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.

Na-Na-Na-No

As sung by Lady Gaga, of course.

But yes, I'm doing NaNo this year, of course. At this point, I really can't picture my year without it. I would be totally lost in the month of November. And it's been a very sub-par year for writing (deciding to put a lot of focus on majoring in Illustration and starting a small business will do that, apparently), so I'm hoping to make up for that. Not with an impressive wordcount, as in years past, (although that would be nice too), but by finishing another novel during NaNo. That felt way cooler even than my 135k year. I like that feeling. I'm a bit addicted to it. And March was the last time I got my fix.

I'm not dead, I promise

Man, what a downer of a post to leave my blog on for months and months!

 I don't feel like doing a full 2012 goals recap, but suffice to say that I've actually started my Etsy shop now, so my days are filled with more knitting than I'd ever imagined they would be! Nothing much to show for it yet, as far as being in the shop--like with everything, I'm great at being motivated to start new things, and rubbish at actually seeing them through to the end. Getting stuck at 96% for weeks because I can't bring myself to do an hour of finishing work is the story of my life lately. Alas.

inner critic, go away; go jump off a cliff today. . . .

It's ridiculous that I just wrote a blog post justifying that yes, I am a writer, since now I feel so very iffy on that front. I know it has to do with the fact that I'm randomly depressed again, and that I just got a good critique (read, was not nice to my story in exactly the way it needed to be, and pointed out a lot of things I need to fix to make it work), so I feel like if I can't even write a story that makes sense, who am I to say I'm a writer?

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:

guest post (or, what I spent my evening writing instead of fiction)

I've written a post for the Callihoo Publishing blog, entitled "What does it take to be a writer", in which I outline a few of the struggles I've faced in calling myself a writer. Check it out, and let me know what struggles you've faced in taking on that title!

http://callihoopublishing.blogspot.com/2012/07/what-does-it-take-to-be-writer.html


Also, I got oil paint on my gardening pants in class today, making me wonder if I should make them my painting pants instead. There, now I can still be random, even if I'm updating more frequently! :)

--
Listening to: In der Stille by Subway to Sally. The problem with this band is I keep listening to all of their albums on repeat while I work, so I keep getting bits stuck in my head and having no clue what song they're in.

summer classes

Don't you just hate those days where you forget you have something to do? I think I subconsciously set the tempo of my days based on whether I have to do something in the evening or not. Today, I forgot I have a class at 5:30, so I've been taking some time getting things done for my business, thinking I'll have the evening to relax a bit. Well, there went that plan. And now my drive to do anything work-related is faltering, since I know I won't get home 'til nine, and will only have about an hour before my self-inflicted bedtime. And I have to take the non-air-conditioned car again. Ick.

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. . . .

in which I decide I would like to blog more often

Even if I feel I have nothing to say. I can talk about writing, current knitting/crochet projects, my poor garden, even the fact that I really do want to get my Etsy shop up and running one if these days.
Of course, I always think that, every time I visit my cousins. Two of them run the pretty darn successful Quiet Mischief and Co., and watching them work and have goals and actually make a living off Etsy always inspires me. Usually for only about three days, or so, but I really would like to actually do it this time. Even if it means dealing with being a business, and taxes and shipping and having to build my customer base from scratch.

mid-may goals recap

All right, rather than trying to catch up on (what feels like) months of missed blogging, I'll just jump in today as if nothing happened. Kinda like I tried to do for my 366 project, which has flickered out yet again.

Rewrite (at least) one of my novels.
I've decided this is a June goal, since that's when the createspace offer from last year's NaNo expires. So, I haven't made any progress on this front recently. I finished another novel though, and at 48k words it's definitely my shortest. Might be a good one to start a rewrite on.

I could have been working on it this month, but I was planning to do Story a Day in May. That's also kind of fizzled out. I suppose I could still try for it this last week, but I have almost no motivation to do so. I feel kind of blah overall, regarding my writing. :/

project 366 - another dose of highlights

I finally got caught up on my 366 project again. I'd been taking photos, and even processing most of them, but without actually putting them on my flickr, it didn't feel like I'd been keeping up on my goal. I even felt like calling it quits again. But now that I have them all up, I feel better about this project. So here are my favorites since the last update (going to be a long post, since it's been a while):

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

february goals recap

Rewrite (at least) one of my novels.
I've been focusing more on writing lately--trying to finish one WIP before starting in on a sequel for my second finished novel, since my writers' group is doing our own NaNoWriMo in March. Maybe I'll take the summer to focus more on this goal?

Finish my fanfic.
Yeah, just 'cause I said I was writing, doesn't mean it was this . . . sorry story alert peeps.

project 366 - february highlights

I restarted my daily photography project, though instead of only self-portraits, I'm now allowing myself to do the point my camera at cool things in nature that I like to do--especially on bad hair days. Also, I know February isn't over yet, but if I take any more really cool pictures, I can always edit the post.

As with all things requiring commitment and time, I keep wondering whether I should just scrap it, but I look back at all the pictures I took for the last project I did, and I know that I got a bunch of cool shots I otherwise would have never gotten. Not to mention how much it taught me about self portraits and editing.

So anyway, to keep myself motivated, here are those 'cool shots I wouldn't have taken otherwise', i.e. my favorites so far this project.

january goals recap

More than halfway through February. Because that's apparently how I roll. Plus, I can be so unusually creative at finding ways to procrastinate while avoiding writing, so I figured I may as well take the time to do something at least slightly productive by finally updating this thing!

new year

I hate new year's resolutions, but it sounds like a good thing to do a blog post around. A week late. 'Cause that's how I roll, apparently. So here I go:

Rewrite (at least) one of my novels.
I finished my first two novels last year, and haven't really looked at either since. Now that I've succeeded at that first big step of actually writing ' The End', I want to get at least one of them to the point where my writing group can go over it. This will likely be quite the hurdle: I've never rewritten anything longer than a short story.