Often after Nanowrimo people just stop… but I have to say, I haven’t. So, yay!
And I am totally crediting 4theWords with that. And look at me after I won a few things… aren’t I cute?
Daily word count:
4,957 Sunday
3,300 Monday
3,638 Tuesday
1,197 Wednesday
I will try to keep up with posting. If only for myself. Accountability.
Daily word count: 3,946
I was searching through notebooks to find things to type up in 4theWords to keep defeating wordy monsters. And I saw a prompt. And four thousand words later…
I got distracted by the shiny new idea… I know, right?
Nanowrimo is officially over with the passing of the 30th day. My 4theWord count for the whole month is 81,499 words. It’s probably a bit skewed given the early hiccups, but I don’t have a better total.
And that doesn’t count blog posts, Goodreads reviews (I wrote 29 of those) or any other things.
In other blue streak news, I posted a blog post every day this month.
Some of which are shorter than others, but that’s not a bad streak to be proud of.
So, all in all, I guess I had a successful November?
That’ll do AM, that’ll do.
The question is, do I keep doing daily blog posts with my word count?
Daily word count: 1,017 ??
Final word count: 53,794
Verified and got the trophy!
All I can say is always make sure you have MORE than enough words to qualify.
Scrivener says: 51,387
4theWords says: 51,779
Nano website says: 53,794
What? [2k difference?]
And that is literally downloading straight from 4theWords and copy pasting it into the verifier via a Word doc that coincidentally says my total is 53,760.
Four methods – four different numbers.
I… it’s me, isn’t it? Kid extra just wailed ‘how do you do this?’
I don’t KNOW. Okay?
But what I can tell from the stats is that even though I started late, I got ahead of that line in the first week and stayed there.
Daily word count: 1,017
Total word count: 51,387
All credit to 4theWords – even though I passed the 50k mark yesterday, this morning I sat down and banged out a few more words because I didn’t want to break my streak.
To qualify you have to write 444 words per day. That’s not a huge amount. But per day that’s 162,060 words a year. Which is a whole book, or two shortish ones.
Look at that blue streak… wait, is that why it’s blue, because streaks are blue in the saying?
But it was ‘talk a blue streak’, wasn’t it. *checks Merriam-Webster*
I am correct ^^
Huh. From now on, I am typing a blue streak.
I have invented a new idiom.
Sure, sure, AM.
I had better verify my win before the time runs out. Remember that year I failed by under 300 words? Ah, good times. $$
In other news, Sydney is not only alarmingly cold for November but today it is also under water. We have had four times our monthly November rainfall in ONE storm with 100 mm (or 4 inches) in 90 minutes. Imagine what that’s doing to the city? In better news, my roof *crosses everything* is NOT leaking.
I think… I mean I’m standing under the parts that used to leak straining my ears to hear even a single tell-tale drip … and I reckon it’s good. &&
More story ideas:
An Irish amateur football team has issued an apology for a “grave and unacceptable mistake” after it falsely reported that one of its players had died last week.
Omg… why? Who thought that was a good idea? Who had to pretend to be dead? How did that work? What did their families and partners think? That they were idiots, obviously…
So many story ideas…
Links:
^^ blue streak definition (2) a constant stream of words, example: talked a blue streak
$$ it was NOT good times; it was the worst of times…
&& the tell-tale heart is SO much more atmospheric than the tell-tale drip, eh? But I am also getting very deaf in my old age. What? Who says I play my music too loud?
football club fakes player death
Daily word count: 2,334
Total word count: 50,370
I was determined to finish today. *you can do it AM*
*waves pompons*
But my PC is just grindingly slow at the moment. Remember how I started Nanowrimo with computer problems? I guess my tech has read all the plotting books I have, as it seems to want to end as we began. *side eyes PC* This is called ‘mirroring’ just in case you were wondering what the term was.
See? I’ve read ALL the plotting books.
But I did it!
Yay.
Now, I’m not sure I’d be able to copy and paste my work into the damn verifier… I had better spend the rest of the day ‘cleaning’ my PC.
And having a celebratory glass of wine.
Daily word count: 935
Total word count: 48,036
I shushed a man today.
I was trying to buy an item from a store catalogue. I had tried my local store and found they had none on the shelves, there was none in stock (out the back), they couldn’t order it in for me, and couldn’t get it sent over for me from another store that they could tell from their ever so convenient computer system had TWO of the item I wanted.
Note that there was a good dozen of those ‘take this tag to the cashier’ tags. It sure looked like they had them for sale.
“Why was it in the catalogue, then?” I asked the cashier.
The man rolled his eyes.
“Story of your life, eh?” I supplied.
He told me which stores had stock. I worked out which one was closest to me, and the next morning I phoned it to make sure they still had the item.
When the man answered the phone and asked what I wanted, I said, “I’m just checking if you still have an item from the most recent catalogue.”
I expected him to say a lot of things, what I did not expect him to say, was, “What’s a catalogue?” %$
I explain.
Everyone in the room is now actively listening.
He put me on hold.
Now, while I’m on hold, I’m processing the conversation and I get that what he is doing is asking someone which department to put me through to, to help with my enquiry about catalogues.
Oh, dear. We’ve gone seriously awry here.
I wait…
He comes back on the line and he launches into a hurried explanation about how he doesn’t know which department deals with catalogues, and I say, “Shush.” I honestly didn’t know how else to stop him.
He stops talking.
Every head in the room turns.
“Wearable fitness items,” I say very clearly. &&
He puts me through without another word.
Kid 2 looks at me. “Mum… you shushed someone.”
I explained. I had to stop him before he wasted more of his time.
Look, I don’t know… Maybe it was his first day; maybe the call interrupted him doing something else; maybe he hadn’t had enough coffee. I know I hadn’t – it was early-ish. Maybe he was tired of people calling about that particularly rare and half priced item?
%$ what SHOULD I have called it? Mail out? Junk mail? I don’t know.
&& New step counter. That cow stole at least 2 kilometres from me in the last 12km hike that it swore was only 10km long. It’s going in the bin.
Daily word count: 4,376
Total word count: 47,102
Not a bad day.
My desk is in the corner of a large room. I have a standing desk as well but what I don’t have is the space to put up things on the walls. I love index cards but I can’t spread them out anywhere at the moment.
The dining table is currently occupied by a four person Warhammer 40k game…
Sighs.
Months ago I picked up three super light corkboards from Kmart – one for each Act. But then I didn’t know what to do with them; I had nowhere to hang them on the wall. But, I had an idea. I thought I might be able to hang them off an Ikea Ivar book ends that slide onto the shelves and voila… it worked. If I hang them sideways.
In a truly mind hurting example of my brain function, I wrote out the Romance Beat sheet cards from the Gwen Hayes book, and then edged them in washi tape that matches the colours of the Scrivener template she also gives you in a link in the e-book. Purple, red, teal, and orange. Then I dug in the jar and found push pins in colours to match, as well.
Why, brain, why?
Is the rest of my life this terrifyingly organised? No, of course not. *rolls eyes at self*
Given this particular nanowrimo project is a last minute, non plotted pile of words, with a lot of super helpful notes like: then Oliver %% whatever his damn name is said,
OR %% father’s GF,
OR %% make sure you lampshade this earlier;
Or whatever convoluted and vague notes I’ve left for myself, it will take some work to disentangle it. It’s not even in any kind of chronological order. I will have to sit down with the 50k I’ve written and work out what goes where, what can be kept, or edited, and what scenes are missing. And that’s why I’ll need those index cards.
But with less than 3k words left, I’m going to make it, which is 50k words more than I had at the start of the month.
And I saw ANOTHER idea for the file box.
A Japanese woman hired an actor to pretend to be the father of her daughter. After ten years, the daughter still does not know, he is not her real father.
WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING? I swear I’ve read that fanfic. But really, how do you even start untying that Gordion knot. Does he care about the girl? Does he want to be her father? Can they get married now and live happily ever after?
So many questions…
And funnily enough, my nano project is about fake dating, doubling down on the lie, and then how you go about starting to fix it when it inevitably goes wrong.
Links:
‘I hired a man to pretend to be my daughter’s dad – and she doesn’t know’
Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels (How to Write Kissing Books Book 1) by Gwen Hayes
Daily word count: 883
Total word count: 42,726
Last night I dreamt I was in a library looking for a book called ‘Hurry up and write, and call a cab we’re late’ which is just flat out rude, brain. My ability to be distracted is all your fault!
The weather has been very weird in Australia; we’ve had cold snaps, dust clouds, and storms so windy they’ve shut the airport. And even though I had my flu shot I’ve clearly got cold overnight and I am now barking like a seal. This is my usual cough, don’t worry about it.
It’s a sound so distinctive I once coughed in a crowded noodle bar in Martin Place and someone stood up and shouted out my name. It was a big call given I lived in Indonesia at the time. [Hi Jen *waves*]
Speaking of brains, more ideas for the idea box.
Someone has the job of being an intimacy coordinator. They choreograph sex scenes for movies and plays, like a fight choreographer does a fight. And this is a good thing; no hands in the wrong places, eh?
But imagine…? Imagine what people think they do with that job? It’s like telling people you write erotica and they think you’re trying it out on your partner all the time. Stephen King is not a serial killer is he? I’ve written fanfiction threesomes with werewolves, not HAD a threesome with werewolves. Werewolves don’t exist.
That reminds me, I am SO tempted to ask the person who stole that story why they posted my story as their own. They are still a member of Wattpad but all their works have been removed. I suppose it would be interpreted as abusive, but I really am genuinely interested in how that works for a person; to steal someone else’s work? I mean, the whole thing – word for word. I’ve probably written paragraphs that sound like other people’s work, and hasn’t everyone written ‘he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding’?
Speaking of, I saw a Twitter convo on that sentence being shat upon by everyone as trite. It’s a fear reaction: fight, flight or freeze. So it’s a valid thing for a lot of people, including me.
Links:
Best Friends share everything – Bella, Embry and Quil
Swan’s mate for Life – Bella, Leah and Paul
Daily word count: 0
Total word count: 41,842
I wrote 7,692 words in another project. I know… I know… believe me I am already shouting at myself.
Life with an ADHD brain – episode one million, eight hundred thousand…
The other day I saw an email from a kitchen supply place and it listed a Kugelhopf Pan. I have no idea what that is, so I search it. A few minutes later I’m watching videos on how to make a Kugelhopf cake in your Kugelhopf pan and one minute into that I’m printing out the recipe and searching in the cupboard to see if I have all the ingredients.
Note, at this point I still do not own a Kugelhopf pan. But I reckon a Bundt tin will work just as well, eh?
These women are complaining that making yeast bread is hard. Omg. Have they not ever made cinnamon scrolls? This is just a chocolate version of them stuffed in a Bundt tin. And it’s the easiest thing to make yeast dough in the bread maker.
Quote me on this when I put up a shot of my ugly baking attempts.
Okay, today I am making the Kugelhopf… and it doesn’t look too bad. It liked the bread maker so much there was a chance the dough was going to overflow. But, there was definitely not enough flour in that recipe, so I folded in a bit more before it was stable enough to roll and spread with chocolate.
It got eaten pretty quickly but most tasters thought the cinnamon scroll dough was nicer. Next idea: make a frankenKugelhopf with dough from the other recipe or make chocolate scrolls?
Mmmm chocolate.
And in more articles for the idea file, I saw a story about the provenance argument over a Brett Whiteley painting. It’s titled ‘the artist’s mother’ but it seems like it isn’t Whiteley’s mother, nor is he the artist. Intriguing. There’s a lot of what ifs that could come from that.
Who painted it? Is it a self-portrait and a large hint? What if it’s his real mother?
Links:
A mysterious painting – the artist’s mother
Daily word count: 612
Total word count: 41,842
I wandered off and wrote words in another project. Goddammit brain, get back here and finish this thing that you started!
I am also listening to the audiobook – Time Travel: A History by James Gleick. It’s fascinating.
Some really huge concepts and it seems to be sucking up my brain power. Leaving me with a very long list of things I clearly need to find and read.
I once tried to write a work of my own that ended up wrestling with time travel issues… and you’ll be unsurprised to hear it’s one of my trunked novels.
I do remember running a scrapbooking workshop years ago when we lived in Jakarta. Kid 1 wandered in and asked, “Mum, what’s the fourth dimension?”
He was six.
“It’s time, honey.”*
“Huh?”
“You know there are three dimensions or axes. Let’s say this coffee cup is an object – we can note its place within space by how high it is off the ground and by how far away it is from that wall, and also how far away it is from that wall. Height, breadth, depth. Three axes. But we also need to note how it moves over time… if I drink and then put it down over here… then it has changed its position over time.”
I demonstrated.
“Oh.” There was a pause. “Is there a fifth dimension?”
“Probably, but I don’t know what it is.”**
A longer pause. “So, if we could go to the fifth dimension, then we could travel through time?”***
“Theoretically, yes.”
“Huh.” He took several exaggerated steps towards the kitchen door. “I am moving into another dimension!” he shouted over his shoulder.
“Okay, honey. Make sure you close the door behind you.”
I looked up to see a room full of women staring at me; mouths agape.
Life with an Asperger’s kid, I tell you…
*His year one teacher told me that it was my fault that he was the way he was. Excuse me? He asks you a question, and you tell him the answer. I honestly had no answer to that. Wtf?
** I asked a friend about this, and he said the fifth dimension was basically the fourth dimension crumpled up upon itself. Naturally, I told kid 1 that later.
***years later I asked Kid 1 where he got this idea from and he said The Powerpuff Girls cartoon. Idk… maybe??? He, of all people, never forgets anything [that he cares about – tidying up after himself? Not so much…].
In Gleick’s novel he talks about how our first exposure to the theories of time travel is often via children’s cartoons. Donald Duck invents the wheel, or whatever.