NaNoWriMo 2008 is ALMOST HERE! My deliberation on writing 50,000 words in November of 2008?

It’s been a long time since i’ve written here and alot has happened. I’ve started pinging a few of my friends to see if I can con.. ahem… persuade them into doing NaNoWriMo with me this year (misery loves company!) but it looks like MAYBE one of the many dozens fell for… ahem… i mean is supporting and joining me in my cause!

Even then, I have really been contemplating whether I should even attempt to do so this year. Last year was my first year and there were definite high’s and low’s. So i’ve really started giving this some serious thoughts.

I’m in the process of buying a house and should close on it at the end of November (Yes… a major reason why i’m thinking of not doing it this year). That means that November will be spent packing, making arrangements with mortgage brokers, trying to read long, legalize documents asking for my limbs if i don’t pay my mortgage, and I will be generally going crazy.

Also, since last year I have been working at a new job which is very demanding. Every day I spend 2-4 hours on the phone and I work the hours of 10am to 7pm! Over the last 4 months it has knocked me off of my workout routines because I am just too emotionally spent to want to do anything after or BEFORE work!

Another thing, my daughter is looking at Universities and wants to go to Ohio in mid November to check it out since she has been accepted there and offered a partial scholarship! (Go daughter!) So in the middle of all this hell, going through “closing”, and trying to live my life I will need to take 3-4 days to do this as well!

Then there is Football (i’m in a fantasy league with my NY buddies!), Thanksgiving Holiday, and life and not to mention my significant other who I am sure will be complaining that I am not spending enough time with her!!!

So after serious deliberation… it is with a very sad heart that I must say aloud and acknowledge… that… “Your DAMN SKIPPY that i’m STILL going to attempt to write a novel this year!!!”

Yes… i know… it is insane and it makes no kind of sense… BUT I am a [wannabee] writer! Sense has nothing to do with it, it is in my nature and that is why I must do it! (As the drowning scorpion said to the frog who was just stung!!!)

The good thing is… no amount of “I told you so…” will reach my deaf ears! I can already see myself, nearly weeping from sheer exhaustion at 3am in my quest to finish 50,000 words and having no one to spit my venom at but myself!!! Even so… this won’t stop me from going for it!

So I salute the defiant spirit in us all! Wish me luck!!!

Wevmax – NaNoWriMo 2008!

I’ve always loved “The Hypothetical” and “What if” questions…

Yes, I must admit that all of my life i’ve been a huge fan of the “Hypothetical Question”, and I can’t really think of why. I love nothing better than some “chatting time” with a buddy, or friend on a slow day at work, or some time to kill while waiting in a long line and then asking a “What if” question.

What I would notice about myself is that no matter what answer they would provide, I would eventually see what path they chose in their answer, where they found their “moral ground” in whatever the situation was, and I would then immediately begin to push them into grey territory. Life was no fun in the black and white areas… grey all the way!

So when I recently got into one of my moods, and you’ll know it when I start something like , “Hey, i’m bored. Let me ask you a personal question?” LOL. This is when you should run… not walk to your nearest exit.

Of course they will always say, “Sure.” At least if they are really any kind of friend they will, and that’s when I say, “So… if you were in a long-term relationship with someone… what line would they have to cross for you to consider them to be unfaithful or cheating?”

Before I go on, let me recommend that you ask your close friends this question whenever your feeling mischievous (which I apparently do when i get bored). So far the one constant that I noticed, and I hope someone follows up with a comment to see if they received the same reaction, is that at some point after that question, your friend WILL ASK YOU, “Why are you asking me this? What did you do??? Did you cheat on your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife???”, and they will then NOT BELIEVE YOU when you laugh and say, “NO! Why would you think that!!!! Where did that come from!!!!”

In my friends defense… I will say that I have a big smile on my face and I start laughing when I respond “NO”… so at least I understand why they don’t believe ME right off the bat! hehehehehe.

Anyway, the criteria was this. When would you consider your significant other “cheating” within these 5 steps. When?:

Step 1: They found someone attractive and had frequent thoughts of interaction, romance, physical connection with that person?

Step 2: If they start ACTING on these frequent thoughts but haven’t had any physical/sexual contact. Trying to get into a one-on-one situation, flirting, intimate contact like holding their hand, touching their shoulder, giving hugs and kisses on the cheek BUT NOT ON LIPS. Basically pursuing those feelings.

Step 3: Actual kissing (tap kiss on lips… no tongue), joking, flirting, and playing around (like a joking slap on the butt). Maybe sexual jokes and innuendo in addition to kiss. What would fall under, “Oh, that’s just harmless flirting!”

Step 4: Dirty talking, and full kiss (sensual and with tongue) , light groping

Step 5: Full out sex, intercourse, oral, etc.

Now, I can go on for a while on all of the responses that i heard. What I will say for now is that men and women generally had some interesting viewpoints on this. The range went from a Step 1, where THINKING ABOUT IT meant that the person was cheating (i’ll let you guess if it was a man or a woman who felt this way) or crossing the line with… to one person (still think that they were just messing with me) who told me with a serious face, that as long as they weren’t leaving the spouse for this person, and that they didn’t LOVE this person that they are having sex with… it isn’t cheating!!!! (Yeah…. i laughed pretty hard at that one!

I’ll follow up another day, but let me know what you think… or better yet… what you hear!

Can you remember why you don’t eat ______ ?

So my significant other apparently LOOOVVVEEESSSS Tapioca pudding, and I seem to have an unreasonable aversion to it (I don’t like it I say!).

Now, anyone who knows me can tell that it is RARE that I don’t “not like” ANYTHING! I’m a pretty open-minded eater… and I would even eat things that I don’t like under the right circumstances (like if I am a guest at someone’s home and they served me eggplant… I would still eat it and as far as they would know I would LOVE IT!).

I like to test my own limits, so I made some tapioca and want to know what I came up with? I don’t like tapioca because I faintly remembered eating some when I was about 10 years young and being sick. So I was sick when I last had it… and somehow I’ve associated tapioca with making me sick. Now, most of you are probably just thinking, “Yeah? So what’s the big deal?” But it got me thinking. What if the MAJORITY of the foods that you don’t like, have fallen into that category because at some point when you ate them, you either got sick, or were already sick through no fault of the particular food??? (Bad tapioca in my case?) So tapioca may have inadvertently gotten a bad rap in my book!

What reinforced this thought is that I spent some time with my brother who is a very picky eater, and we were just discussing why he doesn’t like pumpkin pie, but that he used to a few years ago? When asked why not, he admitted that he was sick and ate some a few years ago, and it OBVIOUSLY made him sicker (thought it may have had nothing to do with his sickness)… and now he can’t STAND pumpkin pie… but it’s PUMPKIN PIE! Oh well, just food for thought?

What do you think? Think of a food that you don’t really like or eat… and then think back as far as you can and see when was the last time that you ate it, or tried it? You may remember something that you forgot.

Found a few tips on what may make you “dislike” certain foods here. There was even an interesting article from the BBC saying how kids might be inadvertently programmed to dislike certain foods which can add some further info to this topic. Check them out and let me know what you think.

So I made tapioca, I tasted it… not bad… but i’m not sure if I would eat the whole cup. Old habits die hard!

Churning the thinking pot in 2008!

Hello 2008!!!!

I started this blog to document my NaNoWriMo 2007 adventure, and looking back it was a great experience. I have always wanted to write a book, and although this is not “THE NOVEL” that i’ve always wanted to write, it is a great step in the right direction. I met some great people, wrote 50,000+ words, and lived to write about it, but what do i do now?

Well, I’ve always been a “creative thinker” and I figured what a better way of writing my thoughts, world views, and sparking other thoughts than just writing? I don’t know how often I will do it… but I think that we can have some fun.

So to all readers, hope that you had a great 2008… and welcome to my blog… again.

Life can get crazy… but I completed 51,032 words!

That’s right! I did it by November 30th, and right before midnight (I completed those 15,000 plus words in 10 hours!!!), but I did it.

Actually, I didn’t finish the story itself either. This had me thinking? Is it that I have to have a COMPLETED STORY by Nov. 30th, or just 50,000 words of my story?

I can accept the answer that I was given. Basically the whole spirit of NaNoWriMo is to have a completed story by the 30th, not just 50k in words. So going by that I technically didn’t really complete my goal, though this is the most that I have EVER written for a story of mine.  I don’t have much time to write now since life has been crazy with all of the things that i’ve procrastinated on to write, but I just wanted to mention that I did finish the word count in time since it has been over 2 weeks and NOW is that I noticed that I haven’t followed up! Later today (or tomorrow) I will write down some of the craziness!

I hope that the rest of you did well! Now I need to get cracking on Holiday shopping, and on trying to find a Nintendo Wii for some family!

35,205 and counting!

Yes, I am determined to get to 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo even if it kills me! (Though hopefully it won’t!)

This is the 2nd night in a row that I am up till 3am writing, but i’ve done over another 5000 words! I will need to do this for the next three nights… or 7500 for the next two! Now, the only thing that i’m not sure of is whether I will need to have my novel complete and wrapped up by then, or if I’m good as long as I have over 50k in words? At this moment it doesn’t even matter as long as I have 50K methinks!

So less than 15,000 to go!

And the race is on!!! 25,000 words in 5 days!

So here I am. I’ve obviously taken way too may liberties in my quest to write a novel. The main one being that I went on a driving trip to NY. It took about 22 hours to get there, and 24 to get back since we stopped at Washington D.C. to see some of the sites like the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and even the White House. In NY we where in a touristy mode as well as I went to the Thanksgiving Day parade, The Empire State building (the top!), a horse carriage ride in central park, walked through chinatown, little italy, and South Street Seaport just to name a few. So I didn’t really have any time or energy to write. In all honesty I didn’t even get to open up my laptop.

Well, that’s enough of the catch up. Right now it is 2:47am and I need to get some sleep. I will need to complete over 5,000 words a day to keep my goal of 50,000 words. I managed to complete it tonight, but not sure how i’m going to be able to do this for the next 4 days. It wasn’t easy.

Anyway… we’re up to 30,047 words… 19,953 to go!!!

Today (or technically yesterday or Monday) I met up for the last Monday Write-in! Thanks guys and gals for your support! Good luck!

And the NaNoWriMo count so far… 24,708!

I am so close to half-way that I can smell it! I will probably work on it at work, and it shouldn’t be hard at all. Of course I’m still behind, but for someone who has never written a book before 25,000 words is an accomplishment (albeit a small one… but baby steps… just have to remember baby steps!).

I went to my local write-in yesterday where only two other people showed up yesterday. I guess this was because officially there wasn’t going to be a meeting, but it was great that we were able to talk more in-depth about our stories and how to get there rather than the larger groups where there are too many conversations going on at once. I’m trying to remember their names (i’m so bad with names), I know Sandy because she was there from our first meeting and then there was…. aaaaahhhh… well, her business card says Ashley Ladd… but even she told me that is just her writing alias… so let’s call her Ashley though I know that this is going to kill me for the rest of the day! lol.

This is Ashley’s first attempt at NaNoWriMo (just like me) so she is definitely a kindered spirit… though a much better prepared one! Her and Sandy were already in their mid 30’s, but I digress.  I haven’t checked out her page yet, but for any of you interested she is at www.ashleyladd.com, www.ellorascave.com, and has apparently already plublished at www.newconceptspublishing.com. Go Ashley!

Ok… i’m getting back to work!

21,051 and counting!

That’s what i’m up to..  21,051! I’ll make this one short since i’m tired and want to go to bed!

Just 28,949 to go!

We shall see what happens tonight!!!

Well, i’ve been a busy beaver… just not busy on my writing. I must be getting cocky thinking that I will be able to catch up 10,000 words in one weekend. I’ve decided to take a trip this coming week and visit my family and friends for the Thanksgiving weekend in NY. So I had to run a few errands today, plus i’ve been attending a few social functions this last Weds, Thurs, and Friday. That’s right… WEVMAX, the new party animal! Well, I better start partying in my writing and as such I think that I will include the fun parts of the last three days into at least ONE night in my book! Write what you know… right?

So back to today… i’ve done everything that I wanted to do except writing… I woke up late (had to catch up on my sleep) around 11am. Went for a walk around the block (2.75 miles) for excercise, and then had to run some errands (post office, shopping, etc.). Have I mentioned how great the Nintendo Wii System is yet? I know that you can’t FIND it anywhere… but for a great hint checkout this tech blog which gave me some great success in finding one!

Basically you can call up your nearest GAMESTOP/EBGames store (from their website you can get your local phone number for one). If you give them a call they will let you know if they actually have it available. I’ve been able to call a few in my area, if they don’t have it I get a good idea when they will get it, and when you call and they have it you can run to their store and buy it. I’ve managed to find quite a few for friends and family this way.

So one of my shopping items was in buying Metroid Prime 3:Corruption and I got, eehhrr… should we say “distracted” for a few hours with it. BUT, i’ve saved my game and promised myself that I won’t play it again till i’ve caught up to within ONE DAYS word count! Let me just say that this game is HOT! I’m sure that you can find plenty of review on this if you just search for it, so i’ll leave it at that.

Anyway… i’m going to get back to the effort of writing! I’ll post up later how i’m doing!

See ya!