Committing to Commitment

I work better, I’ve found, when I have multiple deadlines looming over my head—even if they are self-imposed deadlines. So, I know I said back in October I was back in the blogging game, but then I fell off the edge of the planet again. Go figure. I blame my BFF Sara for that, although she doesn’t know it (then again, maybe she does, she is scary perceptive like a ninja). Sara is in her third trimester and I have gone crafting crazy trying to get my BIG plans completed before Baby arrives! So October passed in a blur of yarn and fabric and emergency poodle skirts. And I’m still not done!

So what does that mean for me? Well, November is going to be busy. As always. I don’t even try to pretend to be surprised. In addition to the crafting and NaNoWriMo, I am going to commit to getting at least two posts a week. They might be short, maybe just be a photo or two. But the more I have to accomplish, the more willing I am to manage my time appropriately and not procrastinate.

And Friends, I am a big procrastinator. If I started a list of all my faults, procrastination would be at the top. I totally blame my family for that one. As the baby of the family, I learned very early on that if I waited long enough, someone else would do my task for me. Heck! My mom and sister still do it! Remember that whole painting my house thing?

(Another fault, since I’m listing them, apparently I don’t like to take responsibility for myself. But I blame my birth order for that.)

But no one is going to craft for me. And no one is going to NaNo for me. And clearly, no one is blogging for me. So I’ve got to pick up the slack. And by pick up the slack, I really mean, actually do the stuff that I want to do: crafting, blogging, writing.

Of course, there is one teensy flaw in my plan. Work. Yup. Me working, as much as I love my job (and a post is coming out soon about that) it really is putting a kink in my whole time management plan. Although to be fair, there are a few things I can do while I am at work that doesn’t interfere with actually working especially during the slow period, but don’t tell anyone I said so!

Free Advertising

Ashleigh had her first SAT today and as chance would have it we were short on #2 pencils, water bottles, and snacks - all things recommended for students taking the SAT. I don’t recall being told I could bring a snack or drink when I took the SAT but times, they do change. With a grocery store on the way, a quick stop to grab the required items was no problem.

Knowing that I was going to spend the morning cleaning, I threw on an old pair of shorts and the first winner’s t-shirt I ever bought from NaNoWriMo. It’s my favorite simply because it was the first one I was ever qualified to buy. Soft grey cotton, bold orange block lettering, and a squirrel saying “Whoa!” What’s not to love?

Image source

Ashleigh and I were walking down aisle 8 looking for #2 pencils when a man - probably about my age or maybe just a touch older - came striding down the aisle, a basket in his hand. He was a ginger, so of course I noticed him. And he had a beautiful, rugged full beard. But what struck me the most about him was his deliciously bright hot pink shirt, shorts, and socks. He had on black running shoes and a number pinned to his shirt so I can only assume he was doing some sort of run, probably for breast cancer (because that’s all October is about now-a-days).

As he approached, he slowed down, hesitated, his stride broke and he looked me up and down. He regained his footing and continued on. Curious, I kept my eye on him because - well, he’s a ginger! And I never get perusals. He got about ten feet beyond me and then turned and looked me up and down. Again!

Folks, I was floored. Dumbstruck. Flabbergasted. Getting one glance almost never happens and a second one is unheard of. 

He walked a few more feet, stopped, turned fully around, and caught my eye.

“I love your shirt,” he says. “I’ve thought about giving it a try and just haven’t .”

Of course, my shirt, my walking billboard to NaNoWriMo. I laugh.

“You should give it a try. It’s a lot of fun.” I tell him. By this time, Ashleigh and I have successfully acquired #2 pencils and were heading back up the aisle towards the guy.

We start walking together.

“My friend does it and keeps trying to get me to do it too,” he says.

“That’s how I got started.” I reply, “You know there’s a small group that tries to meet at Barnes and Noble, usually in the mornings-”

“Oh. I teach,” he interrupts.

“Well, the time is flexible.” I tell him as his pace quickens. Am I being too outgoing? Too pushy? “The website is NaNoWriMo.org,” I tell him and slow down a little.

He strides on ahead of me. “Thanks, maybe I’ll look into it.”

He continues walking. I continue walking. Following right behind him. Crap. He’s going to the same aisle that I need to go down.

“Now I feel like I’m stalking you,” I laugh.

He turns around and smiles. “No problem.”

Is he creeped out? Was that a forced smile? Am I reading too much into it?

Social awkwardness at it’s best.

He beelined down the personal care aisle and I made for the cheese and dairy aisle. We parted ways, but jeesh, wouldn’t you know it, back at the register, who am I behind?

So, I’ll take a second and throw out an apology to the guys over at NaNoWriMo. I tried advertising and recruiting for you. I don’t think it worked. Maybe next time I’ll leave it at, “Gee thanks. You should give it a go,” and walk away.

The Write Way to November

Last year, between a whole bunch of crazy, I decided to forgo my usual November pastime: NaNoWriMo or as I like to call it, No Sleep November. At the time it was the best thing for me to do. Honestly, last year, a month of bizarre writing schedules was just not something I could handle nor commit to. But it was like a punch in the gut when I dropped out. I felt like a tool, disappointed in myself for allowing myself to contrive a nicely wrapped gift package of excuses.

I told myself I hadn’t prepped my story enough. Then I decided I hated the story I was telling. Then I spun into a cycle of “who am kidding,” and found myself staring at a blank screen on my netbook and empty lines in my NaNo notebook - I get a new one every year and all those pages made my head spin, my heart pound. Was this real? I asked myself. Am I having an anxiety attack over something that is supposed to be fun?

So I stopped. Cold. Dead. In the middle of a sentence, I closed the document, did not save, turned off the computer, and walked away from the table.

I was done.

I’m not sure what I regret the most: dropping out or trying to start in the first place knowing I wasn’t feeling it.

Truth be told, I had actually put NaNo out of my mind until yesterday when I got the first official updates from the NaNo people in my inbox. And I panicked!

I’ve got nothing planned! I’ve got too much on my plate! I’m working now - crazy work hours with an even crazier sleep schedule!

After my moment of sheer and utter panic, I stopped and shook my head in disbelief. What am I doing, I thought? I’m already making excuses and I‘ve got a month. I’ll never get anything done unless, you know, I actually go and do it. I love NaNo. I love the crazy, the fast-pace, the insane daily word counts, the weaving and crafting of a story (no matter how much I might think it sucks). I love my few hours at Barnes and Noble typing furiously and drinking buckets of coffee.

I know that I’ve got a good half dozen story ideas that I can plan out this month and be ready to commit to writing in November. So here I am making a public commitment. Call me out on it if you think I’m slacking. Demand that I post my word count in prominent locations. Throw crazy ideas my way and challenge me to make something out of them. I’m game.

Tis the Season

November is pressing down upon me and as my busiest month of the year I am not exactly looking forward to it in the traditional sense. Actually, I’m kinda freaked out about the whole thing.

November brings NaNoWriMo, a writing challenge that I have participated in since 2004. In past years I’ve run the gamut of writing: planning, note cards, winging it, basic ideas, just a character. I’ve done it all. This year is the first year I haven’t had a direction before October hit. In fact, I just got my ideas together and drafted a nearly naked plot with a few hazy characters. The years I’ve planned I’ve done better but I’m hopeful that I’ll continue my winning streak.

November also brings a last ditch frenzied approach to finishing craft projects for Christmas. As usual I have set myself very high craft goals and then there was the incident earlier this month that accidentally ruined three projects that were near completion. So I’m restarting three projects, continuing two more and trying to find the time for a good half dozen not even started yet.

November is also Cyra’s birthday month. In previous years we've gone camping, thrown small parties, had a simple dinner. This year? It’s bowling. We haven’t established if it will be a bowling party or just us bowling for fun. Either way it will be fun. She’s a whole decade old this year. It seems hard to believe. I cleaned out my closet last week and pulled out the girls’ baby boxes. I love how amazing they are, what wonderful people they are turning out to be but, still, I miss them as babies.

If I have a second favorite holiday, it is the completely made-up Thanksgiving feast. I love to cook and bake and it's like Thanksgiving was created just to enable my cooking obsession. Thanksgiving is often treated as a week long event in my house. I bake far too many desserts, way too many side dishes and a turkey three times larger than we actually have need for. I think the largest group of people I’ve fed in recent years was maybe ten. Typically there are six or seven.  But that doesn’t stop me from cooking as though I was feeding twenty-seven! This year might be slightly different as we certainly don’t have the budget for a proper feast.

Knowing myself as I do, I doubt that I will be writing much for the blog and that distresses me. I have let myself get out of the good habits of regular blogging and commenting and so of course I want to rededicate myself to daily postings. With all my focus on NaNo and crafting, I think I will once again participate in fatmumslim’s Photo-A-Day for November.

Tis the season alright! Season of crazy. Season of fun. Season of self-induced stress. I work best under pressure and deadlines. If I don’t have one or the other I tend to be lazy and self-indulgent.

June Fun

You know how sometimes you participate in daily blogging challenges for two months and then you stop, cold turkey? At first you feel all relieved, like "Whoa! Am I glad that's over! Now I can take a break!" And then maybe a few days later you feel kind of...bored...lost...sad...that you don't have any challenge in your day? And then, desperate to relieve the agony of boredom, you comb the web looking for some kind of fulfilling thing to...you know...fill your time with? Then one day, out of the blue you get an email in your old email in box that you still occasionally check, just for giggles, and low and behold, you have been invited...or should you say begged...to participate in this year's Camp NaNoWriMo by one of the very awesome head honchos over at NaNoWriMo.

And then? Oh Joy! Something to challenge you! Something new and exciting! You message a few friends asking them if they'd want to go to Camp NaNoWriMo with you and they say, "Yes!"

You wake to a new day, creative juices gurgling around in your belly and brain and suddenly last week's Cracked articles take on a whole new meaning. That tiny idea you had a month or so ago that you pushed aside because of other projects takes a firm grip of your hand and starts tugging you to the computer. Awesome bits of dialogue that pop into your head while you are taking a shower suddenly have characters who are longing to say them.

And so, looking forward to another challenge, you dive head first into 30 days and 50,000 words.

Yikes...What in the world have you just committed yourself to? Your palms grow clammy and glistening beads of sweat appear on your brow.

You take a deep breath and a new composition book - lime green because it makes you smile and think of mojitos on a hot summer evening. You uncap your pen...

And stare at blank pages...

Terrified.

Then suddenly, the slight weight of the pen in your hand feels right, the paper is just crisp enough and thoughts and ideas boil out of you. Your hand flows across the page outlining and planning, developing characters and back stories the reader will never know about, but you do. You struggle with the setting, just for a moment, then surge on.

And suddenly?

You can't wait until June 1st. 

Back to the Story

Way back in 2004, before we left Flagler, Sara and I came up with an awesome idea: a story that spanned an arc of at least five books. While I claim credit for the initial concept of a set of quadruplets (another brilliant shower idea), Sara and I were equal partners in the development of everything else. We spent a good year working solidly upon it. We made maps, religions, creatures and a royal genealogy spanning centuries. We (and by “we” I mean me) even created a song about the main character!

As time went on, we developed side stories to our main arc. We fell in love with some of the minor characters and ideas. We developed ideas for other books and story arcs. We talked, emailed and took notes but we never actually got around to writing anything solid.

We had cultures, back stories, political intrigue and wars, but no story.

Time passed. Our notes and ideas were filed away as we moved on with other projects. Four Nanos ago, I decided to try my hand at starting our story with Sara’s full support. I didn’t get very far and got frustrated that one character, the villain, began taking over the story and took me away from my main character. I put it away.

When Sara left for Japan, she gave me all of her story notes and files. I dutifully put them with mine and they have been floating around my house ever since, taking up space but not being used.

Last year when the computer incident occurred (Scott crashing my system and me not having anything backed up*) I thought I had lost everything that I wrote for the story I finally started. I was devastated. All the time spent, all those hours of typing…not just the story but all the notes that were saved on the computer – gone! I was thankful I had hard copies of some of the material, but at the time, I didn’t even look at the hard copies. Knowing I had something of the world Sara and I created was enough for right then.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the story, the characters, and the world. I've had some more of my brilliant shower ideas: snippets of conversations, scenes and plot ideas. For the past three weeks or so, I’ve come home glanced at the files and thought to myself, “You’ve got to do something with those!” This world that we created, I thought, deserves to be more than just a bunch of notes. Sara and I invested so much into it, to have it all just sit and wait seems such a let down. Not just for me or Sara but for our characters that we poured so much of ourselves into.

But between work, the girls, and everything, I never picked them up…

…Until today.

Waiting for my gaming group to arrive, I took out my file folder of story notes and began to thumb through them. I couldn’t have been more surprised! Apparently, a while back, during a time I don’t remember at all, I printed out what I wrote for the Nano novel! I had tucked it away in the file and left it there, forgotten and alone!

After the gamers left, I sat at the dining room table and thumbed through all the files. What I thought I lost – the genealogies, the country backgrounds, character notes, one of us (probably Sara) had the foresight to make hard copies. While I am missing some of the original email discussion we had, I have so much material that I don’t know where to start!

So, what to do…

Well, with Sara’s blessing (which I have no doubt she’ll give) I am going to revisit our world. I am going to give voices to our heroes, to our villains and our world!

* I haven't figured out how to imbed a link to previous posts, but for the computer incident check out Silent Fury from Feb. 13, 2009 and Live and Learn from Feb. 14, 2009.

Epic Win

After six years at making half-hearted NaNoWriMo attempts, this year, I set forth a determined message not just to my family but to myself.

Self, I said, you are a story teller. You have been telling stories as long as you can remember and there is no reason why you should struggle and ultimately fail at telling a story. This year, Self, you will win. This year you will take NaNo by the keyboard and write your heart out. This year is your year!

Well, Self, you did it. You said “Screw the laundry!” “Who cares about dinner?” and “So what if nothing is prepared for Christmas!” And you wrote. Every day save one or two when prior obligations (namely a tent and some S’mores) kept you from the keyboard. In fact, you did so well, you were ahead of the word count the entire month! Not once did you fall behind. Final word count 50,500. That’s right. 50ks in 30 days.

So, now what?

Well, a pile of Christmas crafts lurks in the corner of my dining room. A pile of laundry conceals my neglected washer. And 200 pages await a quiet moment of reflection and perhaps printing in January. For now though, my favorite Lobsterman and his lady love are quiet. Their story is still unfinished and after the holidays I will rededicate myself to finishing the story, because everyone deserves a resolution (understand though it probably won’t be a happy one).


So Happy December everyone! And if your Christmas goodies don’t show up until sometime in 2010, just remember that your boxes are late because...

I AM A WINNER!!

NaNo-Crazy

October has hit hard, crafts have been pushed to the side, work is demanding (now that I’m essentially department head) and holidays are fast approaching. So the big question now is what happens next. Well, as far as I am concerned I am determined to “win” this year at Nano. So the only thing that I am concerned about is words! 50.000 words to be exact. October will be for planning and plotting. And November? Oh sweet November. I can’t wait!

Because (and let me repeat): I AM DETERMINED!!!

You got that? All in caps! I am going to win. Come Hell or High Water. If it kills me. Throw in your own cliché here and that’s what it is!

Every year previous, I have been waylaid by other obligations (holidays, birthdays, crafting and work) that I thought were important or might get fired over, this year? Screw it! If I get fired, well, that’s one more reason for me to succeed in this endeavor! So what if the sink is piled with dishes? So what if the kids wear the same clothes for a week on end!

So, Skype will be turned off when I am home and writing. So dinners will be quick and easy (and probably not at all healthy). The phone might ring, but I won’t answer. Cyra will get a cake, but no big broo-ha-ha! Thanksgiving? Maybe I’ll cook, but I won’t socialize and in between basting and pie making, I’ll be writing.

I am not going to be remembered for my awesome cleaning ability or my devotion to a job. On my death bed, I don’t want people to think back and say, “If only I hadn’t cared so much about laundry, I might have gotten a book written.” On my death bed I want to say, “Fuck Yeah! I am proud of what I did with my life!”

So the coffee if fully stocked. My notebook is empty and full of potential. The computer is mine. The plot is set and in two months, I’ll see where it has brought me.

Where have I been?

I’m still here. I swear. My sister commented today that I haven’t updated my blog for a while and what’s up with that!

I am a bad blogger!!

There are some reasons for my lack of blogging: my computer got sick and needed a new hard drive (thankfully I had backed up all my stuff), I’ve been going to the beach and out with the girls a lot, I’ve been enjoying the laziness of summer…reading trashy novels on the patio, reading really good novels on the patio, playing D&D and Sims, drinking Mojitos, and really just spending time doing nothing which if you think about is the best part of summer vacation. I have no time tables or schedules to follow. I am not bound by obligation to anything or anyone.

Another reason or two: I took the initiative (and those who know me well be shocked and maybe even proud) to start my Christmas crafting now, which is really hard for me to wrap my brain around. Normally, I am rushing and panicking from November through December trying to get everything done. This year? I don’t want to do that for two major reasons:

1) the crafts that I’m doing take time this year
2) NANOWRIMO

The first reason is self explanatory so I will not go into detail, but the second? The second reason is the important one.

For the last four out of five years I have participated in NANOWRIMO – for those not familiar with NANO it stands for National Novel Writing Month. Essentially, a few guys out on the west coast started this idea with the concept that everyone says that they want to write but never do it. Add to that the fact that most people work better with a deadline and you get NANO: One Month, 50,000 words. There is no prize or award, just the satisfaction and pride of doing it.

Every year that I have participated I have not gotten anywhere near to the goal word count. Last year my word count was the highest at 20,000+ (I have more written just not typed so the word count isn’t accurate). But then things happened: Girl Scouts, School, Thanksgiving…pair with that Christmas crafts and my dedicated writing time flew away like a sweet little sparrow chased by a vicious hawk. It was sad for me to make the decision to sacrifice writing time for other things. This year I don’t want to have to make that type of choice.

So, in answer to where have I been. Here. Doing stuff. I’ve got tons to blog about: The rest of my trip, Amanda’s wedding, the Birthday Fiesta O’ Fun, the beach. It’s all here floating around my head waiting.

Summer is about being lazy, especially if you are a kid or a teacher (or a teacher who most of the time acts like a kid). And if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s okay to be lazy, just not all the time.

Cheers! I am off to make some more Mojito Magic!