Embellished Truth & Polite Fiction

Sorry to leave you all hanging for so long.. thinking perhaps that I’d lost my mind or, worse yet, drunk myself into oblivion.

Nay!

I have conquered the beast that is NaNoWriMo, and while I do not have a finished novel to show for it, I do have over 50,000 words of a novel to show for it! Not only that, but in a last ditch effort (and with the help of my wonderful friends in the CIA) I managed to pound out 15,000 words in the last 2 days!

The week following November 30 was hard. It’s commonly refered to as NaNoWriRec. Not only because we are all complete wrecks, dealing with withdrawals, but because we are recovering too. (And drinking. But who’s counting?) It was rough, but we got through it. My wonderful friends in the CIA and I leaned on each other virtually through Twitter and the NaNoWriMo forum and managed to survive until our wrap-up party. Which was a BLAST. Because that’s how we do it in Central Iowa.

Speaking of ‘how we do it in Central Iowa’.. Have you seen the news lately? We had quite the storm in Iowa today. A storm that spanned some 1000 miles. The Storm of the Century as they are calling it.. or Iowa Death Storm 09 as I have coined it. Are you on Twitter? Have you seen the hashtag IowaDeathStorm09 flying around? Well, as far as we can tell, I am actually to blame for that little gem. You see, around 11am on Monday, I announced “Only about 13 hours left until #IowaDeathStorm09! Are you prepared for #Snowmaggedon2?” For some reason, Snowmaggedon2 didn’t catch on quite like IowaDeathStorm09 did. I think it has to do with our pride. *wink*

Anyhow, it has been a doozy! We’ve had a whopping 12″ of snow dumped on us so far and have 5 hours left of snow fall before Mother Nature hands the reigns over the The Winds (I hear he’s gassy) to finish the job with a Day of Blizzard. I can’t wait. No really.

So we are hunkering down.

How’s writing? Less frustrating now that it is December and I’m done with withdrawals.

I have sent my 2nd draft of last year’s novel (No Place Like Home) to a few select readers for critiquing purposes so that I can run another edit on it and continue submitting queries for it. Still actively seeking to have that published. I have also re-written the first four chapters of this year’s novel (The Music Man) as they did not match the rest of the story. I have also written another chapter or two on that one. So it’s still moving along.. just much more slowly. Which is okay.

Now it is time to get caught up on a couple weeks worth of school work and prepare for the holidays! Yippee.

Stay warm!

I’m supposed to be writing right now. Don’t tell Mary I’m here. She’ll whip me extra hard tonight.

How are you all doing? I’ve missed you. Truly.

There’s only 10 days left of November and I have over 25 thousand words to write still. Can I finish? I suppose there’s always a chance I might.. There’s also always that chance that my house will be clean for Thanksgiving. And the chance that my dog will be house trained before Christmas. And the chance that monkeys might fly out of my butt.. But lets not hold our breath now, okay? Okay.

I was hoping to at least be able to post an excerpt for you by now.. But I just don’t seem to have anything excerpty enough yet. That’s okay. I’m sure you’ll all be patient and not harass me about it. Right?

Anyway. I think I seemed to give the impression in my last post that I was giving up. I am most certainly NOT giving up. I don’t give up. Just not me. Ask my husband. But I am prone to accepting defeat. Confused? Me too. I did it last year too.. just a few days before I crossed the 50k line and won. Still, I think accepting the fact that I may not finish this is a healthy thing to do. I will keep writing. And I will keep writing as much as my brain and fingers will let me. I want to do the best I can to help out my region (the CIA) and make sure that we beat not only France but also Ohio in words per author and total word count.. I think that’s what it was. I can’t remember. But the CIA is number 75 in over 400 regions world wide. And you don’t get to 75th with a bunch of quitters, no sirree. I’m also aiming to stay neck and neck with the great and wise Schmutzie. We’re writing buddies. We seem to write at the same speed. It’s nice to have someone to lag behind with. Really.

I’m babbling. Sorry. NaNoWriMo ate my brain.

So I will press on, friends.. I will keep feeding my dog fruit loops and my kids kibble three times a day… er. wait. Um.. I’ll keep writing. And I’m gonna win this bitch if it kills me. Right? Write.