On justification...

No, the blog's not dead.

Just resting.

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I can be very good at justifying things to myself, especially in writing. For instance, I can totally justify my lack of blogging lately. I graduated my community college and summer craziness began. Hours at work picked up,  other projects began, family members moved, I'm getting ready to move, etc. etc. Blogging sort of took a back seat to other activities. I didn't mean for it to happen, and I'm sorry that it did, but it did and that's what happened.

Justified.

Except, sometimes that just doesn't cut it. I mean, I totally could have blogged. I spent way too much time on the internet, watching parody music videos and reviewing other people's stories. I totally could have made the time. But I didn't. 

Un-justified.

It's like that in writing. My angel project from months ago was shelved. My reasons ultimately came down to that I couldn't seem to make the characters mesh the way I had wanted and it fell apart. But the thing is... I totally could have made it work. I could have written another character in, or restructured the plot so that it would work. It could have been done, which is why the project is "shelved" as opposed to "dead". It really was because I lost interest, though I maintain that the characters weren't working and that was the reason behind my loss of interest.

Justified?

I'm sure there's many writers out there that would leap at the chance to tell me that is entirely unfair. If I want to be a writer, I have read, I have to actually write. Even on days when it doesn't flow, or I don't feel like it. And normally, I stand by this. I really do. Part of writing is work and it's not always fun. I wonder occasionally why I do this to myself.

But the thing is, I do do this for fun. I don't make a living off of it and while I would love to one day, for real, right now, it's just a serious hobby. Like making fishing lures or raising pet alpacas. If it's not fun, why would I do it? If it became too strenuous, or too expensive, or just too much, I could just stop. Which is what I did.

Still justified?

I'm not trying to make excuses. Well, I am, but it's not because I'm trying to dodge work or something. I still keep writing and putting myself through all the trials and tribulations entailed therein, and I do it without compensation beyond the feeling of a job well done and the occasional word of praise or constructive crit when I'm brave enough to post something somewhere. I do this for me, but as a circle of influence grows, I feel myself feeling more responsible for my writing, like there is someone out there expecting more of me all the time. And I want to live up to it, so justifying things to myself isn't cutting it anymore. 

I dunno. Maybe I'm just thinking too hard about it all and feeling sentimental about coming back and writing in general. 

The point? 

It's good to be back. 

Bursting at the seams...

First off, a big thank you to Hannah from Musings of a Palindrome for her shout-outs to me and other small-time bloggers!
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A sedentary body equals a sedentary mind for me. I find that the less I do in a day, the less I end up writing. It's why NaNoWriMo is such a frantic month, but always one of my most productive, while my writing always seems to stagnate during the summer months when all I do is laze about. Many a writer has bemoaned a surplus of free-time as hindering their writing.

That said, it seems like after a period of non-activity, my brain always seems to start cooking stuff up, just when I don't feel like writing at that moment.

For real, haven't been feeling fantastic lately (everyone else in my family has gotten sick and I'm the only one hanging on to health) and have been sleeping a lot. The other day, I spent the entire day sleeping, eating and playing video games (class had been mercifully cancelled due to snow) and while it was somewhat refreshing, I was frustrated afterward when I realized how little of anything I'd gotten done.

Cut to yesterday, when I had a full day of class and two essays to write. Suddenly my brain seething with inspiration and ideas, but I don't have the time to write any of them down.

Cut to today... The inspiration is still knocking around, but I am still feeling under the weather. I've been browsing the internet, reading a little and just generally not doing anything again. And I'm driving myself crazy because while I want to be writing, I really don't want to be writing.
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Of course, the key is often to just start writing anyway. As I write and moan right now, I'm feeling the urge to simply grab a pad of paper and start writing something worth writing. So I likely will.

Funny how just taking a moment to purge and whine can actually set you on the path to activity. Anyone else find that they tend to follow any of these patterns? Or do you do something completely different?

P to the R to the OCRASTINATION...

Yeah, I really need to be writing. Like, a short story for English that's sort of due tomorrow, but was pushed off and forgotten in the hectic-tasticness that is NaNo this year. And it sucks. I mean, really. It's what comes of having to write a genre that I never write in, namely, genre-less writing. "Literary" fiction. I suck at it. I create this box in my head and have such a hard time crawling out of it. And I am trapped in this box with two six year old characters who refuse to let me let them grow up. I mean, how do you handle six year olds who are in "like" with each other?

And the rubber duck. Oh, the rubber duck, how I hate it.

Look at its beady little eyes.

I think Scrubs is going to die. Actually, I'm certain of it. What I'm not sure of is how his father is going to react to it. I mean, he has a one-shot pistol. I said that specifically. He's already fired his one shot. So how is he going to shoot Scrubs again to kill him? And how is he going to react afterwards? How is Ian going to react? Gah... Here's hoping I can wrap it up in just over 9k words.

Meme-ness:

Day 28 - Name one thing you shafted all month in favor of participating in NaNo.

That short story I was talking about before. (Funny how these meme questions seem to be corresponding to what I'm talking about. I don't plan it, I swear.)

Ventilation is your friend until it becomes hyper...

Yeah, it sort of sunk in that there's only eight days left of NaNo and I'm at maybe 28k. I have dropped my commitment to handwriting and have instead simply committed to finishing.

But, before that, just so I don't get any further behind on another commitment, heeeeeeere's me-me!

Day 18 - Who is the antagonist in your novel?  What drives their actions?

 Erm, that's still up in the air right now. Bluejay? I think? Mainly he's driven by his personality as a fae, that he wants something and will not stop until he gets it. It's just how they operate. Though, once he gets what he wants, he's likely to decide that it's not quite as interesting as he thought and forget about it. And when that thing is a person, that's not so hot.

Day 19 - Which authors or books have inspired your own writing the most, and why?

Erm again, I'd say probably Jack London and Bruce Coville, mainly because they were the ones who really made me think I could write. I was obsessed with Jack London for the longest time as he introduced me to wooden ships, iron men and the freeze-your-tush-off landscape of the Klondike and the adventures therein. Bruce Coville was a final push into the idea that I myself could indeed write an epic fantasy. At like, age eleven.

Day 20 - If you could meet one fictional character from any book you’ve ever read, who would it be, and why?

Wow. Erm for the third time... I'm going to have to take a rain check.

Day 21 - With about 10 days left to this arguably traumatic experience, what are your plans and goals for your novel, should you successfully complete it?

Blah! Eight days now. I honestly don't know if much is going to happen with this novel. It's more of just a purging than a serious project like my '08 novel was. Speaking of which...

Day 22 - If you’ve participated in or won NaNo before, what happened to your other novel efforts?  Still in the revision process/querying publishers/scrapped it immediately/etc.

'08 is still in editing. It has been in the same stage of editing for about a year and a half now, but I don't want to abandon it. It's probably the piece of writing that is the closest to being called my "baby".

'09 was a bit more NaNo-ish and so would have to have a lot more changed to even make it begin to be plausible as the story is intended to be, and I don't actually like it as much, so it's sort of a shelved thing.

Been using Write or Die madly and have about a thousand words for the day so far under my belt. I intend to at least put three more ten-minute sessions under my belt before the day is out.

Turn around, baby, turn around...

Yes, I intend to turn around my progress for NaNo. Really quickly.

Barely wrote a word over the weekend. I blame work and sleep. Also head colds. Seriously, never feel really happy about how you're the only person in your family who hasn't been sick yet. You will immediately get kicked in the head with congestion. Like, literally, within hours. And you will suffer through your shift at work and then immediately go home and crash.

So yeah.

Currently, I'm not sure what my total word count is. Last official typed up count is 7491, but there's some more to be typed up after that. Needless to say, however, I'm still behind by a bit. But I intend to change that with some hardcore writing today (while dosed up with painkillers and decongestant, so we'll see how that goes) and tomorrow's write-in.

Did take the time to write up about a page of rambling for my princess hedgehog story and it's going to sit on the back burner until December methinks. Or I might use it a bit as rewards for myself after reaching word count goals: "Make it this far and you can dabble in another story for a while." Bribing, even bribing yourself, works wonders.

To continue this brief stint of procrastination, however:

Day 7 - Where’s your favorite place to hunker down and write?

My bed. Seriously, with my notebook, I can be laying on my side and writing comfortably up near my head. It lets me nap - er, I mean write without having to expend much energy. Yay for laziness! Plus there are blankets and since I am in the basement and it is the middle of fall, it's one of the warmest places I could be most of the time.

Day 8 -List your current, most up-to-date word count.  Are you satisfied with your progress thus far?

Listed above: 7491 is my most current offical count. And no. No, I'm not.

It's happening again...

NaNoWriMo does this thing. I get really excited about an idea, anticipate writing it all of October, then November comes and the idea just doesn't seem as awesome as I originally thought. And a few days into that idea, when I've made a respectable amount of progress on it, I suddenly get a new idea, one that I think is a thousand times better than what I am currently writing.

Mainly it seems to be because all of my NaNo novels seem to come out angsty. I don't mean them to, but they do. In contrast, the shiny!new idea this year has a premise of anything but.

"Once upon a time, there was a hedgehog who dreamed of becoming a princess."

Yes, I went there. Basically, running with a long-established want to write a "fairy tale princess" story (seriously, I have notes from months and months back) and my recent binge of Princess Tutu (finished it, loved it, though bittersweet ending to the max), I actually have a decent idea for how this story would go. And I really want to write it.

But I think I'm going to just scribble everything I have in mind about it down now and then get on with my NaNo for this month. Then December will be waiting with a shiny!new idea already in place to distract me from the editing that I so sorely need to do.

Continuing the memetastic(ness)!

Day 6 - What is your one biggest stressor related to forcing yourself to write at least 50,000 words in a span of 30 days?

Turning off my inner editor. After having won NaNo two years in a row, I now know I am capable of doing it. The idea of writing 50,000 words in a month is, while still a challenge, no longer a daunting near-impossibility, so my inner editor pokes its head and demands that I actually put an effort towards story-telling. After all, if I'm not spending my time panicking about whether or not I can make word count, then I should be spending my time panicking about something else.

The down side of the pre-NaNo season...

Yes, even something as amazing as NaNo comes with a dark side.

1) Everything is about NaNo. "How is that a bad thing?" you ask. All my thought processes seem to be about NaNo, so my blog entries and general conversation topics suddenly become far less interesting as they all gravitate to NaNo and beat the concept to death. I feel like I'm just harping on the same ideas as everyone else.

2) Right now, just before NaNo is supposed to kick off, I'm being bombarded with other ideas I want to pursue. A robot love story in comic strip form, original fairytales and other such goodies keep popping up and have to be relegated to the "future ideas" bin.

3) Despite my desire to create, I'm not writing. Because NaNo is coming up so fast and I want to be able to devote all my attention to it, I'm scared to start anything for fear my enthusiasm will be killed during NaNo, or that I'll get distracted from my NaNo.

Those things said...

Omigosh, just four days until kick off!

Procrastination, thy name is Pre-NaNo...

I should be writing an English paper and analyzing the legal uses of marijuana for Biology. What am I doing instead? Pre-NaNo stuff!

If you haven't already seen the pep talk list for this year's NaNo, looky-look!

I've been decking out my NaNo profile, with actual novel info and the like. It's hard to do when you suck at summaries and titles. City of Glass Eggs is a temp title because I like the words "glass" and "eggs".

This is so cool. You know how you do Advent Calenders for Christmas? Here's one for NaNo! I want to make one so badly, but I'm not sure what I'd put in it.

Pandora not work in your country? Try Groove Shark! In some ways, better than Pandora because you can not only have a radio station playing music related to the music you like, you can actually create playlists and play specific songs that you want when you want them (which Pandora doesn't let you do).

Need a punchy title?  Every time I get a good one I want to change my NaNo idea just to fit that title.