Day 2 did not go quite as planned. I wrote around 500 words, putting me behind once again. Sigh. But I'm trucking along for Day 3. I'm close to 2,600 words, just over halfway towards the ending goal for day 3 (5,001 words). I have a research paper outline due tomorrow and I'm behind on the reading for one class, but I'm going to keep going and do my darndest to get to 5K tonight before I pass out. If I can at least get close to 4,000 I'll be almost caught up, and I can write extra this weekend.
Today, I also quit my second job, the one where I was an unofficial buttmonkey in the Information Technology department here on campus. I was overcommitted, fed up with the treatment I got from certain full-time staffers, and classically overworked/underpaid, so it was time to give in. I got to that point where I just could not keep going at the pace I was, and a big chunk of my energy was being directed into something my heart just wasn't in anymore. It had to give. I have my 8 hours a week at the Writing Center, which suit me fine now that my trip abroad is paid for. I don't get anymore than minimum wage for the WC, but I enjoy what I do there, the hours are more flexible, and my boss actually likes me.
Okay, my direct boss at I.T. was great and I consider him a good friend, but everyone else was...yeah. I.T. just wasn't worth it anymore. Now I have a free 9 hours a week to catch up on my homework and to put energy into my writing.
Anyway, enough rambling. Time to take a crack at the next 2,500 words.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
NaNoWriMo 2010: Day 2
I ended Day 1 with 1,682 words, which I am immensely pleased with because I've never been ahead. I WILL win this year, I WILL I WILL I WILL.
Okay, enough shouting.
Day 2 promises to be just as challenging. Today is Tuesday, and Tuesday is my day from hell. If goes something like this:
8:00am -- Wake up
8:30 - 9:15am -- Breakfast, finish any homework not completed the night before
9:25 - 10:40am -- Class (20th century American Lit)
10:50-12:05pm -- Class (Old Testament)
12:10 - 2:00pm -- Lunch, do more homework, have meetings or run errands
2:00 - 3:00pm -- Work in the Writing Center
3:00 - 6:00pm -- Work in the Information Technology Department
6:00 - 8:00pm -- Work in the Writing Center (again)
8:00 - ? Homework, studying, writing
I'm typically completely wiped by the time I get out of the Writing Center at 8 and already ready to go to bed. Heaven help me those days I decide sleeping in is more important than going to breakfast and getting some coffee. I'm hoping I can sneak away during my three hours in I.T. and write a bit. Maybe I'll hide in an equipment closet...
Okay, enough shouting.
Day 2 promises to be just as challenging. Today is Tuesday, and Tuesday is my day from hell. If goes something like this:
8:00am -- Wake up
8:30 - 9:15am -- Breakfast, finish any homework not completed the night before
9:25 - 10:40am -- Class (20th century American Lit)
10:50-12:05pm -- Class (Old Testament)
12:10 - 2:00pm -- Lunch, do more homework, have meetings or run errands
2:00 - 3:00pm -- Work in the Writing Center
3:00 - 6:00pm -- Work in the Information Technology Department
6:00 - 8:00pm -- Work in the Writing Center (again)
8:00 - ? Homework, studying, writing
I'm typically completely wiped by the time I get out of the Writing Center at 8 and already ready to go to bed. Heaven help me those days I decide sleeping in is more important than going to breakfast and getting some coffee. I'm hoping I can sneak away during my three hours in I.T. and write a bit. Maybe I'll hide in an equipment closet...
Monday, November 1, 2010
NaNoWriMo 2010: Day One
I've already ransacked my "November only" stash of food and just brewed my last Cup-a-Soup until payday. I have slightly over 1,100 words and it's 10:30pm, I feel like I'm coming down with a cold, and I REALLY want to go to bed. Day one in a nutshell.
Granted, not the best way to start NaNoWriMo, but I will persevere. This year is the winning year. I've already gone off on one spurious tangent, inspired by a Beatles song I was listening to, and I'm quite pleased with the result. After a bit more writing, I may post an excerpt if it is deemed acceptable for eyes other than my own (likely).
Anyway. I am off to sip my soup and finish up my last 500 odd words for the day.
Granted, not the best way to start NaNoWriMo, but I will persevere. This year is the winning year. I've already gone off on one spurious tangent, inspired by a Beatles song I was listening to, and I'm quite pleased with the result. After a bit more writing, I may post an excerpt if it is deemed acceptable for eyes other than my own (likely).
Anyway. I am off to sip my soup and finish up my last 500 odd words for the day.
CreateCrochet Team Challenge
I'm a member of the CreateCrochet Team on Etsy, which hosts a team challege every month; for September it was Halloween items, and for October "All Pink" for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I hadn't submitted anything for the last few challenges since I joined the team, so I decided it was time to. I had pink items that needed to be listed, anyway.
Well, I ended up submitting my butterfly baby headband. I love making these little things and I was really pleased that the colors came out right in the pictures. I'm still learning how to use my camera properly, but I think the pictures are pretty good. I'm proud of the item, and keeping my fingers crossed for lots of votes :)
You can see the challenge entries, mine included (#40, everydayunique) here. Masses of talent!
Well, I ended up submitting my butterfly baby headband. I love making these little things and I was really pleased that the colors came out right in the pictures. I'm still learning how to use my camera properly, but I think the pictures are pretty good. I'm proud of the item, and keeping my fingers crossed for lots of votes :)
You can see the challenge entries, mine included (#40, everydayunique) here. Masses of talent!
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Motivation: Found. Time: Still MIA.
So, I got up off my butt since my last post and actually did something. I finished reading Pride and Prejudice, I started reading Emma, I caught up on email, I straightened out bank business, I bought appropriate shoes for the wedding I'm in on the 30th, and I thoroughly ransacked my room in stress and carelessness (I didn't say it was all good stuff).
I haven't written anything substantial for my current WIP, Outrageous Fortune, though I got started patching up a few plot holes that would've seriously put a snag in my progress for NaNoWriMo. I'm due to submit for my writing tutorial next week, right after the start of Nano (grrrr), so sometime this week I do to need to write something. This year is going to be tough, because I can't even write myself out of a rut by letting my characters get lucky like I did in 2007. (That plot jump was epic, if embarassing.) My main character is a pregnant widow, and the story is told 1st person from her point of view, so not much sex involved in the here and now. Although, she does have flashbacks...
NO. Stop it. Bad writer. You will not resort to sex just because it's convenient.
Anyway. New subject.
In other creative and crafty happenings, I made myself a comfort pack like the one on my Etsy, because it was just too darn cute and sitting hunched over a notebook trying to fix my plot had given me a serious crick in the neck.
Who doesn't love Eskimos? I did a big no-no, though, and fell asleep with it while it was still hot. No burns, but I woke up at about 3am wondering what in the heck that lump was behind my head. Kind of like when the cat sleeps with me or I cuddle Ted the Plot Penguin before I drift off.
Anyway, I am off to read more of Emma before my date with the bed.
I haven't written anything substantial for my current WIP, Outrageous Fortune, though I got started patching up a few plot holes that would've seriously put a snag in my progress for NaNoWriMo. I'm due to submit for my writing tutorial next week, right after the start of Nano (grrrr), so sometime this week I do to need to write something. This year is going to be tough, because I can't even write myself out of a rut by letting my characters get lucky like I did in 2007. (That plot jump was epic, if embarassing.) My main character is a pregnant widow, and the story is told 1st person from her point of view, so not much sex involved in the here and now. Although, she does have flashbacks...
NO. Stop it. Bad writer. You will not resort to sex just because it's convenient.
In other creative and crafty happenings, I made myself a comfort pack like the one on my Etsy, because it was just too darn cute and sitting hunched over a notebook trying to fix my plot had given me a serious crick in the neck.
Who doesn't love Eskimos? I did a big no-no, though, and fell asleep with it while it was still hot. No burns, but I woke up at about 3am wondering what in the heck that lump was behind my head. Kind of like when the cat sleeps with me or I cuddle Ted the Plot Penguin before I drift off.
Anyway, I am off to read more of Emma before my date with the bed.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Motivation. I have none.
This past weekend was a three day break after midterm week, and on Thursday evening I had many shining visions of getting caught up on my "to read" list, bringing the two adrift sections of my novel neatly together, getting pumped for NaNoWriMo, and just generally taking advantage of no class and no work to buckle down and do stuff, but still relax.
Today is Monday evening and all I have to show for my amazing-epic-productive weekend is a pile of dirty laundry and one awkward picture of me sitting on a duck statue (I goofed off with friends -- don't ask).
I have no idea where my motivation went. Okay, I do have some idea, and I think it's called "Senioritis," but I really don't want to get into the habit of blaming my unproductivity on that. Still, I did even less this weekend than usual. Okay, scratch that, I did add a new listing to my Etsy, but other than that, nada. I think I took at least one nap each day, in addition to sleeping late, and I thoroughly updated myself on the various exciting happenings of the internets. I relaxed, alright, but Monday morning came with a groan of dread, anyway.
Maybe a decent night's sleep and a good breakfast will make me feel better...
Today is Monday evening and all I have to show for my amazing-epic-productive weekend is a pile of dirty laundry and one awkward picture of me sitting on a duck statue (I goofed off with friends -- don't ask).
I have no idea where my motivation went. Okay, I do have some idea, and I think it's called "Senioritis," but I really don't want to get into the habit of blaming my unproductivity on that. Still, I did even less this weekend than usual. Okay, scratch that, I did add a new listing to my Etsy, but other than that, nada. I think I took at least one nap each day, in addition to sleeping late, and I thoroughly updated myself on the various exciting happenings of the internets. I relaxed, alright, but Monday morning came with a groan of dread, anyway.
Maybe a decent night's sleep and a good breakfast will make me feel better...
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Back it up
There's a thread on the NaNoWriMo forums about backing up your work. As the original poster makes a good point of, EVERY year it never fails that at least one person ends up in the forums, in tears and/or hysterics, having lost everything due to a computer crash, file damage, theft, something. While you certainly can't prepare for every disaster, now is the perfect time to start getting into the habit of saving and backing up your files.
Having suffered data loss on three different occasions, I use a rule of three when backing up my work -- have the original document, plus three different types of back up. Mine:
1. USB drive
2. SkyDrive online file storage
3. Hard copy
The first time I lost something to the point of hysterics, it was some sort of hard disk error or virus that caused a computer to shut down when I put in my flash drive, thus erasing almost everything on it, including the 12-page research paper I had been up until 3am finishing the night before. The only thing that saved my sanity was the fact that I had hand-written 3/4 of the paper before typing it up. The second time, I didn't save anything and my laptop crashed. Hard drive had to be replaced, and I lost approximately 45,000 words of my novel. I cried. Honestly. Third time was December 2009 -- I wrote a 13-page research paper and saved it to my flash drive, only to have something deep within the cosmos decide to screw with me and not save the paper properly.
After that, I got a SkyDrive. 25 GB of free space, and it's accessible anywhere I have an internet connection. Everything that is important enough to be saved to the (new and well-treated) USB drive goes into SkyDrive. Even things that don't go on the USB go into SkyDrive, like my music, pictures, everything. I will sing praises to that program all day -- I have yet to have any issues with it, and who can say no to 25 GB for free? I've heard lots of writers talk about DropBox and how wonderful it is to have everything sync automatically, but in my experience, computers cannot be trusted and I'm not going to assume my irreplacible work is getting saved when it might not be. Auto-syncs are wonderfully convenient, but I'd rather have the peace of mind in knowing I did it myself.
And, last but not least, I keep hard copies of my most important documents. Every time I write a new chapter in my novel, I print it and keep it in a water-proof accordion file. I hand-write a lot of my school work and keep a hold of those pages, too. One can never be too careful.
Don't wait to back up your work, and do it in more than one source. Don't make your backup habits long and convoluted, but definitely don't leave it to chance. Your sanity is really not worth it, and your precious writing deserves to be well cared for.
Having suffered data loss on three different occasions, I use a rule of three when backing up my work -- have the original document, plus three different types of back up. Mine:
1. USB drive
2. SkyDrive online file storage
3. Hard copy
The first time I lost something to the point of hysterics, it was some sort of hard disk error or virus that caused a computer to shut down when I put in my flash drive, thus erasing almost everything on it, including the 12-page research paper I had been up until 3am finishing the night before. The only thing that saved my sanity was the fact that I had hand-written 3/4 of the paper before typing it up. The second time, I didn't save anything and my laptop crashed. Hard drive had to be replaced, and I lost approximately 45,000 words of my novel. I cried. Honestly. Third time was December 2009 -- I wrote a 13-page research paper and saved it to my flash drive, only to have something deep within the cosmos decide to screw with me and not save the paper properly.
After that, I got a SkyDrive. 25 GB of free space, and it's accessible anywhere I have an internet connection. Everything that is important enough to be saved to the (new and well-treated) USB drive goes into SkyDrive. Even things that don't go on the USB go into SkyDrive, like my music, pictures, everything. I will sing praises to that program all day -- I have yet to have any issues with it, and who can say no to 25 GB for free? I've heard lots of writers talk about DropBox and how wonderful it is to have everything sync automatically, but in my experience, computers cannot be trusted and I'm not going to assume my irreplacible work is getting saved when it might not be. Auto-syncs are wonderfully convenient, but I'd rather have the peace of mind in knowing I did it myself.
And, last but not least, I keep hard copies of my most important documents. Every time I write a new chapter in my novel, I print it and keep it in a water-proof accordion file. I hand-write a lot of my school work and keep a hold of those pages, too. One can never be too careful.
Don't wait to back up your work, and do it in more than one source. Don't make your backup habits long and convoluted, but definitely don't leave it to chance. Your sanity is really not worth it, and your precious writing deserves to be well cared for.
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