the end is nigh

For NaNo of course, but I hope for my novel as well. I've been half-busy with Etsy stuff this year, and half incredibly lazy and unmotivated. I managed to reach 50k by the 15th, but I haven't even added 20k more in the time since. So I'm aiming to change that today (and will be blogging throughout).

I've decided to have a last day of NaNo crazy writing day, despite the fact that I woke up at 6:30 yesterday morning after about 3 hours sleep. But I've decided I'm not going to bed again until I either pass out, get way closer to finishing (maybe final confrontation done, but not final wrap up), or write The End. I'm hoping for the latter, but I'll take what I can get--even passing out would hopefully give me good dreams. After all, this entire convoluted mess started from a dream I had during last year's NaNo.

Start of day total wordcount: 66,365.

At around 2 AM I was impulsive and did this:

But I brainstormed while the bleach was doing its work, so not complete procrastination. I'm not sure yet whether I'll be dying it purple, blue, or pink over this. I'm tempted to leave it, except my bleaching was very uneven, and the roots look weird.

 After I got all the bleach washed out, I sat down and did a ton more brainstorming (which may or may not have outlined the rest of my novel--we'll see) and actually pounded out some words with only a few bouts of extreme distraction.










4:42 - wordcount so far today: 2169
Listening to: In the Flame of Error by Coheed and Cambria
Huge mug of English Breakfast Tea and a plate of nummy oatmeal raisinet cookies sitting in front of me. I'm ready to get some more written--if only I had more of a clue where I'm going with this! You'd think that at over 100k in (40k written before NaNo) I would know, but I guess that's the pain of being a longwinded discovery writer. And right now, my flashlight for the path ahead is a little shaky. Hopefully the tea and cookies (and loud music) will either jumpstart the batteries.

5:41 - wordcount so far today: 3127
Listening to: Devil in Jersey City by Coheed and Cambria.
I'm not quite sure whether I want to be updating this by the hour, or by the thousand words. By the hour would probably work the best. It's been kinda close to an hour, so here's an update! This will probably get boring very soon.

C & C is my writing music, if you hadn't guessed that yet. For whatever reason, it works the best for dramatically spurring me on without making me get too lost in the music (though it still happens on the songs I really love--ahem; In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, I'm looking at you!). It's worked like that for me ever since my first NaNo in '08, when Spotify didn't exist (and I hadn't bought their albums yet), so I spent the whole month with a youtube playlist I'd made of my favorites on repeat. Now I listen to all of their albums in chronological order according to the storyline. Because I'm a nerd like that.

 6:12 - wordcount so far today: 4155 (70,512 total)
Listening to: Neverender (just assume all songs are Coheed and Cambria)
Maybe I'll just update whenever I feel like it. Like now.

Oh boy. I'm about to put the 'tea' in TMI. Because there's a reason tea rhymes with pee. Maybe I shouldn't have drunk quite that much. Not to mention that my stomach is now angry at me and trying to retaliate by becoming less than habitable. But at least I'm awake!

6:42 - wordcount so far today: 5045
Listening to: In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3
I'm not exactly excited by the way my left wrist is starting to feel. But my characters are almost to the bad guy headquarters! I just hope my wrist/shoulder holds out long enough for me to chase down my ending.

7:16 - wordcount so far today: 5498
Listening to: The Crowing
I've been up more than 24 hours now, and despite the caffeine, I'm definitely starting to feel it. But I don't want to stop. I want to at least get my final confrontation done, even if I don't finish all of the wrap up at the end. Onward, with aching wrists, I go!

7:38 - wordcount so far today: 5866
Listening to: A Favor House Atlantic
I need to not make insane goals like this. I want to go to sleep. I feel like I would write faster and think better if I went to bed and then got up and continued this whole blogging writing thing. And maybe that's true. But at the same time, it sounds so nice to be able to go to sleep exhausted but feeling accomplished rather than worrying about not having enough time after I wake up to finish to the point I want. I don't think my sentences make sense any more. But I guess I'll keep trying. For now.

8:01 - wordcount so far today: 6260
Listening to: I took off my headphones and forgot to put them back
Awesome of a title as that would be, the above is not a song by Coheed and Cambria. :p

I don't want to say second wind, because I'll jinx myself. Especially since I've gotten to that stuck spot right before the big confrontation starts, and I remember clearly thinking 'I'll never make it' at that same spot last year. But I didn't let myself give up, and that was the first time I actually finished my novel during NaNo. So I'm hoping I can make it if I keep pushing myself, even when I'm up against the convoluted mess I've spewed out over the past month.

8:32 - wordcount so far today: 6867
Listening to: still haven't put my headphones back on. Willow meowing, I suppose.
Slogging. That is the word for it. Slogging. But slogging is at least moving forward, however slowly.

9:08 - wordcount so far today: 7007
Getting less lucid by the minute, I swear. Mitten. Yep. There's a swear for you.

Rowan distracted me by watching X-men Evolution. Rude sister. Now I would much rather keep watching than keep writing. But only 3k more words and I can . . . maybe beat Rowan for the day? Oh poo. I will definitely not finish this in 3k words. That thought scares and hurts me. I don't know what a 10k goal is for then. To beat my best day this month, I guess.

9:25 - wordcount so far today: 7400
Listening to: Cuts Marked in the March of Men
As I get less lucid and write less, I really should update less often. But I'd much rather ramble here than in my novel. Except my fingers aren't quite cooperating the way I want them to anymore, so I really should put all my effort typing words into my novel for now.

9:42 - wordcount so far today: 7776 (74141 total)
Listening to: Blood Red Summer
I did updated now because it's a cool number. A pair of them. No one really needs to read this anymore except for me later to laugh/cry at myself.

Nigh does not look like a word. I googled it to see if it was a word. I want to spell it neigh, except I really do know that's wrong. My head is fuzzy. Stupid not sleeping me.

I can't even quite comprehend numbers anymore. Like, I'll write a few hundred words, and have no clue how they compare to what I had before, or how long it took to write them, or if my fingers are moving fast or slow and plodding on the keys. I didn't really mean this to be a rambling sleep deprivation guide. But I figure I'll look back on it and laugh at myself, so I shall continue, even though I kind of feel like my head is rocking back and forth when I'm pretty sure I'm sitting still. Maybe that's the motion of my fingers on the keys doing that. I wish I could count all of this words for NaNo, but I can't bring myself to. Besides, I'm going for finishing this year, not wordcount. Phooey.

10:07 - wordcount so far today: 8639
Listening to: The Light & The Glass
Hey, I typed a lot more! Mostly because I got to describe disgusting things, which I'm good at. But it totally counts!


10:22 - wordcount so far today: 8765 (75130 total)
I got distracted. And now I'm going to take a nap so I can hopefully dream about my story and make it actually have an ending. I'll pick this up again after my nap. Though even if I don't manage to get up before midnight, I still got higher than I was thinking I would after the last two weeks of the lazy plague. Now to see if anything I wrote makes sense later.

--

19:59 - I'll be getting back to writing soon. As soon as I make myself a mountain dew/orange juice concoction to wake me up. And then swear off caffeine for the rest of the week.

23:32 - wordcount for today: 15,123. (81,488 total)
The best part is, the last two words I wrote were THE END.


Well, that was a strange crazy journey of today. I'll write more about the strange crazy journey of all of NaNo later--for now I'm breaking out the WoW expansion I just bought and reveling in my victory. :D