Countdown and last minute goals

Including today, I have 3 more planning days for NaNoWirMo.  I feel like I haven't even breached the main guts of my story in my pre-writing/planning.

You are wise to be thinking, "Well Dara, what the hell have you been doing?"

Not.  A.  Whole.  Lot.

I've seriously shut myself off from the world of writing, between avoiding my own blog, blogs I read, site and forums I visit, I just stopped.  I don't know why, it's not like I haven't had time.  And sure I've gone to my comfort zone of, "Let's play Age of Empires instead of writing."  But even worse, my head was having me clean the oven and reorganize the spare bedroom before sitting down with my notebook and writing.

Yes.  I cleaned the damn oven before writing.  No, it is not a fancy, self-cleaning oven.

You are wise to be thinking, ".... what the fuck, Dara!?"

After having a way-too-fun lunch with my close friend Angie, I got myself re-inspired.  My novel is kinda-sorta zombie-ish, as I've mentioned.  I shared with Angie the main story and other fun bits of what I have planned, and knowing the LOVES the undead/zombie genre, she nearly piddled in excitement.  After that,the last thing I wanted to do was go back to work for 4 hours.  I wanted to get back to pre-writing.

I need to be talking about my novel and the story ALL THE TIME.  That's what works for me.  The kinks that I need to plow through are the 8 hours at work where I can't really do that and an average of 7 to 8 hours of sleep.

So, 3 days left, two at this point.  A few things I have want to achieve...

1. Be story-planning at least an hour for the next couple days.  This at least covers my lunch break OR right after work.
2. Launch and share my NaNoWirMo Fundraising Page.  SHAMELESS PLUG!  If you would like, no, love to sponsor me, awesome!  And if you match my own donation of $50, you'll get a little batch of homemade, family recipe Christmas cookies!  For reals.  They rock.  They're my great-grandmother's cookies and I've mastered a few of them.  Moving on.
3. Get fully caught up on the NaNo Forums.  I've been drifting in and out.  I get overwhelmed with the amount of new posts to track (and I'm not too fond with the removal of the "subscription/watching" for specific boards).  I do want to have this as a quick resource/time-killer and I just need to get down and familiar with it.

Just keep breathing.... just keep breathing....

NaNoWirMo Spotlight and Liebster Award!

Will I ever not post during the week then promise myself to make it up Fridays or over the weekend?  Hell no.

My week got thrown for a loop when I came down with an out-of-nowhere fever that left as soon as it showed up.  It hit 102 degrees on Thursday.  My rule of thumb is go to work no matter what, unless I'm dead, have something super contagious, or have a fever (this is assuming I don't have sick days... which I don't yet).  I called in, everything was fine... until my boss made me feel bad about calling in as one of the other women in our group had the day off and another has strep... so she did kinda make me feel that a fever wasn't good enough.  So I went in.  And it was awful.  And I felt like this about it...

As of Friday evening, I was fully recovered, and celebrated with illicit beverages.... which is a typical Friday for me either way.



So yeah!  Chris Kelworth is doing a series of spotlights of people who will be participating in NaNoWirMo this year.  I said I was interested to be featured for, shits and giggles, and BLAM!  Check me out!  Thanks for the feature, Chris!

And check this out!  Jennifer Chow swings by my blog and lets me know that she's nominated me for a Liebster Award.  First, I was confused and thought it was Leapster and felt that this in no way is a chile-appropriate blog (see gif above).  Then, I got all giddy.  Apparently what I share here is interesting enough for people to find their way here one way or another and see who the hell this "Dara" is and why she claims to be a writer.  So that being said...

I want to credit Evelyne Holingue with the best description of the Liebster Award:

"Liebster comes from the German verb Lieben, which means to love. Liebster is the superlative form of the adjective lieb, which means kind, likeable, lovely. As a noun liebster also means sweetheart and boyfriend. Ah the complexities of the German language!  As I understand it, the Liebster Award is like a little gift from one blogger to another."

Mission for me this week, share the love.  Rules are as follows:

1. Write a post about the nomination and link back to the nominator’s site.
2. In that post, explain the meaning of the award and answer the questions given to you.
3. Create questions for your nominees.
4. Nominate 5 blogs with fewer than 1000 followers.
5. Contact nominees and let them know that you have nominated them.
6. Post the award button on your blog.

First, anyone who I nominated, please do use these same questions (add or subtract); I borrowed them from Jennifer as I liked them.  Second, I'll be searching for said nominees this week.

My nominees:
Samantha May, at Writing Through College
Julie Luek, at A Thought Grows
M.J. Fifield, at My Pet Blog
Shannon O'Regan, at Papillon D'Amour (p.s. that's my mama's blog!)
DB, at 204 and Losing it


Do you remember your first blog post?
In days of yore, I had a LiveJournal.  Remember that?  Apparently it still exists, and it looks just awful.  End tangent.  I've tried to start blogs many times since then, and at this point they're all a blur.  My first post on this one here was a bit of an intro post, who I was, what I'm trying to do, the usual.

Why are you blogging?
Partly at the recommendation of my friend (see that first post I mentioned), also as an excuse to write to fill my daily quota.  Mostly to share the experience of starting out.  I'd like to think I have a fun sense of humor, so the ride should be entertaining.

What do you like best and least about blogging?
Best: sharing and meeting new people and communities online.  It's fun, and for me, the best way to find support in writing.  Least: actually sitting down to blog.  Example, I've been trying to post this entry since Friday.  I suck.  I procrastinate like it's my job and I get all ADHD so I just never OH SHINEY RED BALL!

What blogs do you like to follow?
My current news feed is filled with writing blogs; I find if I surround myself in it, I'll get it done myself (most of the time).  Though there's a few other I follow.  Friends, family, sites like xkcd and Penny Arcade.

What would you like to share with your readers that they might not know about you?
I got my head caught in a revolving door when I was six-years-old.  Yes, I still avoid them at all costs.

If money, job and family weren’t an issue where would you live and why?
Ireland.  It's a hell of a lot more laid back and filled with less bullshit that here.

Have you learned more from your successes or failures?
I'm still learning.  And at a quick glance, from my failures.

What one key message do you want your readers to take away from your blog?
Oooooo.... never thought of having a message.  Right now, I just see it as sharing my experiences while I go through with this whole novel/writing thing.

Do you prefer the book to the movie or the movie to the book?
I go both ways.  (HA!)  Some books I would have never read if it weren't for the movie, and vice versa.  Some movies butcher the crap out of the book, some do well on their own.

The image says it all.

Damn straight.

I did at least want to get a quick post up.  Here's a few fun tidbits.

TIMELINE COMPLETE!  That's right!  I finished the timeline for my NaNo novel!  What's hilarious is that I didn't think I finished it.  I sat down with Adam again after he read it and he goes, "Okay so what's next?"  I have to finish the timeline.  "I read it.  It's done."  It is?  "Yup."  Oh.  Well that's just wonderful!

Next I'm working on my characters.  This I'm finding difficult.  I've looked at scores of character sheets, and sweet jesus, TMI (too much information)!  Superstitions?  Phobias?  Pet peeves?  Annoying gestures they do?  I can see this being awesome, but right now, as other than the timeline, I have written nothing about any of these people.  Other than figuring out last names, fuck, first names, I'm starting with basics; seriously, my timeline is littered with things such as Spanish Lawyer, Social Worker, Good Guy Board Member, Asshat Board Member, Woman Similar To Sylvanas Windrunner.

Last night the following phrase left my mouth: "Honey, I'm going to get in bed with my new toy while you finish up with that."

I'm priceless.

Really though, I got my sexy new ultrabook: Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga.  It's a laptop, it's a tablet, it's frickin' awesome!  The keyboard flips around to use as a tablet, but as it's not a tablet, I can still run Word and other such programs.  What's even better is that Adam spotted it for half the price online as a refurbished model.  I love it!  Now when November hits I don't have to be tied to my desktop.

Only there's not a whole lot of places in this area with WiFi, other than McDonald's.... and call me snobby, but I ain't sitting in McDonald's for 2 hours writing.

October IWSG

Awesome news in terms of Alex J Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group.  There's a full website now!  I'm very excited to be apart of this group in the mist of the awesome upgrades.  You can find it here!


Now, on to how freakin' insecure I am.  It's quite entertaining as it reared its ugly and nonsense head last night.

October has begun, and with my, my goal of having my novel plotted out by November 1.  Nails already chewed off, I get home from work knowing I would get something written down by the end of the night, some sort of early planning.

What came out of it was Adam fully realizing how my brain operates, or cannot operate, between my actually diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder and my pretend diagnosed obsessive compulsiveness.  Because we both have a twisted sense of humor, we got both frustrated and laughed hysterically knowing I was going in circles and he was about to have a nosebleed trying to keep it as simple as possible.

I look at my big goal, the main goal, write a novel, and that's all I see.  Okay, that's fine.  But really, marketing and publishing and revising aside, actually WRITING it takes steps.  And then, the steps take steps.  This is where my head goes, "Bitch, you're on your own," and looks to go play World of Warcraft or some other game, maybe even wash the living room floor instead.

I wrote down research undead and then plot novel, and immediately complain that I can't come up with other stuff.  "I need to decide on the ending."  "Okay, put that under plot a novel."  "Wait, I didn't make room, DAMNIT."  *rips out paper and starts again*

This was an hour and a half... plus with the also pretend diagnosis of ADHD, we both kept getting off track arguing about how a disease would still be in the family with chromosomes and how I had a brief lesson on that as I nearly failed biology in high school.

I still wanted to come up with a daily goal of what to accomplish, weekly goals of what to accomplish, just a plan; I need a plan down because if I don't articulate every little thing, I won't do it, or half-ass it, and then thing I know it'll be October 30th and I won't have anything but this written down:

Literally my title right now.

So that's happening.  BUT!  The ONE THING I decided on was, by Friday, have the timeline written down.

Which I am already scared to do because I need to plot out the plot at the same time, but need to work on the characters that I have in mind...

Oh god, not again.



And question for those who use Blogger for their blogs.... how the hell do I tell Blogger to stop putting a thick, white frame around images I put here?  It's obnoxious and I find it ugly.  I will cry if it has to do with the HTML.  All I do is click the "insert image" button at the top while drafting a post and then Blogger gets all, "Hey, let me put this stupid shit around your image for you."  Can I get around this easily?