So ends another crazy month of Nanowrimo...

28 days, over 50,000 words and frustration, hair pulling and general discontented malcontent and maybe the occasional incontinence to boot but I am friggin DONE!!!!

....no real sense of SATISFIED accomplishment yet, I don't think reality has really set in. I've been slaving away at writing and all the words were as easy to pull out as shoveling quick set concrete that is 2/3 of the way set. It was a bit a struggle, and then I got embarrassed and had a hard time with that.

I'm sure I will feel some satisfaction later. I worked my ass off and neglected most everything else. And my house shows it.

Some of the writing became very personal and so sensitive, I couldn't stand it and I removed it from the blog. I just couldn't put something so intimate out there for all to see. It felt like I had no skin and was naked to the elements.

And besides, there was the other down side: my novel SUCKS!

But I finished the piece of shit in record time for me, lmao.

Happy Nanowrimo everybody!

Everglen

So, this morning I awoke with the title of my NanoNovel.

Everglen.

Sounds interesting. Less than 48 hours until kick off and I'm still without an outline or real plot.

This is going to be... WOW!

For lack of a better term. lmao. See you soon!

Letter from Chris Baty...

Dear National Novel Writing Month Author,

Hi there! NaNoWriMo Program Director Chris Baty here. It's so great to have you writing with us! Before we get rolling, I wanted to send you a quick guide to our upcoming month of literary abandon.

Here's the plan:

Today: If you haven't already, please make a tax-deductible donation to help us pay for National Novel Writing Month and NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program. NaNoWriMo is a nonprofit, and we've spent nearly half a million dollars getting this swashbuckling adventure ready for 150,000 adults and 35,000 kids and teens around the world. Our goal is to pay off this year's expenses and set aside enough to expand and improve both programs next year. With your help, we'll do it! Thank you so much to everyone who has donated so far!

Tomorrow: Make sure you've set your time zone correctly (it's under User Settings). Some word-count features appear and disappear at midnight on November 1 and November 30, so dialing those in now will save you stress later. Join a local region, and find out when and where the first novel-writing get-togethers (called "write-ins") for your city or town will be held.

October 31: Get your first pep talk email. You'll receive about three of these a week; one from NaNo staff and two from our panel of esteemed celebrity pep talkers. Spam filters love to eat pep talks, so if you don't get yours, just drop by the pep talk page (under Fun Stuff) where they'll be posted as soon as they go out. Our first guest pep talker will be Jasper Fforde; he'll be parachuting into your inbox next Wednesday.

November 1: At midnight, local time, start writing your book. You need to log 1,667 words per day to stay on par. The website will be very slow for the first few days of the event, but with patience you can update your soaring word count in that box at the top of our site. Watch your stats graph fill. Send a link to your author profile to your friends so they can follow your progress. Revel in the majesty of your unfolding story. It's November 1! You are an unstoppable novel-writing machine!

November 2: Stop writing. Wonder if you should start over. Keep going. Feel better.

November 8: As the first full week of writing comes to a close, you will be at 11,666 words. This is more fiction than most people write in their lifetimes, and you did it in a week. Go, you! This is also Municipal Liaison Appreciation Day, a raucous international holiday that celebrates NaNoWriMo's volunteer chapter-heads (the folks who organized the write-in you went to last week). Chocolate, flowers, and gifts of expensive electronics are appreciated.

November 13: Nothing really happens on November 13.

November 15: After the second week of writing, you will be at 25,000 words. This is the approximate length of such legendary works of fiction as The Metamorphosis, Of Mice and Men, and Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion. You're halfway to winning! Attend a Midway Party in your town.

November 16: The second half of NaNoWriMo dawns. Writerly confidence builds. Your book comes to life, and characters start doing interesting, unexpected things. Nice. Weird.

November 22: After the third full week of writing, you stand at 35,000 words, the NaNoWriMo milestone universally recognized as The Place Where Everything Gets Much Easier. This is also when you fly out to San Francisco and join us for the Night of Writing Dangerously Write-a-thon, where you'll help us set records for group noveling and candy consumption.

November 25: Novel validation and winning begins, and Word-Count Progress Bars turn from blue (under 50K) to green (over 50K) to purple (over 50k and a verified winner!). Check our FAQs for details on uploading your manuscript and winning. A limited number of 2009 Winner T-shirts will appear in the store. These will make you smile, and will feature a squirrel.

November 26: American Wrimos celebrate the true meaning of Thanksgiving by gathering together with friends and family, wolfing down a huge meal as quickly as possible, and then ditching those friends and family to hide in the bathroom with a laptop.

November 30: By midnight, local time, we will all be the proud owners of 50,000-word novels that we barely could have imagined on October 31. Plan to attend your local NaNoWriMo Thank God It's Over Party, where grins will abound, champagne will flow, fives will be highed, and wrists will be iced.

You did it. We all did it.

December 1: Sleep will fall heavily across NaNoLand, as 150,000 writers close the book on a crazy, oversized dream.

December 2: The "I Wrote A Novel, Now What?" page goes up on the NaNoWriMo site, containing some special items for our winners from sponsors CreateSpace and Scrivener, along with advice on revision and next steps from published NaNoWriMo authors.

December 3: Rewrites begin.

It all starts very soon, brave writer! Here's to a great month together!

Chris
NaNoWriMo

Less than 6 days

and still counting. Since I'm going into November with no outline, title, characters and just a hazy plot idea; well, the closer I get to kick-off, the closer I get to full hyperventilation mode. And I think this is fun???? Of course I do, it's the adrenalin junkie in me, writing by the seat of my pants terrorexhilaration thing going on.

It's a special one this year, I'm dedicating my effort this year to my friend who passed away unexpectedly last January. We had some big plans for '09 and were going to take our small community by storm, capture young imaginations and foster creative literacy like gangbusters, starting off our campaign with Nano '09 and building steam from there.

A few of the things EE and I had planned was holding a full noveling workshop for 3 of her english classes for Nanowrimo '09 and kickstart a local school but community driven paper at the end. There were other brilliant contests and ideas we were going to implement throughout the remainder of the school year but it was not to be.

EE got the flu. Then complications. She missed almost a month of school. Then, she thought she was getting better but she went to bed one night and died in her sleep.

She died happy and full of plans but they are plans I have no heart for after what the school did in the wake of her unexpected death. There was no formal announcement and high school students were told the news by their first period teachers. Elementary students were told nothing but learned the news from the high school students. My children already knew she had passed away but were stunned and hurt by the calvalier treatment of such a beloved teacher. I was so angry by the casual treatment by staff and faculty of the death of such a wonderful person it was the last straw and I pulled my children from public school forever more (much to their relief).

That's enough right there.

I'm doing it this year for me and EE and all our wonderful unrealized plans.

I really miss her.

7 days to go!

And I'm getting some of my old "zing" back, thank goodness!

Just getting my lists ready: nanosnacks, nanodrinks, nanoquickmeals, nanostaples, lol.

Notebooks, pens, paper, printer cartridges & paper, taperecorder, batteries...

lists lists lists!

Off to make more lists...chore lists for the kids for when I'm busy writing...bwahahahaha!

Countdown Update...13 days left to go!

Turns out the giddy anticipation and weary dread was actually a combination of swine flu and my diabetes tipping.

I thought I lost 11 lbs in 11 days but I actually miscalculated. I've lost 15 lbs in 12 days and I'm over the flu but the diabetes is still tipped and I'm still working on getting it back down to a normal level. How can it be so high when you have to force yourself to eat AND you make sure your sugar intake is low low low? And I drink water like it's any kind of alcohol and my name is Oliver Reed. But it's still too high. Jeesh...another unsolved mystery to keep me busy.

Nanowrimo 2009 countdown!!

The countdown is on! Only 25 more days until the '09 Nano rocks and shocks.

Looking forward to it with a strange mixture of giddy anticipation and weary dread.

It's gonna be fun...right? Riiiiiiiiiight!!!!

OK...off to the official site to log in and get some nifty Nano '09 widgets and such.