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NaNoWriMo 2010, Day Nineteen

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Man, I’m wiped out. Thought I’d get a lot more writing done tonight, but at least I got in something over a thousand words. I’m stunned to see that I’m actually still on schedule. No frakking way! I was sure I was at least three thousand behind by now. Man, I guess I wrote a lot earlier in the week. I’m at 32,543 now. Not bad, not bad.

So busy this week. I’ve been applying for all kinds of freelance writing work, which is quite a switch for me. I haven’t done this sort of application-heavy stuff ever in my life. I guess it was just time for that to happen. I have some leads, and a few of them might even pay money that you can count! We’ll see. I’ll update here when something of note comes down the pipeline. I might be doing something related to motorcycles. That would be fun.

In the meantime, more writing for NaNo, and I gotta get back on track with some of this sculpture work. I might be falling behind a little, darn it!

NaNoWriMo 2010, Day Sixteen

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Wow, it’s been a while since I updated! Ten days worth! This month’s schedule is apparently just as full and harried as I had thought it would be. If I’m not writing, then I’m sculpting, and if I’m not doing either of those I’m attending to something like the regular job, or sleeping. Occasionally I eat. Oh, and I have been doing drawings with Jem! So, yeah, been busy.

I’m feeling a little run ragged at this point, and I honestly feel like NaNo was actually kind of easy the last two years! I mean, heck, I pretty much dropped everything to write those years, and this year I’m still trying to pile other stuff on top. I must be a sucker for stress.

The sculpture is continuing to progress, however, which is awesome and kind of amazing. I hope to do some significant construction with it this weekend, start actually sticking one piece to another, add the frame, that sort of thing.

The novel is, well, I don’t know what it is. It’s…coming along? I’m struggling a bit. I’ve had some parts where I feel like I literally Scotch-taped some scenes together to make them work. It’s clunky, but I’m forging on. Tonight I wrote a scene that I like. Well, I didn’t so much like the way I wrote it, ’cause it was a bit rushed, but I like the scene itself. I will enjoy rewriting it. (Did I just say I was going to rewrite this thing…!)

So the novel moves ahead. I should compare notes with last year. I wonder if I felt like my novel was just starting to gain momentum at this point last year as well. Oh, and I’m at 30,258 words – and NOW I feel like it’s picking up? Geez!

NaNoWriMo 2010, Day Six

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I am officially at 12,600 words, which puts me ahead from the daily average of 10,002 for today. That’s not bad, but I would like to be further ahead than that. I hope to possibly write again a bit this evening before going to bed. If not, there will be much more writing tomorrow.

I worked on sculpture this afternoon, and was pleased with the amount of work I got done. I put in something like three hours on it. It didn’t seem like I got much done until the end, and it still sort of seems that way, but as I often say, “Well, I had to sit there for X hours to do it, so it doesn’t matter if it seems like a lot or not, it was going to take me X hours regardless.”

These are the major elements of the most recent sculpture.

Tomorrow, more sculpting, more writing. So far I believe I’m on track for both, or closely so. Sculpting is a littler harder to guess, but if I break it up into four-week estimates, I guess it looks like I’ve gotten a fair amount done for one week. Similar progress over the next three weeks should (hopefully!) result in a finished product at the end of the month…I think?

Continued good luck to all my WriMo friends! Keep at it! We’re one-fifth of the way through!

NaNoWriMo 2010, Day Four

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Day Three got me zip in the word count, but I was pretty much planning on that. I drew that night with Jem instead of writing, and it paid off, because we actually, finally finished a piece! Not sure what we’re going to do with that, but it’s done now. I’ll get pics up later.

For Day Four I planned to get more writing done, kind of bulk up on some writing, but it didn’t quite work out that way. I wanted to get around 3000 words down. I got almost exactly two thousand, 1,990, actually. Not bad. Good for a day, and a bit past the 1,667-word minimum. I’m up to 9,444 words now, which still has me ahead of the curve. I’m very close to being one fifth of the way done, and that feels good.

This weekend there’s a break in band activity, and I plan on bearing down on both sculpture work and writing. I hope to make my word count literally soar into the realms of the ridiculous and to have some sculpture progress worth showing to you. I hope to have pics. DOn’t hold your breath on that one, though, because I seem to have become terrible at actually posting photos even though I’ve taken thousands over the last few months.

More to report on Day Five later. Write on, WriMos!

NaNoWriMo, Day Two

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Today ends at 7,454 words. That’s well past the necessary 3,334 to keep on pace for a 30-day win, but I’m padding. There are going to be some days where I’m sure I’ll not get to write much. I have a sculpture commission that is due in mid-December, so I have to make sure that I am more than on track with NaNo. Today, in fact, I even started on the sculpture as a “break” from writing. The irony! I didn’t get much done on it, but it is a start, and that’s important. I also managed to squeeze in getting some laundry done and getting some shaving cream picked up at the store. These are the little things that suddenly seem monumental during NaNo. You go, “I’ll just go to the store – wait! That’s…that’s going to take 23 minutes out of my day! I could write 500 words in 23 minutes! I…I don’t know if I can make that sacrifice! Maybe I’ll just shave with bar soap tomorrow…”

Shaving will commence as normal tomorrow. And I’m not even close to feeling like I need to give up time for showering. Not yet, anyway.

Best of luck to all you fellow WriMos out there!

NaNoWriMo, Day 1

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All right, kids, it’s that time of year again. I’m starting it dog-tired, because I was at Steak & Shake last night at midnight kicking off this insanity with about a dozen other writers. This post is short, because I’m really exhausted. I’m about a thousand words into my story. I’m not sure what it’s about yet, except an electric ray figures into it, and so does a boy in his teens. We’ll discover it together, then, eh? Come along and let’s see what we find in the insanity that is National Novel Writing Month. Only 49,000 words to go!

Rolling through, and being okay with it

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Here you can see the roll out, the exit for the sculpture. It turned out nicely, but there was plenty of tweaking involved in the area immediately below the final spiral. I spent a good long time getting that to work properly. This was another one of those details that ended up absorbing far more hours than you’d think it would or should. This is exactly the sort of thing that keeps people from building these doohickeys. It’s the little stuff that’s most challenging for the simple fact that it’s nit-picky and slow. Fortunately, I thrive on that sort of attention to detail. The real challenge for me is to be okay with it not being 100% perfect, something which no human is capable of, but which I, for some reason, think I should be able to do. This thing is working well, and I’m going to be happy with that. Onward! Completion awaits!

Woody wood wood

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I was so exhausted Monday that I only took three pictures all day, and two of them were of this right here. I went up to mom and dad’s to say hello. Ended up hanging out with dad and we talked about some wood for some rolling ball sculpture projects I have going on (okay, they’ll be going on sometime kind of soon…I hope). So we went through his scraps and found some nice stuff. Should look when it’s done. For now, well, it’s just pieces of wood, I guess. I just couldn’t make anything else happen tonight, went home and almost immediately went to bed.