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.

in which I watched a ton of movies while on the clock

One really nice thing about the work I've been doing for my etsy shop lately is the amount of Netflix I get to watch, guilt free. I need something to do while I knit and crochet, after all. My viewing history of last night/this morning reads as follows:

start of july goals recap: take that, mid-may!

Rewrite (at least) one of my novels.
Well, I didn't get it done in June, but I have been working on rewriting Clockwork. I polished my first scene up nicely before realizing I should probably be editing for story before doing line edits. So I'm in the process of summarizing all my chapters and scenes on notecards to try and get an idea of the shape of the story. It's hard because the only way to get better at rewriting is more rewriting, which you don't have a clue how to do unless you've done some rewriting. . . .

leave a message after the (text) tone

Okay, that title really makes no sense. But basically, this blog is to highlight the latest project I did for my design class, where we used text as value (tone). Here's a link to the picture, which you can click on to make it huge: http://armyofgnomes.deviantart.com/art/text-tones-self-portrait-290078115

There are five values (six, if you count the background). This is where you're supposed to guess what they all are.

Tone 1: paper white
Tone 2: katakana
Tone 3: script
Tone 4: kanji
Tone 5: black

Extra tone: background kanji

so that's why I have a tablet!

I got a little Wacom Bamboo tablet for . . . I think it was my birthday last year. Or maybe the year before. My not remembering the exact date may show exactly how much I haven't used it. I mean, I asked for it, I wanted it, I was excited for it. I'd seen people do digital drawings in tutorial videos and had been blown away by all the options. The possibilities of layers, for one, made me want to dance around in glee, clutching the tablet to my bosom. Ahem. Anyway.

So I plugged it in, loaded the drivers, had fun writing "omg I am writing with a tablet" a few dozen times before dragging out whatever photoediting software I was using at the time (might have been Paintshop Pro, maybe Paint.net). I scribbled excitedly. And it looked like . . . a scribble. A scribble where all the lines were a uniform blackness, a uniform unattractive fatness. I blinked, and tried again. Same thing. Not exactly the sexy depictions of line quality I'd seen in tutorial videos.

NaNo day 30: and there was much rejoicing!

I finished the darn thing!

Ahem. That is to say, I got 94,380 words for NaNo this year. Not the 100k I was aiming for. Certainly not the 150k I was dreaming about. But I got something much cooler than wordcount, which was the spectacularly glowy feeling of typing END at the bottom of my manuscript. Danica, queen of procrastination, of starting new novels instead of finding middles and ends, and ooh look a squirrel, has now finished two novels!

NaNo days 21-23 (11k day!)

I was about 1000 words under my goal on Monday, and by the time I got home from school on Tuesday (about 5) I was so beat I couldn't even think about my novel.  Several hours of art homework later (of the "it's due tomorrow" variety), and I went to bed early, deciding that maybe I should get more than 5 hours of sleep at least one night this week.  So nothing for the 22nd.

However, I have the rest of today to myself, so I'm aiming for 1k an hour until midnight.  With my average typing speed, that's about 20 minutes out of every hour, which I'm sure I can easily find--so long as I don't procrastinate too much or get dreadfully stuck. If all goes well, that will give me (at least) a 10k day, putting me back on track for 100k.

Then I just hope to keep my daily 4202 goal through the two Thanksgiving dinners I have this weekend (one for each side of the family).

NaNo day 18 (and the start of 19)

Is it already the 19th? Glory. This month has had the strangest feeling of dragging past, but suddenly, we're nearing the end stretch. Which reminds me about that photography final assignment I've been neglecting, which is to document my experience with NaNo this year. I think I've journaled twice. Oops.

But anyway, after not meeting my goal for 3 days in a row (and not even writing anything 2 of those days) I somehow pulled a 5k day. I'm still not quite sure myself how I manged it. I woke up incredibly depressed and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep so I could escape back into my dreams for a while. But I dragged my butt out of bed, knowing I had to make today count as far as my words went. So what did I do? Spent the next 3 hours googling bipolar. Yep.

NaNo day 6 - back on track?

After only writing about 1000 words on the 4th, and nothing yesterday (due to a close friend's wedding), I got my goal of 4000 today! That put me above my cheaty wordcount, and up to 13782. I am /never/ posting a wordcount before it's written again! If I do end up writing most of the day's words after midnight, my graph will just have to look strange. I can deal. :)

And I was really happy with myself, because I was writing along with @NaNoWordSprints on twitter and got 1000 words written in 20 minutes, until I realized that it was all introspection. Doh. That's what National Novel Editing Month in March is for!

another check on the bucket list

Quite a bit has happened since that last very boring post. One thing: I've decided that blogging just to blog, especially when my blog has "rarely updated" in the title, is silly. If I can't take the time to make what I'm saying make sense, or at least make it amusing, why post at all?

My attempt at humor (click to make it bigger).

Anyway, I can't believe I haven't posted about this yet, but here it is: This July, I went to a writers' retreat for my writing group. I had a goal in mind, but I had no idea if I would be able to reach it. "Shoot for the stars and you at least won't shoot yourself in the foot" was firmly in my mind.

Did someone say, . . 100K?

Doy. I just realized that I never posted on here about the end of NaNo! Well. . .

I got to 100k!! Specifically, I got 101,549 words, official grand total! I tried tweaking for that to end with a 47, but it just didn't happen. :)

Anyway, right now I'm trying to write poetry for the first time in weeks, and I think remembering I had yet to post this was an avoidance tactic, so I'm not going to spend too much time writing this. But I also wanted to mention that I'm signed up for WriYe next year, for 600,000 words for the whole year. That's 50,000 a month. A NaNo a month. Did I mention I'm also insane?

Anyway, I'm "choukuro" on the WriYe site, same as for NaNo, but without the space in the middle. Yep.

One more post before I sleep

Two posts in one day! I could just edit the other one, but this one is on a different subject. Actually, not really. It's just more randomness.

I was all excited, "yay, I have 11 profile views already", when I realized that all those views were me, checking up on everything and making sure it all looked pretty. Darn.

Oh well, I'm not really writing this for comments or to be popular. I enjoy talking to myself, basically, and this accomplishes that very well. And tagging things is fun too.