Larocque and Roll

NaNo 2007 Day 30: Endgame December 1, 2007

I just spent the last hour an a half in the kitchen making the components of a gingerbread trifle (it will be assembled tomorrow afternoon). Before that, I spent most of the day cleaning the house, moving furniture around, and shopping for groceries. Last night I spent almost three hours baking gingerbread cookies [1] for the cookie exchange at work today. Before that, I spent an accumulated seven or eight hours making new curtains for the windows on the main floor and a new cover for my footstool.

Prior to that, I’ve entertained four guests on three occasions for a total of six days and seven nights (I’m rounding up, I think). With those visits, came the obligitory cleaning and slaying of dust bunnies.

This is a long way of saying that I didn’t get any writing done on my story since the last update. None. My total word count this year was under 2000. I did try a few times - I’d sit down at my laptop and stare at my screen for an hour or so before giving up and going and doing something more [2] productive.

Part of it was the story - I just wasn’t feeling it. I had no plot, no characters, and no passion for what I’d written. If I’d had any of the three, you can bet I’d have made time to work on the story. As it was, it was too easy to walk away from it because I couldn’t see getting to the point where I would start to like it. And in the end, there was just no spark. To belabour the analogy, the patient had very little life on arrival and died on the table.

Would I do NaNoWriMo again? Damn skippy I would! Would I do it next year? I sincerely hope so.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go to bed. I’m hosting the staff Christmas party tomorrow night - almost everything is done except sweeping the floor, and cooking my two dishes. I can sleep the sleep of someone who is on schedule for once.

[1] Yes, I’m obsessed with gingerbread. What made you ask?
[2] Or occasionally less.

NaNo 2007 Day 6: Baby steps November 7, 2007

Sunday night when I got home, I managed to bang out just over 1700 words, which would have been great on day 1 or 2, but worrisome on day 4. Yesterday I got home and practically had to turn around and go straight back out, not getting home until almost 10. And work has been really busy so no NaNoing there.

Tonight hasn’t been a total bust, but it’s close. I now have just over 2000 words, and considering I should have over 10,000 by the end of today, that’s pretty bad. Tonight I’ve been phenominally unproductive [1], and I’ve wasted so much time that it’s better that I just stop now and go to bed.

Production note: I have a Twitter account (because I haven’t met a bandwagon that I didn’t like), and I’ve posted the feed in the sidebar; I have widgets on my browser at home and at work, and occasionally post updates using that.

[1] As far as working on the story goes. However, I have done the following:
~ Downloaded 8 songs from iTunes;
~ Listened to Three Dog Night’s Shambala 21 times in a row [2] [3];
~ Drank two cups of Earl Grey Vanilla tea;
~ Talked to the cat about the plot, or should I say, lack thereof.

[2] I was trying to use it to inspire me to write the introduction to another character, but it’s all wrong for what I had in mind. Or maybe I should just run with what I have…

[3] It is my firm belief that if you are inspired by a song, or need a song to set a particular mood, you can’t listen to it too many times in a row. On Sunday night I listened to Arcade Fire’s “My Body is a Cage” 32 times in a row because I was trying to set a mood for a funeral, and it was the most perfect song on my iPod at the time.

Nano 2007 Day 4: Where’s my word count at? November 4, 2007

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m sitting at my sister’s kitchen table. I’ve been here since Friday evening and it’s been a non-stop whirlwind of family kinds of things, including throwing a birthday party for my b-i-l. We’re not going to talk about how many bottles of wine have been consumed between my sisters, my cousin and myself. Let’s just say it’s still in the single digits, but not in the low ones. And that Vineland Estates Dry Riesling is my new favourite wine.

Enough about our drinking problems [1]. I haven’t even come close to meeting my word count for the last four days, let alone the first day. So far, I have one paragraph and a sentence on the second one. Woo. Go me.

I’m heading home shortly, where I will spend the rest of the afternoon and evening trying to meet my target.

[1] Namely, that we ran out and had to stop.

NaNo 2007: Pre-production October 31, 2007

Le sigh.

After I made my little pro/con list last week, I thought in my mind that I’d settled the matter - that I’d sit this year out and come back next year. It felt good to make that decision, and I went about my merry way.

Then I got an idea for a story.

No, no, no. I can’t do it. I absolutely have no time for this.

But it’s a good idea! And it will let you write both a story and free-form parts, for those times when the plot just isn’t there.

No! Three of the four weekends in November, I have either one or no free days. I have work/committee commitments almost every week.

You can write it using Google Docs, so you can steal a few moments here and there at work. Chipping away at the word count all day is better than trying to bang it out in the evenings.

I’m not even finished the work writing I mentioned! It needs to be done first!

You know you wanna…

Oh, fine. I’ll do it. Damn you, mind!