Ganymeder

NaBloPoMo 2010-02-08

My oh my, how time flies when you have a ton of things to do. For some reason I’ve been barely able to keep my eyes open all day (Sunday). All through the church service, through taking my son to sled with his friends, through lunch, dinner, chores…I could hardly stay awake. I tried to take a nap at one point (hey, don’t judge me!) but couldn’t fall asleep even though I was dog-tired. So why is it that once my son and husband went to bed I was suddenly wide-eyed and ready to go? I can’t sleep when I should and want to sleep when I shouldn’t. It’s perverse.

We had a nice Sunday. I already mentioned that my son went sledding with his friend. I made goodies for the Superbowl, set up tables downstairs in front of the big t.v., and then tried to set it to the right channel. The joke was on me. We don’t get the right channel! Which was fine. We feasted on our Superbowl treats, leftover un-birthday cake, and watched Zorro instead.  After cleaning up a bit, I read my son bedtime stories: ‘The Ant King‘ and some of ‘The Things that make me weak and strange get engineered away‘. I read him a slightly edited version. I don’t read any profanity; It’s mild but I’ll read ‘heck’ or ‘darn’ or ‘freaking’ instead of their more colorful versions (Hey, he’s only nine!). The stories themselves are pretty good, ‘Weak and strange‘ is one of my very, very favorite short stories.

So, after reading awhile, I finally came out and started working. I did my very late post for yesterday’s (Sunday) NaBloPoMo post. Then I edited more of my 2009 Nanowrimo using my new weird way of using my laptop. When I finished that, it was after midnight so here I am again. This is technically my Monday post for Day 8 of National Blog Posting Month, but it feels like it’s still Sunday. I think that’s leftover from when I used to be a graveyard shift waitress. It may technically be Monday, but it feels like Sunday til I’ve gone to bed and woken up again.

So, I’ve accomplished a lot this weekend. I shoveled my driveway without throwing out my back (hooyah), watched movies, had cake, took my little boy sledding, spent time with my family, accomplished my errands, and edited an unknown amount (guessing 3 pages but hard to tell because the format’s different) of my rough draft.

Now that I’m starting to get tired again, I should probably wrap this up so I can try to sleep when I’m actually supposed to. After all, in the words of Scarlett O’Hara, ‘Tomorrow is another day.’

Happy Sunday/Monday, keep writing, and have fun!

NaBloPoMo 2010-02-07

Yesterday, I spent about 3 hours, not counting breaks to dry my clothes and rest, shoveling the driveway. My son’s playdate did not work out because of the weather, so I made up for it with extra videogame time. My husband stayed home with him, while I ran to get the belated birthday cake (it was after 4 by the time I finished shovelling), and I stopped to pick up a book that he wanted on the way back home.  He’s become addicted to the ‘Wimpy Kid’ series and my parents had given him a gift certificate to get the ones he missed. He read the entire book last night after dinner.

So his playdate fell through, but (once I managed to get the car out of our driveway) I went and brought a bunch of goodies home. We had one of our family favorites, General Tsao’s Tofu, and I also picked up some treats for Superbowl Sunday. We’re not really into pro football much, but we thought we’d try to watch this for the spectacle.  I’m looking forward to the commercials.

So, in a little while, we’re going to meet one of his friends on a big hill for sledding.  He’s really looking forward to it. After that, I’ll get our Superbowl treats ready: Tofutti cheeze pizza, chips & salsa, root beer, and (for hubby) Buffalo-tofu. I’ve still got my laptop set up for editing, so I figure I’ll watch the commercials, half time shows, etc. and edit during the actual football. Heresy, I know…and on a Sunday! *gasp*

Did I mention that my son was born on Superbowl Sunday?  It wasn’t in February (like this year), but boy was the obstetrician mad!

Well, I need to finish getting ready to take him sledding. Happy Sunday, have fun, and keep writing!

*I apologize for the alternating font sizes. I’ve tried several approaches, but invariably when I save my blog I end up with funky script. All I can say is that I’m working on the problem, and hopefully I’ll have it fixed soon. Again, my apologies.

NaBloPoMo 2010-02-06

I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that I picked the wrong month to try to complete this edit. For one thing, February is the shortest month of the year. Also, with my son’s accelerated (virtual) school schedule, my family’s health issues, my husband’s crazy work hours, and repeatedly getting hit with the unexpected, I honestly don’t see how I can edit 6 complete pages every day.

This is not a bad thing. I know it seems like a downer, like I’m quitting, but I’m not. I am adjusting my schedule to take in the reality of my situation. For example, yesterday our family had a ton of things to do (mostly errand type stuff). I got up early, wrote and posted my daily blog post/progress report, went to our appointment, ran errands for a sick family member, got ready for today’s playdate for my son (sort of an un-birthday party with cake), and then took a nap. The nap was entirely necessary. After running around all day, I could barely remember my own name, so I reasoned that if I slept for a couple hours, I’d have more energy to complete my tasks and edit. I woke up, cleaned to get ready for today’s un-party, set up a DVD for my son to watch, and got my laptop ready to edit. Then my son looked at me with those big blue eyes of his and said, “Mom, when are you going to be done? I’m waiting for you to watch the movie!” I told him I’d be a few more minutes cleaning, etc. and be right in, intending to edit on the laptop while he watched. Nope. He wanted to snuggle.

Sometimes you just have to stop everything to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and snuggle with your son.

Now, as far as my editing progress goes, the good news is that I still managed to squeeze in some editing time. The bad news is that I simply re-edited a page I’d already done the day before. The good news is that it improved considerably the second time around, but obviously I didn’t get any farther into my actual book.

So here is my adjusted plan. For all the Nanowrimos I participated in, I always scheduled free time to give myself a break and keep myself from getting behind when things came up. I can’t schedule more this month. I can’t really keep up with 6 pages a day without seriously compromising my time with my family and my household duties.  At least not THIS month.  I think this project would work better over 2 months, given the size, but I have another idea. I’m going to give myself weekends off, like I did during Nanowrimo, and aim for 3 pages a day. I won’t worry about finishing by the end of the month, as long as I get my 3 pages a day. I’ll probably still edit on weekends, but it won’t be a scheduled thing since weekends are always crazy.  Then, if I’m completely finished by the end of the month, great! If I’m not, I’ll look at my schedule and see how to plan finishing the edit next month. I’ll at least get a good portion of it done, and it’ll keep me in the habit of editing my novel consistently.

I’m hoping, hoping, hoping that the snow stops soon. Last week we had to reschedule his un-party (read: glorified playdate with cake) because our basement flooded. Today we’re experiencing the edges of a huge snowstorm. If the snow stops and the salt trucks come through, it might still work out. If not I’ll have to come up with something else, but I hope not. He’s been looking forward to this for 2 weeks now.

Well, I need to get dressed so I can clean and possibly shovel the driveway. If his friends do come, they need to be able to park.

Have a great day, and wish me luck!

NaBloPoMo 2010-02-05

Five days of editing my rough draft, and twenty pages done so far. Originally I had thought 6 pages a day, which would have put me at 24 by this morning (30 by tonight). Still, considering that I was really sick one day and only managed to edit a page and a half, I think I’m doing pretty good. Also, I stayed up late to make yesterday’s (6 page) quota. I’m chipping away. The only thing I’m worried about is that I’m chipping away so much.  I feel that my writing’s becoming tighter.  In my next edit I’ll need to work on breaking the story into chapters. I’m really enjoying this process.  I just hope that in the end I haven’t chopped off half my manuscript.

Resources are mostly shared, but keeping up with the blog hasn’t been difficult. I’ve been getting up early to beat everyone to the common computer. I usually try to write every day and post a short story once a week (except this month), so daily blogging about my progress is a break from fiction writing. Of course, I’m still writing some during my revision, and I’m addicted to thesaurus.com and m-w.com. But this type of creativity (editing and revising) feels completely different.

Oh, and I think I figured out a way to write on my finicky laptop.  It’s laborious, but it seems to work. Yesterday I copied about 10 pages of my rough draft from the desktop computer file, saved it to Google Docs (the entire document’s too big), then downloaded it from Google Docs onto my laptop. That way I can edit on my laptop whereever I go. I’m a little concerned about losing formatting, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. When I’m done editing what’s on my laptop, I’ll do the same thing in reverse.

Today I have a bunch of family stuff and errands to do, so it’s going to come in handy having what I need to edit already on my laptop. Hopefully it will make the process a lot easier. My laptop has always made writing much more accessible to me. But that was before it became finicky. Ha!

Have a great day, and wish me luck!

NaBloPoMo 2010-02-04

Well, here I am on day 4 of NaBloPoMo, and I’ve already slacked off my editing schedule for my Nanowrimo rough draft. It wasn’t on purpose- well, sort of. Yesterday I got up bright and early to start, ready to go, and then I got sick. I ended up doing most of my son’s school with him while bundled under the covers.  Obviously, before everything else, my son’s education comes first. I just didn’t have the energy to do anything else, and I couldn’t concentrate enough to do a decent edit. Towards the end of the day I felt slightly better, so I did a little editing (about 1 1/2 pages). But I didn’t push myself in the hopes that if I just got better yesterday, I’d be in better shape to continue my edit today. I’m hoping to make up for the 4 1/2 pages I missed over the rest of the month.

So, yeah I didn’t make my edit goal yesterday, but I should be able to make six pages today. I was also thinking that since I’m actually cutting so much out of my rough draft just by trimming it might actually work out anyway. My Nanowrimo goals usually get met early each November, so I hope that I can keep that up this month for the edit. My general strategy for Nanowrimo has always been to schedule a little extra work each weekday with weekends off so that if (when) things come up to throw me off schedule I don’t get behind or discouraged. It’s worked like a charm every year.  My daily edit schedule is slightly more than necessary (by a fraction of a page), plus I’m sure I’ll have less pages by the end. Who knows? I might just have to stay up late one weekend if I feel like I’m getting behind. But so far, I’m still pretty confident.

Have a great day, and wish me luck!

NaBloPoMo 2010-02-03

Good day, everyone. Here’s my quick progress report for my edit of my 2009 Nanowrimo rough draft novel. It’s going well. I know already that I’m going to have to do a lot more work after this, but I feel like I’m making progress.  I have twelve pages edited so far, just straight grammatical and sentence structure, but it feels good- like chipping away at a stone to get at the sculpture hidden inside.  I think I must have chopped two pages off my final book in the past couple days.

Remember when I said that six pages a day didn’t seem too bad? Well, six pages a day is A LOT. Last night, after doing my housework, schooling my son all day, and editing in between everything else, I felt like my brain had melted into my shoes. But I did it. I’m doing it. I’m glad that I’m blogging about it too, because with my current schedule I could easily see me dropping this and putting it off til later. I’m accountable now; I have a deadline, so I need to keep it. Which is why I’m up at 6 a.m. typing this.

Hopefully, my laptop will get better soon, but I doubt it. In the meantime, I just keep plugging away and doing the best I can. I’m tired, but I also feel like I’m accomplishing so much more. It’s odd how that works. When I have less free time, I feel more productive. Weird. Oh well. Have a nice day, and wish me luck!

NaBloPoMo 2010-02-02

It turns out that editing is more painful when 1. your equipment doesn’t work properly (my laptop), 2. you need to share a computer (which means you only can use it at certain times), and 3. your saved file of your rough draft novel mysteriously disappears.  I was able to recover it from Google Docs, but I had to paste it together. When I originally saved the file on Google Docs, it was too big so that I had to break it into smaller pieces. So…yeah, that was a pain too.  But now I know that I have roughly 160 pages to edit by the end of the month. That works out to (160/28) roughly 6 pages a day.  That doesn’t seem too bad. I hope.

First thing yesterday (Monday, Feb 1st) I was able to post both my NaBloPoMo post and my weekly post to my Esperanto blog (http://www.ganymeder.com/esperanto). Hopefully I can keep the habit of doing this first thing in the morning. I can’t really edit on the computer once my husband gets home, because he usually needs it. So my success depends largely on how my schedule fits in with everyone else and my access to the common computer.

But hey! I edited six pages yesterday. Today I’ll edit six more. That’s a start.

**

NaBloPoMo 2010-02-01

I’ve taken the challenge to write a blog post every day for the month of February for National Blog Posting Month. I’ve purposefully coincided this with my 2010 Nanowrimo rough draft edit so that the accountability and daily discipline will help me meet both goals. Considering the fact that most of my writing is done between other tasks and responsibilities, I take advantage of every opportunity to push myself. I’m a procrastinator of Olympian proportions, and without self-made deadlines and accountability on my blog, my rough draft might be doomed to the dust pile.  So, with that in mind, here’s my schedule:

February 1st, 2010: Begin 1st complete edit.
February 28th, 2010: Finish 1st complete edit.

I know that I’ll need multiple edits before submitting my novel to a publisher. However, my hope is that by forcing myself over the editing hump the first time, subsequent edits will be less painful and I’ll have more confidence. I’ll also learn more about the editing process, just as I’ve learned more about the craft of writing for the past 3 years.

Since I became interested in this, I’ve read and studied when I could. I’ve found Stephen King’s ‘On Writing‘ really informative and helpful. Podcasts such as ‘I should be writing‘ by Mur Lafferty and ‘Writing Excuses‘ have helped me along the way. I am grateful for the information and instruction I’ve gleaned from these authors, though I realize I have a long way to go.

I’m not quite sure what my approach is yet to this first edit. I’ve read and tried multiple techniques with my other work. I’ve listened and read other authors thoughts on the subject, and my conclusion is that I’m just going to have to dive in and do my best. What I’m thinking is that I’ll probably spend this first day outlining my approach, maybe split the number of chapters by 28 days and finish a certain number per day. But then that doesn’t address the problem of approaching larger plot issues that need to be resolved or maybe entire rewrites. I might do another complete outline to examine where each chapter fits (or doesn’t) in the overall story arc. I’ll see. I think first of all I’m going to edit a certain number of pages daily and then take things from there.

Yesterday, as I was getting ready for today, I already discovered that my pages were NOT divided into neat chapters as I remembered. Also, I didn’t number the pages when I printed out my paper copy. That wouldn’t have been quite such a big deal, since I had the rough draft saved on my SD card, except for the fact that I’ve been having multiple laptop issues. The card had been taken out to use a different one with a different OS in the hopes of fixing the problems. When I put in my original card to get to my rough draft, it’d mysteriously disappeared. Okay, no time to panic. It’s still on Google Docs.  It’s broken into 2 pieces (it was too large to save as one document), but I can still save it as an Open Office Document and edit. I’ll have to do it on the shared desktop computer though, since my laptop decided to freeze up on me completely last night.  But I have a paper copy, and I will probably number the pages today and divide them up into managable chunks.  After that, I’ll see where I need to go.

I know this sounds over the top corny, but it’s true. It’ll be a journey, I’m not sure where it will take me, but I’m sure I’ll learn new things along the way. Wish me luck!

Goldi-locks part 2

The burglar glared at her jailers through the bars as the clock struck for the noonday meal. The policemen laughed and chatted, closing the door behind them, as the small girl struggled vainly in her handcuffs. With the final click of the lock, she spit the hairpin into her hands. She wasn’t called ‘Goldi-locks’ for nothing.

The thought of the cops’ faces when they returned to find her cell empty split her face into a malicious grin. With a deft movement the cuffs fell from her wrists and she grabbed them before they clattered to the ground. Years with Pops hadn’t taught her manners, but picking locks came as easily to her as breathing.

As she glanced through the door’s small window at the sleeping guard, she let her thoughts drift to the little fink that had exposed her. The world knew him as ‘Baby Bear’, but to her he was simply a rat. Surely she could think of worse things to do to him than eating his porridge. She swallowed the remnants of her conscience and headed for the door.

2010-01-27

*This story continues the fairy tale theme I started last week.  I like this microfiction format better than the newspaper format I experimented with last time.  Since I’ve been reading ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’ as bedtime stories for my son, I’ve had fairy tales on the brain.

This is my last #Fridayflash story before February. I plan to use all of next month to edit my 20009 Nanowrimo novel, ‘Mortal Coil: The Afterlife and Times of William Shakespeare.’  I am also participating in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), so while I am not writing new short fiction, I will be posting daily on my editing progress.  Wish me luck!*

Headlines

Newspaper article from ‘Daily Forest News’:

THREE ARRESTED FOR INSURANCE FRAUD

Jan.22, Police charged Rachel ‘Red’ Adams, age 9, Gertrude ‘Granny’ Adams, age 102, and Wolf Jameson in the largest insurance fraud operation in Forest history.

The three implicated several other forest dwellers including P. Charming. The nobleman is suspected of false insurance claims in the death of his wife, S. White.  Allegations have also been raised against Porker, Porcine, and Swiney McPig for multiple building code violations.

‘Red’ Adams, in a tearful bid for sympathy, blamed the failing economy and rising cost of healthcare. “How is an old woman like Granny expected to make ends meet on Social Security?” pleaded the minor, mastermind behind the insurance scam.

Television rights for the stories are being negotiated.

***

I thought this one up really quickly today, because I hadn’t had time to write anything most of the week.  It’s silly, but since my son and I are currently reading ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’ I thought it would be fun.  I hope you enjoy it.