I'm so close that it's maddening

I've got this novel, see? And it's supposed to be at least 50,000 words long.

I have over 48 k words written out in Open Office, but as soon as I switch the text over the Microsoft Word, my word count drops by over 1k.

Ack!!!!!!!

So, I still have the whole ending to write, where I get to figure out the bad guy's fate, and the good guy'ses [sic] rest of their lives (short? long? who knows. not me) and I guess I'll just have to keep writing until the end comes.

But, I'd also like to know the definite moment where I hit 50k words for real so I can breathe a bit more easily. Entering my text into the NaNoWriMo website brings up a word count that matches MS Word, so they think I'm 1k behind as well.

Poo.

And yet, there are much greater things in life I could be worried about right now.

I admit that it has been nice to get immersed in a story so totally different than my own, and yet so incredibly like it in some ways. It puts some perspective into my life, and vice versa, as I watch words pop up onto a page almost by themselves. My labor is to listen closely and refine where I can.

I have until Monday evening to finish this up, and I will get the word count. But I just don't know if the end will have real closure before then.

After all, I really want to see this bad guy squirm, but it doesn't always work out that way, does it?

Turkey Day

We had some friends and missionaries over. It doesn't look like much from the pic, but it was a lot of work.

Rolls
Turkey
Scalloped Corn
Sweet potatoes baked with granny smith apples (Thanks for the recipe, CG! It tasted like pie)
Cranberry sauce
Mashed sweet potatoes with toasted marshmallows (this recipe, but I didn't add milk, butter, half the sugar, and only half the vanilla. Tasty!!!)
Mashed taters
Gravy
Green bean casserole (with roasted mushrooms)


This is the first year where we havn't had many leftovers at all. The only things we had left from the turkey were the drumsticks and two cups of extra meat. I guess it's a good thing we have those other two turkeys people gave us. Man is happy to be eating turkey well into the new year.

Not shown:
Pumpkin pie
Cherry pie
Brownies
PB brownies
Homemade whipped cream.


I was on the bike twice today, even with moderate portions. The carbs!!!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Novel

Now, it's interesting to write a novel.

I grew up reading some really great stuff. Tolkein, R A Salvatore, Raymond E Feist, and countless other novels in the fantasy and sci-fi genres consumed much of my adolescence. These books seemed so surprising and complex, with characters I could really believe and feel for. It seemed like each person in those books was a living, breathing person who could knock on my door at any moment.

I'm over 31,000 words into my book and things are, indeed, getting complicated. I have three threads going right now (two major, one minor) but I have many of the machinations of several different warring peoples ruminating aside from those.

Next time, a thorough outline is an absolute must. I'm a bit lost and feeling like my people aren't alive quite yet. I often catch myself writing a scene only to suddenly realize that someone did something they shouldn't have done, by their very nature. I have to give each person credit for at least the sense God gave billy goats. That makes things a whole lot less convenient from a development standpoint.

As I stump through the wilderness of a new world that I'm giving birth to even as I gestate it, I realize that honesty in writing is very hard. Writing what is real is hard. Someone gets a splinter, but do we care? Someone swims for twelve hours in an ocean, and is it worth noting that their clothing is salt crusted and they can never stand the taste of fish for the rest of their life?

-sigh- I often wonder what I got myself into. I'm over my head as I reach for the level of riveting involvement some of my favorite authors can invoke, but I don't have the tools or expertise to pull it off yet.

But I'm going to finish. I may be plodding along right now but I think I have enough story in me to get to the goal this year. Brian, you'll very likely win the word count war, but I'll be ecstatic just to get to the fifty thousand mark.

And then I'm going to sit down and rewrite the entire damn thing.


PS, I feel like a middle school kid for getting all excited over this, but my heroine just found the foundation of her learning experience and is now fumbling around, trying to make sense of it. And it involved getting her first kiss.

Squee!!!

Not for the faint of stomach

This page grossed me out, hardcore.

Thanks, Romeo.


http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

whining

Tag: Mom, why do you keep making food I hate?

Me: Why do you keeping hating the food I make?

Tonight's dinner is homemade chicken soup with cheddar drop biscuits.

YUM!!!!

Unless your pseudonym is Tag.

autumn

The kids keep asking me when winter will officially be here. I've had to explain that, even though there are dates on the calendar that declare when a season officially starts, nature doesn't pay much attention to that sort of thing. It's been drippy here, and the leaves are mostly off the trees. We have yet to get a really solid freeze, if one at all, but I'm ok with autumn for a while longer. It feels appropriate the my first real fall in a few years would linger.

(novel update: 22k+ words and still have plenty of plot to go. I'm feeling good about getting to 50k by the end of the month.)

Aha!

So, I've been looking at my NoNoWriMo progress graph, wondering why I can exceed my daily goals only to have the little calendar on the right give me a little red square. That's confusing.

Until I realized that I had been reading the graph wrong. Oops!! Compare my actual word count with the line on the right, not on the left. Got it.

So, you should be seeing more green squares in coming days. It's red for today so far, but the day ain't over yet. The counter below it is more up to date, so look at that one first.

Poll

Don't forget to vote in my new poll.

I'm curious to see how many introverted friend I have. :)

Testing some more

It seems that light red means I was slightly under my daily goal. Light green means I exceeded my goal. Dark red and green indicate increased values of their lighter iterations.

(by the way, I'm up to 10,031 words. I don't know why the above doohicky isn't updating.)

Testing