicken would have cost more for less meat, which is strange) Anyway it was fun to cook again since it has been so long. I had fallen into the trap of heating and eating. Whether it be a microwaveable burrito or something from a can I was not doing much besides adding water.... So I decided to mix it up a bit and get back to cooking more. I think I need to do burritos next... yay burritos!

I am procrastinating on my novel. It is halfway edited and half of the edited part is retyped but I am hung up exactly where I was when I was writing. I am not sure where I took it is where it wanted to go so I am debating a major rewrite of the last half. I think it would work better and get me back closer to familiar territory if I did the rewrite I am considering.... but it will take some work and I am feeling lazy. Well I have to get back to the phones....

The Writing Thing

Well I am on page 110 of my first edit and I only have 50 pages left to review. It is not going too bad, what is the real bear is retyping it all. Some of the edits are big rewrites where I rework an idea and some are tiny word changes or sentence restructuring. It is taking forever. I am on page 38 of the retyping process. I now have 50,960 words in this story and it fluctuates a bit as I correct, delete and rewrite but it always seems to end up around that number when I quit for the day. I have some major edits coming up and it may actually shrink a little bit. We will see soon enough. I am hoping to have the first draft out to a few of you, who have been kind enough to volunteer to be editors, before the 12th of January. That is my goal. Hopefully I hit it.

The 12th is also the day I go for orientation for my masters degree program.... and that is why the goal of getting the first edit done is set so quickly after I just got done writing it. I may have chose the end of February otherwise. To tell you the truth I had originally hoped Christmas would see the end of my first edit and it still might but the retyping portion will take the other couple weeks.

Wish me luck.

Oh and what do I want for Christmas? Money. I am saving to buy a cheap laptop to make my writing and my schooling a little more mobile. Anyway have a good week and remember Christmas is next Tuesday. You can always order that special someone a totally awesome calendar or t-shirt. http://www.cafepress.com/crazedlunatik

What Did You Do Last Night?

Well I decided to finish a rough draft of a novel..... It has officially been counted by a NANOWRIMO bot and 50,085 words is the tally! Woo yeah! See for yourself: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/246822



So yeah I did it on my first try.... I am totally not even sure what to do now. I read a lot of comments at the NANOWRIMO website from other people who had tried to complete this in the past and failed so I feel pretty good about this. Well I am walking away from it for a few days and sometime in December I will go back and see what it looks like. Anyway thanks for the support on this crazy endeavor.

Nanowrimo Crisis #2

So I am nearing the end of my 50,000 word race and I was golden until I hit 42,000 words.... I have been fighting the writing ever since and 5 days later I am barely at 46,000 words. 4,000 words in 5 days? That used to signify two days of writing, if I was taking it easy. The words were falling out of my skull onto the keyboard and it was smooth sailing. One moment of panic happened early on about what my characters were doing and that was chronicled here and now comes the second crisis. I know I will finish this endeavor but I am sure this 'novel' is a total disaster. 50,000 words of crap that will take forever to edit and still never be any good. Ok.... I knew that writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days would more then likely end up being nothing but total crap and I also know the actually doing part is where I need to focus. I get all this... I understand the concept but that does not mean I don't feel like griping. I am at a point in my story where I know what I want but I am not sure how to do it. I wrote myself into a world that I know even less about then the two girls I started writing about. But I have an ending in mind, I have my characters more or less in place and I have a story even if I managed to only barely get it across. It is only the first draft and the best part is that it is nearly done. I have 3 days left to go, on a nearly empty tank of gas and a 'car' that just started sputtering but I will drag the damn thing across the finish line if I have to!

WORD FREAKIN' UP!

Thanksgiving Review

Well I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving! I hope as I write this at work you are at home relaxing with family. Perhaps eating more left over turkey..... or tofurkey depending on your meat or no meat leanings. I had a good Thanksgiving. I stayed at home, did a little writing (not enough if truth be told), watched some football, made a roast beast and ate said roast beast, helped put together a crib, and watched Fantastic 4 and the totally silver guy that surfs and Evan Almighty. In case you are wondering I am at 43,500 on the word count. I just could not get motivated to write yesterday. Oh well.

So a quick review of the movies I watched.

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer - Yeah.... hmmm.... yeah.... Could that have ended before it started? That would have been better. The least they could do was have a lot more of Jessica Alba in slinky form fitting super hero outfit, that would have made it better. I was so unbelievably bored.....

Evan Almighty - Hokey but fun. I liked the movie but yeah hokey sums it up. It was good for little people too.


Well continue having a nice holiday.

The book and the Holiday

Well I am at 42,031 words right now. I have a story and it is all over the place but I do know what I am doing with it. Kind of..... I know what I want to make it do but I am still working on making sure I do that. I am 8,000 words away from the super scary rewrite..... I will be reorganizing things and perhaps going with a new direction on a few things, a few characters may get scrapped and a few others might get added. I have an idea of what this is and it took nearly 40,000 words to see it. Which in itself is scary. I am spending time flushing out some ideas or writing new pieces to add in different spots to help with the reorganization. My story is a story about people coming together basically and that is all I am saying at this point for a description. I hope to organize it in a semblance of a coherent and flowing story and then I will start getting people to help me edit it. My mom is dying to be an editor but I am looking for other people as well for down the road a bit. Maybe the end of December on into January. Just so you know it is super rough and I can not guarantee it is anywhere close to what I ultimately want it to end up. Heck... I am not even sure if where I want it to end is where it is going to. So what I will need in the beginning editing are people that will help me find weaknesses in the story and maybe suggestions on how to improve it. If you are still interested let me know somehow.... email, blog comment, phone.

Other then that I am going to my dad's Friday night for Thanksgiving on Saturday.... as I said before, I work the day after Thanksgiving and I was not looking forward to driving all the way down to Roseburg just to turn around on a stomach full of Turkey and drive all the way back up. So they moved it to Saturday. Thanks Dad, Maryjo, Aunt Wanda, Uncle Don and Mildred for being flexible.

In yet other news I will be making a rare appearance in Phoenix the weekend of December 7 - 9. For more tour dates just let me know you need to know where I'll be and when and I will let you know. I may even sign autographs....

Post 200!

Well I have written 200 blogs on this thing since I started it over a year ago. That is pretty amazing. I guess I have a lot to say or at least I like to write a lot of stuff about nothing. Either way that is a lot of words and time spent on this thing.

Well I had a good day Friday. I slept in, I had film developed and I bought a new jacket. I wrote 400 words...... Then I went bowling with my room mate. I suck at bowling in case you were wondering. I know you were. I had a few beers and I bowled a high of 86 and a low of 71. Like I said, I suck at bowling. Either way those few beers or those 4 miserable performances that I called bowling allowed my brain to get the mojo back and I came home and wrote 3,500 words. I am going to bed now because it is 3:30 in the morning and I feel tired but not because I want to. My brain wants to keep going and find out what is going to happen to these people. (See even I don't know what will happen in my story isn't that exciting?) Anyway the word count is firmly in the 34,000 range and I am feeling good since I wanted to get 35,000 words written by the end of Sunday.

I could not think of a better way to say 'Happy 200 blogs!' then I just did by giving an awesome word count. I want to add that I am in a great mood today and it is because of the day off. I really needed the time away from that den of evil that I call my job. My roommate needs a break too but he keeps waiting for everything to be perfect and I keep saying that it never will and to preserve sanity he needs to not go to work one of these days real soon. Work is bad. Like worse then the devil bad. I mean really really really bad. I think I need to quote Office Space right here: "I don't really like work, so I don't think I am going to go anymore."

Don't worry I am going back Monday. I just feel that the above quote properly sums up my feelings about work. You know the whole desire to stop going and stuff.....

Shiny Happy Thoughts for Disgruntled Citizens

I am so glad I took Friday off this week. I was starting to get a bit tired of the people that I deal with on the phones all day at work. It gets hard to care about what people are whining to you about when you are tired of hearing it. It is even harder to care when you have not been to sleep before midnight all month long because you are writing a novel in 30 days. Yeah I bring that issue on myself I get that, I am just saying I needed a day off so I took one. I am working the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve for this evil company and I might have stabbed a brother if I did not take some me time. Sometimes I still get amazed that we allow work to take such a huge chunk of our lives away from us. Why the Hell should I have to spend this much of my waking time doing stuff I hate. I get it there is bills and yada yada yada, but really? I was in a rut before I started this writing project. I would work all day, come home and take a walk (when the sun was still up and if it was sunny), then I would eat dinner, watch 3 to 4 hours (depending on if I went for a walk) of pointless TV, spend some time on the internet and then I would go to bed so I could get up for another day of exactly the same thing. I know you have heard this from me before and woe is me and all that jazz but I just can't believe this is what adults do. I can't believe that because it boggles my mind. I remember thinking "when I grow up..." when I was a kid but you trade one set of rules for a new set of rules when you get your 'grown up life'. In fact the only thing I realized was how free I was when I was a kid. I remember people told me to enjoy the fleeting moments while they lasted but who the heck listens to the voice of experience? No one does. How can you? As a kid you just see you are not allowed to do anything. You also never have money to do anything and your parents won't let you see if you have the ability to fly by jumping off the roof. Here is the thing, I am sure as an old fart I will envy these days too.... maybe. Anyway enough of my 'the corporate world is a fascist regime' tirade.

So I am on word 30,090 on my story. Just 19,910 left until my goal is achieved. I have a story with a crisis and I am in way over my head because I know nothing about the crisis I chose to write about, but I feel alive. It is fun, scary, intense and exhilarating all at the same time. I would highly encourage any budding wordsmiths to tackle this with me next year. I have a book that helps you keep going through the ups and downs that I could loan you. It is pretty entertaining to just let a story take you but some people spend quite a while laying out their ideas and the research needed to pull it off as opposed to coming up with and idea and then googling it mid writing stint like I have been doing. Anyway, the words still flow and I am still having fun. Wish me luck.

Don't Count Me Out!

I had a heck of a weekend in productivity for my book. I was feeling pretty down Saturday because I was only at 17,000 words and I was super whiny and defeatist, just ask my dad. I was worried about the plot (or lack of one) and my characters not doing anything interesting. I read the instructions for week 2 in 'No Plot? No Problem!', which was written by the founder of the National Novel Writing Month. He basically tells you how to survive this crazy ride you signed up for and says week two is tough because it is when the novelty of 'writing a book' wears off and the writing gets harder to complete. He said lots of people find they still don't have 'plots' during this week and usually feel panicked but he says don't worry, just keep writing about your characters and they will tell you where they want to go. So I churned out 5,000 words between Saturday night and the end of Sunday night. I still had no concrete story but I had decided the 2 male characters needed to ask out the females. I was thinking this is it, this is my story it's about being a dork and trying to have a relationship with people that aren't dorks. So I started writing at work today because work was super slow, I guess people thought the evil corporations would be closed on a national holiday but of course they weren't. I wrote 2,400 words before heading home and things had happened and I was ok with what had happened but I could see a sad little tale developing with a storyline of relationship woes. When I got home I decided to watch some football and that was boring, the 49ers suck. Then I decided to do some work for the Grove Review and I read all of the poets I had taken home with me. So I sat down in front of the computer and I started writing. And I had a complete left turn come up and smack me in the face and I had finally been delivered a problem to confront..... YES!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH YEAH!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

26,000 words and I feel fan'freaking'tastic! I have a story here! WOO! This is awesome! I want to keep writing and ditch work tomorrow, but I won't (booooo). I am going to bed in a helluva good mood though! I have a story to tell! Yay!

I have a story but you don't got one cuz' you're on welfare!

Meow Meow Meow

Hello all!
Well it seems at 22,000 words my characters all still alive. They aren't doing illegal drugs. It is scarily calm. I am not sure what storm is approaching but I feel one building. I have a feeling I will attain 25,000, the halfway mark very soon, hopefully tonight. Yay my writing is growing in size..... yay.

In other news I am a reader for the Grove Review. I went to the informational meeting last night, in case you don't know what day I am writing that was Sunday night. The day I usually lay around watching football all day and night. I have a stack of poetry to read and rate by next Sunday.

Other then that life is moving along. I am in 4th place in fantasy football. ASU is in 8th. The Blazers are 3 and 3 and the Cards are 4 and 5.

18 k and feeling fine....

I am sure you are all just dying to know what is going on with my novel. Well is still has no plot but I like the characters enough to keep charging ahead. I took Thursday night off so I am at 18,000 words instead of 20,000 today. I have been stressing a lot lately and I read some tips and they say that most people experience moments of panic and despair in the second week. That calmed me down quite a bit. I am still struggling to develop a story but I am taking another tip from what I have read and I am just writing and trusting my characters to help me decide something should happen. In the meantime I am just putting together more words that help me get to know my characters. There are 4 main characters now and each of them interests me for some reason. I can't wait until they let me know where I am supposed to take them.


Anyway.. I have some more words to ramble.

Oh and the Blazers won the last 2 games! Yay! Beat Dallas tonight!


UPDATE: 9:30 PM, I am at 19,000 words and the Blazers beat Dallas! Woohoo 3 wins in a row. Next game....The Pistons on Tuesday...
The Pistons Booooo!

Beat the Pistons! Yay!

Nanowrimo Crisis #1

Well it seems that I have hit the wall..... I am 11,000 words in and I still have no clear idea of what I am doing. I have one main character and I think she is too mild and not all crazy so if I am going for a young adult feel here I need her emotions to kick up a bit. That is another thing should I have went with a female lead? I mean it is not too late to totally kill her off. It's not like it's a first person role. Mostly it is thought driven so I could switch people and just rotate or whatever. I mean I have read some interesting things lately with a multiple person take on things, ie. Jodi Piccoult. I mean all I really need to do is find something to write about. That is where I fall into a bigger dilemma. I do not want to write a heavy book about death, rape, teenage sex or other retarded ills of the world. Hell the world is dark enough isn't it? I want a lighter feel where you just escape your life and get into someone else's problems that are not completely overwhelming. Something that might make you laugh and might make you remember and even possibly relate but I do not want you balling or trying to figure out the mystery. I guess I have to make a decision tonight......

Yo! CLD Rocks!

Well the weekend was pretty good to me. I am currently sitting at 7700 words written on my novel that I still have not titled or figured out where it is going. I am trying to get to 8500 tonight before I call it a night. I just needed to take a break and say hi to you all. I wanted to mention a few things. ASU lost to the stupid Ducks... that was horrible. My roommate was all happy and I felt like kicking him in his fat head a couple times. So I decided to write for a while with my headphones on so as to stay on good terms and all. It wasn't his fault the Ducks finally started playing defense. We went out and saw Michael Clayton on Friday night and I would recommend it to you. It is not an action packed thriller but it is highly intriguing and I liked it. It kinda of showed corporations as being super evil and I felt like I should point out my poem called Corporate Practices that I posted in October about corporations and there evilness. We are totally on the same wave length there. Then Saturday after watching the Devils lose (boo!) I went with my evil roomie to a place called Indian Grill that had some awesome food. I had a Lamb Tikka Kabob and loved it. Then we rented Alpha Dog which was actually pretty entertaining. It had a horrible ending and all but it was kind of amusing until then. Other then that I have been lying low and close to the home front. Anyway I need to get back to writing.

A quick November howdoyado!

So it's freaking November! I had a great weekend this last weekend. Halloween wasn't too bad either. I would love to tell you about it and you might even want to hear about it but I have promised my time to a few other projects instead. The first thing you should know is it's NANOWRIMO month (google it) and I am involved in crapping out 50,000 words in some semblance of a story. The second is a little book called the Grove Review has asked for volunteers to staff their little office to help them put out their book. I have decided to look into being one of the volunteers so Sunday the 11th I will be checking it out at an informational meeting. We shall see but it seems intriguing. So I am currently at 1322 words in my story and I have a mere 48,688 left to type. So my words here are going to brief this month. Suffice it to say my pumpkin won a contest at work for being the coolest and most creative pumpkin. Of course there were no other pumpkins but my beast of a pumpkin would have eaten them for breakfast or at least fallen on them crushing their souls and their pumpkinness. Either way it got me a gift card at Starbucks and a week of dress down to be used in December. Well hope all is well. I will check back in. I have some more writing to do.

If you have little people you dressed up in costumes for Halloween I would love to have a copy sent to me and your permission to post them, if you do not mind, on this blog. If you do mind the posting of the cute lil' people then send the pic to me and say "No posty!" The message being little kids in little costumes are cool and I want to see what they were dressed up as and I am sure most sane people do too.... Actually any of you silly people out there can send me a pic of your costumed self and I will post it! DO it! DO IT NOW!!