It’s November!
If I had more than say.. 3 or 4 people reading my blog, I might feel bad about leaving you hanging. But, as it stands, I’m not sure when or if I’ll finish that story. I probably will, but it likely won’t be until December. We’ll see.. sometimes I surprise myself.
So, here we are. November. The grand NaNoWriMo event of 2009. I’ve already slacked off by giving the kids the day off of school yesterday so that I could write. Naughty mommy. But no more of that nonsense! I need to make sure that NaNoWriMo doesn’t make daily life cease to function as we know it around here. I’ve been working too hard and sacrificed way too many blogging hours to let it go now.
My book this year is outlined into 50 some odd chapters. That means I need to write about 1000 words per chapter. Heck, most of my blog posts are about that length, so easy peasy, right? So far, so good. My goal at this point in the game is to write two chapters, aka two thousand words, each day. If I can stick with that for at least the first 20 days, then I should only have to write 1000 words a day at the end of the month. I’m hoping this approach works. I tried to prepare as much as possible with plot outlining and character profiles and such before November arrived.
Last year, I think the write-ins really saved me. They are truly invaluable. For those who don’t know what a write-in is, it is a gathering of all the local people who are participating in NaNoWriMo at a local venue where we write. Our ML (municipal liaison) is like the best in the world (hi, Mary!) and she whips everyone into shape. She has us write in sprints and gives us challenges and goals as far as words count for each timed sprint. This method has proven effective for just about everyone in our group. At last night’s write-in, we cumulatively wrote over 50k! I believe they did the day before as well. Go team.
At this point, my main stumbling block is bedtime. Most of the write-ins I plan to attend are at the kids’ bedtime. And, with the addition of Lucy to the family, bedtime just doesn’t work with only one parent. The husband has been working his tush off lately, and even he has ended up having to help me out with bedtime despite my best efforts to do it on my own (well, that was only once.. but still. I failed.).
Lucy is still a rather clingy puppy, and at bedtime? She does not want to be put down unless it’s beside me in our bed. Yeah. During the day she’ll sleep in her crate just fine, but after the kids have gone to bed? Not a chance. She has to be in my lap. So there’s that. And she’s getting a bit big to sleep in my lap, making it nearly impossible to write. Fun.
Anyway. I’d apologize for the insanely boring post, but I don’t really care. Since I took a break for so long, everyone seems to have forgotten about my poor little blog, taken me out of their readers, or assumed I’d stopped blogging completely. Oh well. So to the very few of you who are still reading, thank you. And I’m sorry. Here’s a picture of the puppy to make up for it.
