NaNoWriMo – Day 1
This is my first year participating in NaNoWriMo and I’m pretty excited about it. It may be just the thing I need to get my act together when it comes to finishing a first draft. I’m going for 50k, and since there are 30 days in November, that works out to about 1667 words a day (1666.66666666667 actually, but I have this thing about completing all of the words that I’m writing; I’m old fashioned like that).
Day 1 Goal: 1667 words
Day 1 Actual Word Count: 2736
Bam! I owned that word count.
The day’s experience:
Well, it’s only day one, but I’m pretty happy with how many words I got down today. I could have written more, but I reached a good stopping point, so I figured I’d give my brain (and fingers) a break. Not too shabby for the first day though.
The Project: I’m working on a piece of young adult historical fiction. Now, I’m not much of a history buff, but there are a few historical occurrences that I am obsessed with. My idea stems from one of these. I don’t want to give too much detail because I always do that and then once everyone knows what I’m doing, I lose interest in the project. So for the sake of finishing NaNoWriMo, the details will stay mum until the month is over. However, it’s something I only rarely see in the YA section, and I’m well-versed enough that I only have a small amount of research to do throughout the process.
Pros: I definitely didn’t stop as much as I normally do to analyze how crappy I think the sentence structure is at this point or how many times I overuse the same words. In other words, I saved the editing for the editing stage and didn’t allow it to get in the way of my progress. Also, I’m loving the concept I came up with. I think it’s a unique take on the situation and it’s a possible explanation that never really comes up. I totally relate to the character’s struggle (at least, the way I’m portraying it), and I think teens will definitely see her reasoning and understand why she can’t just admit where the fault lies. Yeah, it’s pretty vague, but basically I think the target audience will be able to relate to my project once it’s done. And don’t judge me, but I am pretty impressed with myself for typing the whole thing up. I prefer to write by hand, but thought I’d give typing up the first draft a whirl so I didn’t have to do the word count myself. Best. Idea. Of. NaNoWriMo. Except for my story idea, of course.
Cons: Having never written anything historical before, I didn’t realize how hard it would be to write now and leave the additional research for the editing phase. I want everything to be accurate right now, but honestly, if I’m off on where the necessary pressure points are or on the timeline, I can fix it once I’ve finished my draft. So I stopped probably 8 or 9 times tonight to search for the history of insane asylums and find trial transcripts. Tomorrow, my goal is to focus less on research and more on doing my best writing.
Special thanks to:
Starbucks Coffee
Your caffeine made today totally possible. Je t’aime.
Random Connection
Today I realized something. I have a thing for fictional Spencers.
Example 1 – Spencer Shay, iCarly
- Spencer #1
Why? I don’t know. It could be that he’s an artist, or that he has really cool socks (If you’ve never watched the show, he has a pair of socks with light up pineapples on them. So awesome.) or that he accidentally lights everything on fire. But he’s adorable, funny and totally awkward most of the time.
Example 2 – Spencer Reid, Criminal Minds
Spencer #2
Again, I couldn’t tell you what it is about him. Half the time he looks as if he should be the frontman for an emo boy band or something. And once more, he’s completely awkward.
You know what Spencer I don’t have a crush on? This one:
Spencer Pratt, Douche Extraordinaire
I don’t know what this all has to do with anything, I just thought I would share it.
Birthday Fun
Today is a very good friend of mine’s birthday, and I was trying to make her a card on my computer. I had a very specific idea for the photo I wanted to use. We have a bit of a running joke about a ghost with an abacus (a Japanese myth that makes us both laugh) and I figured I’d use my Photoshop free trial to put it all together. The problem? My Photoshop free trial expired.
I tried Paint.
I tried Picture Manager.
I tried the photo editing commands in Microsoft Word. (Yes, I have a PC.)
I tried Picnik.com.
And then I found it. The golden apple. The only free program worth anything these days. Aviary.
I used it online and came up with this:
Ghost with an Abacus
It’s not perfect, mostly due to my pretty pathetic attempts to figure out how to use all the tools immediately. Also, I’m not exactly the best at photo editing anyway. But it looks pretty damn good for a last minute attempt, I think.
Aviary, I love you. Will you be mine?
Xoxo,
Jenna
I Invented Procrastination
So as you know (or if you didn’t already know, you do now), I’m a writer. I write for blogs, I write for websites, and sometimes I even get the time to write for myself. And like any good writer, I have pretty much got the market cornered on procrastination techniques. Some of them even pay off in the long run. Here are 5 procrastination methods that may or may not be helpful to you as you attempt to avoid productivity.
1. The Hulu Approach - There are several television shows that I watch on a weekly basis, but since I don’t have cable and never got around to setting up that digital converter box (I think that’s what it’s called), I watch them all online. Usually all at once. Some of the channels have their own video players, which is how I get my Glee on, but others are a little harder to find recent episodes, so I turn to sites like Hulu to watch. And if you’re worried about what to do when you run out of new episodes, might I suggest a Netflix subscription? They have about a billion shows available to watch instantly from your computer, including classics like Charles in Charge and current hits like Weeds.
I want, I want Charles in charge of me!
2. The I’m Going to Do Research Approach – This one is great because it’s not only fun, it also helps you to feel like you are doing work. You start off slow, looking into something that you’re working on. For example, let’s pretend I’m writing a DVD review. I might go to IMDB to see who played a certain character, or what else the director has done. From there, I go to another film that said person worked on, and find out that they starred alongside James Franco, which brings me to a site discussing his art exhibit and when his book comes out. So now I’m googling celebrity book releases to find out that Snooki from Jersey Shore got a publishing deal and Johnny Weir did too, and OMG did you see him skate in the Olympics cause it’s on YouTube and … you see where I’m going with this?
Be Good Johnny Weir!
3. The I Really Should Clean Up in Here First Approach – This approach usually only works if you are either OCD or a messy person. If this does not apply to you, feel free to skip to number 4.
I’ve always had a room that kind of looks like the inside of my brain probably does: chaotic with a side of complete upheaval. Every time I clean, there is always more laundry to be done, more stuff to pick up off the floor, more books to cram into my bookshelves (yeah, I’ve got a LOT of books). Plus, there’s the brilliant avoidance plan that pretty much ensures I’ll never do anything…my scrapbooking materials. All sorts of pictures, concert ticket stubs and memorabilia for me to sit on the floor or at my desk going through pretending that this is actually helpful to the organization process when in fact I should be shoving it in my desk drawer to go through after everything else is clean. My room almost never gets picked up and my work never gets done. Bonus!
If you see this, Julie, I could use the help!
4. The One Last Thing to Do Before Approach – Sometimes, you just have to run out to get that cup of coffee, or slice of pizza before you can sit down to write. Or maybe you’ve got a birthday card to mail and you really should just take it to the post office since the mail already came today. Or you just want to play one more round of Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. It’ll only take a minute, right? And then while you are out or finishing your game or whatever, something else equally unimportant comes up and you need to do that before you can do anything else worthwhile and it all becomes a vicious cycle.
High score!
5. The Writing a Blog Post – Well, it’s writing, isn’t it? And writers who have an established following are more likely to get published, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself when I post blogs about cute pigs or methods of procrastination instead of finishing my manuscript.
A previously unposted cute pig
Well, now I’m off to work on my manuscript and find a day job so I can pay all of my bills on time attempt a new high score at Bejeweled Blitz. Wish me luck!
Lest you think I’m biased…
I also like pigs that aren’t wearing rain boots. Like this one:
Pig with a tea cup!
And these little dudes:
Paint splattered piglets!
And these very seasonally relevant ones:
Pumpkin pigs!
And this one who sits just like I do:
Some pig!
I even like this pig:
Miss Piggy
Aren’t they freaking adorable?
Pigs in Rain Boots
It’s been raining a lot in NY (and I’m sure all over) recently, and I kind of love it. Mostly because the rain reminds me of this:
A pig in rainboots!
Which then reminds me of this other picture I saw:
A different but equally cute pig in rain boots!
I wish there were more.
Procrastination
It’s 5 AM and I’m still awake. I’m not writing, I’m not doing laundry, I’m not even thinking about anything important. No, I am catching up on How I Met Your Mother and desperately hoping that Ted’s kids don’t realize that he kidnapped them and never actually married their mother. I realize this is lunacy, but really, how else would they not know which woman was their mother when Ted gives her first name? Why do they care about their dad dating Stella or Robin? Deep thoughts, I know.
I really should be cleaning right now. My room is a mess, the kind of mess that makes you think someone might have hoarding tendencies but hasn’t quite made their way to being a hoarder yet. No dead cats or moldy food, but there’s very little of my carpet that has seen the light of day this week. Or really, since I moved in.
Anyway, this is really a self-sabotaging effort to keep myself from working on my WIP (that’s work in progress for you non-writer types). I want to write, really I do, but I’m almost at the end of my book and it makes me a little sad. Do you ever feel that way? It reminds me of where I was at when I began this project, and how far I’ve come. Knowing that this is really the only story I want to tell with these two main characters (and man, they have really gotten into my head) makes me kind of want to keep the end from getting here. But eventually I’ll have to finish it, or never finish anything, so I am going to shut down my computer, go to bed, get up tomorrow (or really, later today) and get to work.
But first, I’m going to watch the next episode of How I Met Your Mother.
