Eeep!

I just realized that National Novel Writing Month is coming up again. Now I'm torn....last year was a miserable failure. Do I attempt it again, knowing that its very unlikely I'll get anywhere in it?

Of course that means I will attempt. After all, I learned where I failed last year, right? So that means I can pick something that's easier for me. I do ok with short stories. Perhaps if I have them all be connected, it would work as a novel? That would be more realistic in terms of not losing interest.

Then again, I have been reading quite a few bodice rippers lately. Its not that I'd have to write something good, or something I'd ever let anyone see.

Hmm....looks like I'll be attempting something! Yay! Or boo! It will definately put me into a huge time crunch. Arrrrghhhh! If only I didn't have to do this crazy work thing. Too bad that I'm accustomed to eating and having a place to live.

My car is still fantastic, even though the knob for the radio just fell off. I can glue it back on. Yay for glue!

This weekend will be a grand time with my Pumpkin Carving Party (there may be 15 people and a few kidlets in my apartment for it-should be loads of fun). I'm going to make an attempt at dressing up this year, off to look for costume pieces tonight.

I've been a bad girl lately in terms of ordering perfume oils. There's just been too many limited edition scents that I really "need" to have. Naughty, wicked Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs, how dare you tempt me so much! Oh well, at least its something I'll use.

Curls, Curls Everywhere! Curls, Curls, In my Hair!

Yay! Since I haven't blogged about it yet, I figured its time. About a week and a half I chopped off all my hair. Well, technically Shari, from Design Affair chopped off all my hair. And to my surprise, this time it turned curly!? What's up with that? I've never had curly hair in my life! (She did tell me that happens to some people when they get older. I refrained from crying cause I'm turning old. It was hard.) So, now its a lovely shade of red again...instead of that icky natural color, and curly! Wheee! Its cut to about chin length, with layers and fun stuff. And I can do Things with it again. A little gel and let it be curly...a flat iron and make it straight...or some sort of mysterious thing and flip the ends out (which sound way too hard for me). I absolutely love the cut. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the haircuts that flappers had. Which makes me very happy. I really feel like I should go do naughty things and hang out in a speakeasy. Hee hee!

I've been working on getting some Christmas presents together for people. Making ornaments and stuff like that. So far this fall, my obsessive tendencies have really come out. First was the whole crocheted dishcloth thing. I now have 43 of them. (Which is ok, its not like they go bad.) Then I made 3 crocheted bags. This week so far, I've been making lace angels, 17 of them...and I ran out of lace. I'm not planning on buying more though, even though I have lots of the other bits that go into the angels...cause how many do I need? (And they're made out of stuff that mom had sitting in her garage...I'm trying to use it up.) Oh, and the count on dangley beaded ornaments is at 3 right now. I had to stop with them, I bruised the palm of my hand-my wire clippers are rather dull and I was using a thick wire on them. I have other wire clippers, but it involved getting up and finding them.

Then something bad has happened. Sort of. I was at a Goodwill last weekend. And I bought something I shouldn't have. The deluxe version of Sims (the first one). I started playing with it on Monday night. That game is a horrible time warp. I've made two people so far...Hunca Munca, and Peter Piper. Hunca is boring, apparently I didn't set her personality right. Peter is much more fun...plus he managed to burn down his kitchen already. I don't think I'm going to play with Hunca anymore. In reality, I shouldn't be playing with any of them...I have other things to do. It has really cut into my sleepy time. So no more Sims this week for me.

Must clean and try to get ready for Christmassy fun times! Yay! That will be fun for me too. For some strange reason, I don't mind cleaning...even though I don't do it much. Its more of a satisfaction thing, when I see how nice it is. One room to go, then I can start on the floors.

I'm a quitter!

I've decided to give up on the attempt to write a novel this month. Its just not going to happen. I managed almost 5,000 out of the 50,000. I don't have the time to do this right now, and it would have been a struggle to make it happen if everything had been going right. Since things have not been going right, I came to the decision that I need to focus on other things, and not even see how far I can get. I can always do this on my own some other time...just pick a month and do it myself.

I've had a bit of a lingering cold/cough for the last 6 weeks or so (since I was on vacation). This weekend it came back and then some. So another trip to the doctor, and heard more gibberish about this just having to run its course. But at least this time I insisted that they give me some medicine and now I have so super cough syrup that actually keeps me from coughing. Yay! (Well, at least most of the time.) So that should help with the rib damage that it caused...it'll at least have a chance to heal. I've never hurt my ribs before...its not pleasant. I don't recommend that.

Help help!

More Nano posting! Yay!

I've fallen horribly behind on my schedule of how many words a day I need to write in order to get my 50,000 in time. In fact, as of this morning, I'm about 7,000 behind where I want to be. *sigh* It probably doesn't help any that I'm doing this in sort of drafts...this first run through, I want to just get the basics of the story out, and then go back an fill in details and descriptions. I was hoping to have the story done by the middle of next week, but unless I spend almost all weekend working on it, that won't happen.

I'm having a very hard time forcing myself to write when the words are struggling. Especially when I'm at home and there's all sorts of fun things to do there. (Its not fun writing when its a forced thing.) I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to catch up very well. I've gone so far as to ban myself to my room with the computer in it, thinking that would help. Not so much...there's closets in there. Closets full of neat stuff. A quick break to look for something, or get up from the chair turns into hours that are lost. I think there's some sort of black hole time warp in my apartment. I honestly don't know where the time went.

Tonight I'm going to start setting timers. So long writing...then a few minutes of doing something else. Like laundry. Which is not fun. But to make up for that, I get to go see Paul & Lorraine play Friday and Saturday nights. Whee!

Mmmm....Cardboard

Started my book for nanowrimo. (Yet another nano post...get used to it, its going to be occupying me all this month.) So far, its veered off the path I had started it on. Bright side, I think I came up with an idea for it to dash back to where its intended to go...and have it match up. In fact, its a rather brilliant idea...if I do say so myself, brings in a lot of continuity and motives.

Sad side, I still have no name for my main character, I'm not sure if she even has one at this point. I haven't got a clear idea of who she is yet, so all the dialog is very wooden, and the characters are all cardboard...and there's no emotion in it all. In fact, its a decent idea that's being ground down into a pile of crap. But that's ok, I went into this intending to write a steaming pile. The whole idea isn't to create something good, but just to create something. The nice thing, is I won't have time to go back and edit it as I go...that can come later, after its all written. Though in reality, I'll probably never do anything with it. I'm not intending to show this to anyone, just prove that I can do it. Its all for my own amusement. Its a good thing I'm easily amused.

I am a bit worried about my hands being able to take the abuse though....that's an awful lot of typing, after putting in a bit over 3000 words last night, my hands were aching and I couldn't get to sleep. I can see pain killers will become my friends this month.

Adventures with Whistles

As promised, a UPS box was waiting for me when I got home on Friday. Inside was my shiny new tin whistle. I've been playing with it a lot since then. I've progressed to make fewer horrid screeching noises out of it. (I knew my neighbors were going to love it!) Its quite different and harder to play than I had thought it would be. It'll take a lot more practice to get it under control. But, its do-able! And so much fun! The problem I'm having with it right now is that I used to play brass instruments...and with them, volume is controlled by how hard you blow. (Ha! Sounds so dirty.) And your embouchure controls the tone. With the whistle, tone is controlled by your breath. So far, I haven't been able to hear any difference in the note by changing the embouchure. Its turning out to be great fun. Once I master this one, I'm planning on getting more whistles in different keys. (They're made to play in one key-you need a different whistle for a different key.) Keys of course meaning which notes are sharp or flat. Should I turn out to be proficient in whistles, the ultimate plan is to try out a lovely wooden flute. Whistles being my gateway instrument to the flute. (I'm a touch afraid of the flute...it will be so very different from anything I've played.)

All this whistling (I probably put in about 9 hours of it over the weekend) has put a damper on my attempt at nano though. Well, I still could have made time to write more...but it just wasn't a priority for me this last weekend. I had better things to do...things like watch tv (the winner of everything I watched was Tin Man-I saw the first two parts-if you haven't seen it, go find it-its brilliant), take naps, read books, curse at the fact that I hardly got any trick-or-treaters, spend hours taking apart the treat bags I had assembled for them, play with yarn and eat candy. I think I'm going to put most of the blame on the candy though...I'm sure it put me into a sugar coma of some sort where all I was able to do was lounge about. It wouldn't have had anything to do with my laziness or habit of procrastinating with everything. Nope. Couldn't be that. So far I have a grand total of 3 words. Ha! Even worse...it isn't even 3 words that are going to stay, just a little reminder to me of what I picked to write about. (I've been tossing ideas around for a few days, and finally just picked one and will be going with that.) Since I'm sure you're curious now...my three words are Sleeping Beauty Sucks. I've always hated that bitch and its time she got what she deserves!

Oh, back to the tv....I watched the opening of the Legend of the Seeker show. It was crap, I didn't like it...but I sat there continuing to watch it. For some reason, I was taking delight in how horrid I though it was. Then during commercials I was reading the book its based on. So, its a step above the tv version of the Mists of Avalon...which was so awful I couldn't watch it...but still a waste of time. I haven't quite decided if I dislike because its veered so far from the book (I wasn't expecting it to follow the story all that well), or if its also just bad tv. I'm going to have to keep watching it until I figure that out. I'm not a huge fan of the books, I have most of them...but after the first 3 or 4 it really started getting old...the story was just dragging on and there's no end in sight. (Rather the same as Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series...started out fantastic...but just didn't have the staying power for me.) With both of them, I feel like I should read them all, just because I have put in the time reading a lot of them (I read almost all of both of them), but I find myself just not caring what happens to any of the characters in them. Maybe I'm just not a fan of the "big" epic stories.

Things that go Bump in the Night

Halloween has been sneaking up on me this year. I have the treats, but completely forgot about a pumpkin and haven't put up my decorations yet. I'm going to try to get that all done tonight. Along with getting some food cooked and frozen. (And freezing more food is on the schedule for tomorrow night.) Because, starting midnight on Friday, I'm going to be starting my silly little book I'm going to attempt to write. Not to mention playing around with that whistle that is on schedule to be delivered Friday. I won't be willing to cook with all those other things to do. Eventually I'd get sick of oatmeal and start picking up prepackaged food...and I really should be eating up the meat from in my freezer-I need to make room-in case I get a deer this year. (I don't do the hunting, but if they get enough, my dad and brother give me one.)

Last night, I started doing a bit of reading of mythology stuff and fairy tales-just in case I can't think of something original to write my story about-I figured if I'm completely stumped, I could do a retelling of one. I came across the Pandora story. Its never made any sense to me at all. I think something got lost somewhere in that one. The whole thing, is that the gods made Pandora to punish man. She was supposed to be decietful and all the bad things that we women are. *big eyeroll here* All the gods gave her "gifts", and along with that, they gave her a box filled with all the evils of the world...and for some reason hope was in there. Why would hope be in the box of bad stuff? See...doesn't make sense! So the story goes on, that her curiosity got the better of her, she opened the box, and the evil escaped. She saw what she did and closed the box quickly, leaving hope the only thing left in there. Well....if that's the story...then there shouldn't be any hope in the world...right? Its still in the box! Arrrrrghhh! And WHY was it in there?!? I had to yell at the book after reading that. I've never been happy about that...but now, in my old age, it appears to make me furious.

I'm also toying with the idea of doing a retelling of Sleeping Beauty for my book. I was never happy with the way the "bad" fairy was protrayed. I tend to identify with the "evil" people/creatures in those stories. The "good" guys always seem so boring. What's the fun of being beautiful and kind and obedient and all that. Its our flaws that make us interesting. I just can't make myself cheer for some cardboard character.

NaNoWriMo! Eeek!

I believe I did a silly thing yesterday...perhaps even sillier than buying a tin whistle to irritate my neighbors with. (Though I'm sure they're used to it...after all I hit my snooze button for about an hour every morning...I hate getting up.) I signed up for NaNoWriMo. Now, I never really had an urge to write a novel...and haven't really written anything since college. Add in that I'm trying to make a bunch of my Christmas presents, and learn to play that whistle....probably not the wisest decision.

So far, I've been trying to think of some way to be able to have enough story in me to write that many words...and have it still kind of go together. My good idea is to start with a normal story...when I run out of things to say...kill them all off and turn them into zombies. As far as a starting point...I'm toying with the idea of starting with one of my crazy dreams. (Last night's involved stepping into an alternate reality by climbing up the inside of a wall.) Its still an awful lot of words to write. Perhaps it'll turn into generations of zombies. Ha! Actually...that's rather amusing to me...maybe I'll do that. Hee hee hee! Still not sure where I'm going to carve out the time to do this. Granted I don't do much....we'll see how it goes.

Other than that...the swelling in my ankle has gone down some. Wheee! It probably would have disappeared a whole lot earlier if I hadn't been poking at it. It didn't hurt enough to make me leave it alone.