Just in time?

So I finished off my Thanksgiving break by picking up the boy's cold, which took care of much of my past week. Sneeze, sniffle, cough, repeat.

I did attempt some cooking- I made an abbreviated chex mix, following the "bold" recipe (with hot sauce). I now have a bag of overly spicy, slightly burned, nigh-inedible snack mix. The "burned" part should have tipped me off there was a problem.

I decided on Thursday night to make meringues. Heated the oven, mixed them up, piped them into nice little stars, put them into the oven. Paused to clean off the oven thermometer that got knocked over and took out a corner meringue in the process. Closed the doors, turned the oven off. When I went to go to bed, I checked and they seemed to be drying nicely. Friday morning, however, they had gone a bit gummy. I decided to turn the oven back on for a bit to dry them out again, so I set it to "low" (below 225). Went to the other room, was alerted a bit later by the smell of burned sugar. Opened oven, meringues are a cocoa brown color (would be nice if they were chocolate, but they were lemon). The oven thermometer said it was 350. My nagging suspicion that the thermostat is not accurate at low temperatures? confirmed. Seems to be fine for settings in the 300-400 range, though.

On Saturday I finally decided I had to plant the daffodil bulbs I had bought, so I did so. I also moved the rhubarb to a sunnier spot, while I was at it. Didn't get the bearded iris in the ground, but I hope I can work with that.

I guess I planted those bulbs at the right time, thought, because they are predicting snow tomorrow. Snow. Like, frozen water from the sky. Not hail, the other stuff. Weird. I know it exists, I have seen it. I have even seen it fall here a couple of times. But still, very strange.

And, of course, not I am worried that all of my plants will freeze. Worry, worry.

Well, that didn't work

And having said all that, I have not done any novel writing since. I did make an astonishingly good apple pie! And ate food. And slept. And had a killer headache all day for Thanksgiving, that lasted until the end of pie in the evening (it seems pecan pie is medicinal in its sweetness).

I'll try to get back to it, but frankly I'm making no promises at this point.

Nanowrimo - not winning this year

Let's just say that I will not be winning NaNoWriMo this year. This should not be too surprising, as I abandoned the idea I had been working a few days before it started for a new idea (one I was not as invested in and so would theoretically have an easier time not writing perfectly), which changed during the writing and is now unrecognizable. Seat-of-pants is not my winning approach.

If I write hard, and do more than my average words per day, I may meet my personal goal of 25,000 words (Ignore the fact I have started over several times, and so am only a few thousand words into the current story- some of the rest can be fit in later). I did have ambitions of winning for a while there, but this does not look like the year for that. I did not do the total commitment thing: I tried to reduce my other time commitments, but not drop anything. I have written most days, even if only a few sentences (I got really stuck a few days ago).

I have found this to be a valuable project, though, and I do expect to try again next year. I had hoped to use this month to find a pace I could work at steadily, without burning out. I seem to have found what that is for now.

Good things I have learned:

• I can write about 800 words in half an hour
• Without a plan, I can write about 400-800 words in a burst
• A timer helped me get something on the screen (unless the writing just wasn't going to happen), either an IRC word war or E.ggtimer. com.
• Do not go back and delete anything - it may be useful later.
• The only way out is through- when stuck, write something. Even a different scene. Even write about how and why I'm stuck.
• I need an outline of some kind to keep the story moving forward, or I will wander and dither and backtrack all the time.
• One type of reluctance to write is solvable by writing. Another is solvable by trying again tomorrow. Trying to write reveals the difference (they feel different- like the difference between prying open the lid and having the lid open, but the jar empty)
  

Problems I found:

• I need an actual desk for working at (sofa=back pain)
• I need a full-size keyboard
• My brain is really not working as well as it used to (I blame my job. It's good for that).
• Possibly related- I have headaches more than I had thought- and it is hard to write with a headache.
• I need to break up the file- the one long file unexpectedly freaks my brain out (I'm going to try yWriter when the month is over. I have been tempted to buy a Mac just for Scrivener, but I can resist on account of not having the money to burn).
• I confirmed my suspicion that I have a hard time with plot (I have all these characters, but my plotting is awful- stops and restarts and moves all over the place, while being hackneyed and dull).

Next year I will have to have a bit of an outline for this. That's a good thing to learn. The problem with discovering these things during NaNoWriMo is that I haven't been able to spend the time I need to play and figure things out. (That, like editing, is what December is for, I guess)

So: I need to write a few scenes to find my characters (that's the only way I manage to get a sense of who they are), then I need to figure out the plot, and map it out (in what detail, I am not yet sure). I also need to find the right tools for me to wrangle the text. I can write an average of 800 words a day without major changes to my life. I can double that if it is going well. If the writing doesn't get much easier or faster as I get further in, I'd be looking at about 2-3 months to a rough draft. I'm okay with that.

If I can find solutions to the problems I'm having this year, and do the prep work I need to do, I suspect NaNoWriMo will turn out to be a good way for me to churn out a rough quickly. Just not this year.

Catching up again

Still busy/overwhelmed. Trying to get house in a fit state for company, as that would likely also be a fit state for living. With such a small house, I am surprised at how easily I lose things.

So... It's been a long time. What has changed... the job still bites, the hit to my paycheck hurts a lot (although the extra days off are appreciated). The kitchen is slowly coming together (just finishing the painting & new hardware on the horrible cabinetry). I went on a regrettable ebay/goodwill binge and ended up with a bunch of new-to-me sewing machines (old, metal workhorses), after resisting the lure of a very affordable industrial machine. I don't have any place to put them, but I have them.

The front yard is still a mess- trying to kill bermudagrass is not easy. Professionals were involved, it is still coming back, and probably will be forever. Such is life. The apple and chery are doing wonderfully, the japanese maple I planted out there as well is doing okay (it got a bit stressed before planting). the plum & peach I planted in the backyard are still alive, but not thriving. The area I started with flagstones & thyme between them is really nice, and I probably should work on spreading out from there. At least it now looks like something is being done, even if it is being done very slowly.

And so.... I am doing NaNoWriMo. And I am not finished with today's words. and I am writing here. Bad me. I am also considering various forms of cat-vacuuming- I need to go buy discounted halloween decorations! Produce so I don't get scurvy! And a new keyboard because this &^%(^$*% cheap compact one is not so comfortable to use (very stiff, keep missing letters or doubling them... awkward).

I shall do so. Even if I am only at 800 words. Need to ponder what happens net. Then I can do another burst or two of writing.

planting

Not working on much fun, too stressed at work (and pondering job hunting in this economy is not fun- I'm not likely to be laid off, but the current changes may make my job undoable. Or it could all work out fine. Maybe.). I got most of the painting done in the kitchen, bought some open shelves, but have stalled out a bit due to the unavailability of the counter unit I plan to get. Ikea supply chain problems. Fun.

What I am doing, is trying to start the garden. It's bareroot season, and I am poor/miserly. I'm buying and planting what I can now. Thus far, I have a Fuji apple (in the ground last saturday), a multi-grafted cherry (planted tonight), an Elberta peach (as yet unplanted), a Wonderful pomegranate (in a pot for now), plus some smaller as-yet-unplanted - Concord grape (total impulse buy), raspberry, asparagus, dicentra, onion sets. I also picked up an artichoke and an upright rosemary, that are both really in need of planting out or repotting. On top of the potted stuff that's still unplanted from last summer (blueberry, marionberry, trailing rosemary, myrtle, roses)... I have a bit of work ahead of me. (plus I need to prune what I've already planted).

I plugged some swiss chard and red cabbage into the bed at the front of the house I was using as a vegetable garden last year. I do hope to make that a bit more "decorative", but I haven't quite decided yet. Probably some roses at the back of the bed, and some peppers/eggplant in the front again, because they actually looked nice. I do need to balance the huge camellia at the other corner of the house with something large, but I'm not sure what.

The urgency of getting bareroot stuff in the ground has kind of kept me from thinking about any other nonpressing projects. My story is still stalled, and I haven't figured out the right questions to ask the characters so I can move on. I just have to try to remember how I was able to get in the groove of this whole thing before. My first finished play may have sucked horribly, but I did start to get the hang of discovering my characters. Someday maybe I'll fix that thing, although having figured out the main problem it might be fatal. Probably, it'll just stay in the bottom of the drawer*. Which, I fear, is also the fate of what I'm working on now.

*or hard drive.

Small progress

I've written a bit for the book. Less than a thousand words, and crap, but still - words on screen. And then, of course, I got to a spot where I'm stuck again, and have to figure out what the stuff I was writing wants to be, since it doesn't seem to be heading where I had planned.

And, on the less-fun-but-more-all-consuming front, I've got some paint up in the kitchen, and have begun to buy plants for the yard. Must. Finish. Kitchen. I can think through the story as I'm painting, right?

Rebooting

Well, I created this blog with the intention of using it, I swear. Maybe this year I will. Rather than the personal journal I've tried (and failed) to update in the past (or updated so obliquely that I cannot tell what I was talking about when I read the entries years later), this is focused on what I am working on, and what I intend to work on. A project log, rather than a diary.

Although I know I won't be able to keep my life out of it entirely, and I do not intend to. Life affects what I work on, and what I don't. I haven't been working on any projects I consider "fun" for quite a while, for various reasons.

I was working on a story, but stalled on that summer before last. The story revolves around death and cemeteries, and I was doing research for it, and then I had a few people near me die and couldn't deal with it for a while (and then I waited until Neil Gaiman's wonderful The Graveyard Book came out, to find out if my story was too similar, which it fortunately is not). I'm starting to work on it again, in my head, figuring out what the core of the story is. I suspect I will start putting some words on paper/screen soon. I also suspect I am not a good enough writer for this right now, but I need to give it a try. (And there's still another one waiting in the wings, with a character that appeared in my playwriting attempts, who belongs in a novel instead. And then there are the plays, of course).

I also have completely set aside sculpture, jewelry, knitting, sewing, and puppets, hoping to be able to get back to them when I've got my house together. Because I bought a house, and that leads to many projects of the mundane variety. Right now, I am painting the kitchen, so that I can put in a counter unit and some shelves (the "under $500 kitchen remodel"). This is necessary, but very very dull. I also am trying to plan landscaping, to figure out my long-term plans for everything, and maybe clean off some cobwebs once in a while. Very, very dull. Yet, also all-consuming.

So anyway, this was just an extremely rambling way to say that I'm going to be trying to update this blog with all the various things I'm working on. Or at least, the ones that don't bore me too much to post them.