I officially finished my first NaNo!

On the bus home today, I crossed the 50,000 word threshold. And kept going because I was stuck in the middle of an anecdote and had to get out before I could live with myself stopping. It was a great anecdote, really, though I suppose that's something you'll just have to take my word for.

Looking back at my novel, and I have looked over parts of it (which I may never do again), I've decided it's really not good. There are gems, to be sure, but the majority of it's just crap. But I suppose that's NaNo for you, making pure crap completely acceptable. I skipped both the best and worst parts of my life - middle school and high school, respectably - and I don't know why. When I started, that's what I wanted to write about the most. Now, they're nowhere to be seen.

It was a blast, and now not only do I have my very own autobiography/novel to show off (or not), I have this nifty obsession with word count. [181]

See you next NaNo!!

Hitting the finish line isn't exciting like I'd hoped it would be.

I am proof that procrastination works wonders:

So that 15-page paper that's due tomorrow, I have almost 14,000 more words added to my novel to show for it. I simply cannot bring myself to do that stupid paper, but at least I was a productive procrastinator, I suppose.

Now there's just a little meeting and some dinner to stand between me and finishing that paper. But no more NaNo. That probably would not turn out so well for my Government grade.

Disclaimer: During my writer's crisis I thought it best to switch gears on my autobiography, something I definitely couldn't have done had it been pure fiction. Instead of going from past to present, I abruptly (after a brief explanation) move from somewhere during fifth grade to talking about college and begin going backwards into the past.

I'm not sure that it's working to tell the story I want to tell, but it's definitely getting the word count up. I'm able to write so much more vividly and so much more story-like with these more recent events, just because they are so recent. Stories from so long ago were a bit hazy and read a lot more like a scattered bit of what actually happened. Those parts ended up being not very involving and not very interesting, to tell the truth. The thing is, I know the whole story, so it doesn't matter that it's out of order, but to anyone else, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's probably a good thing, then, that no one but me will ever read this little slice of my life.

I love that NaNo makes this all okay.

We saw the sun come up Sunday morning, that sneaky little bugger. It stayed pitch dark until almost 6:30, and for a while there, we were beginning to doubt that it would make an appearance at all. But it did, and we made it through (with pretty artwork to prove it)!

Overall, the exhausting experience was quite fun what with rainy walks with carrots, Taco Bell trips, and of course, our ridiculously trendy NaNo ensembles. It successfully pushed me just past the halfway mark. I don't think I'll be able to write until Wednesday, at the earliest, so thankfully I got ahead when I did. I have two large, terrifying exams tomorrow (Psych and Marketing) as well as a 15-page research paper for Government, a print ad, a Psych paper, and a team project by Friday.
Woo hoo!

Just before Thanksgiving Break, on Thursday, I will hopefully have all of that finished and can truly enjoy my Smart Monkey time with Jackie and be productive. And then, Thanksgiving!!! Which means not only a relatively relaxing break from school, but a trip to Michigan and ample time to NaNo along the way as well.

So our "staying up til the sun comes up" was buckets of fun. It wasn't as productive as I'd hoped, for me at least, but it was much more fun goofing off. We did write for most of the time, however, with minimal breaks. A brief rundown: we watched Election, then started writing at 10, fueled with caffeine/cocoa concoctions from BJs. Took a Taco Bell break at midnight, and my fashion-blind hobo look was well-received among the rude students on campus. ("I like your stripes! And I'm not just saying that to be a douchebag, I really do!!" - thank you, Mr. Drunk Basketball Player, it really means a lot.) Once we were fed and re-fueled, and one episode of LOST later, we started writing again until 2:30, when we went on a carrot-filled walk around campus in the rain and our leggings. We just missed the cutoff for ordering cookies (but more than more than made up for it with last night's stroke of delicious luck!) and then wrote til about 5:30, when we just lost it. That's where our pretty pretty artwork factors in. We watched an episode of The Office, and then it was finally 6:53 and it was officially light out. Our all-nighter was done, so Meg went downstairs to bed. I was wide awake, and frankly quite proud of myself, until I decided to lay down around 8 and woke up around 12:45, very confused as to why Scooby Doo 2 was on TV.

We're doing really well on our word counts, and it's probably a good thing that we're both ahead, seeing as this week is fiendish. I'm sure Meg will tell you her scary amounts of things to do, but I have: a Bio proposal, a Bio paper outline, a Fiction piece due (the scariest of them all), a Grammar quiz, Grammar flashcards to consequently make and study, a Latin test, and, oh yeah, a completed rough draft of my autobio for class. Fun!

Thursday Meg and I are going to be smart monkeys, and hopefully that will be a welcome stress-reliever. And then we'll have 10 days off from school to make our nanos the best things ever written in a month! :-P

Enough said.

Nano Art, circa 5:30 am.

So, I'm in the library because the rest of my classes were cancelled (yay) and I'm waiting for Meg so we can go to lunch. I went to Autobio today and Gigi handed back a packet of all the writing I've done thus far that may potentially make it into my final memoir. She had mostly really positive comments, which left me excited and anxious to perfect my autobio. But all of her suggestions revolved around a central theme. She says she loves my voice, and I have a great description and a fluid narrative; but what is missing is the me factor. She wants to get a better sense of who I am, what I think and like and feel passionately about, and why. She wants to better understand the things that I hold so dear to me: my parents, my relationship with them, my sister, my home, my neighborhood, my intimate family relationships, my identity... basically, all the heavy/central stuff. And I now know why she commented about that: I can't seem to bring myself to write about the things I cherish the most.

I've tried many times to start writing about LNT, Hannah & Sarah, my family dynamic, my extended family, my beautiful home and neighborhood, and everything I write just sucks. (I know nano writing is supposed to suck, but I'm looking at this in terms of which pieces I'm going to choose to put in my memoir, what stories I need to tell most of all. So I have to take it seriously, and really hone my voice.)

I'm holding back, and now I can really see it. I never thought it would be so hard to write about the things that really make my life worthwhile. I wrote 15 pages on youth group the other day, and I said a bunch of stuff, but it was, at the same time, nothing like what I needed to write about. I really have to work on opening up, being myself, and letting my writing really stand for who I am, and it's scary because it's a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Welcome home, Week 2 Writer's Crisis. Oh, how I haven't missed you so.

I've had a writer's crisis. Nearly one-third of the way there and I'm questioning everything.

Oh NaNo.

I applaud Meg on her major progress. She's coming along quite nicely, as am I. Spending the afternoon in the cafe was really fun, a delightful change of pace. I tackled some hard stuff today, and 14 pages later, I'm not sure if I feel sweet release or frustration, but what's done is done. And now, tomorrow, I move onto another, hopefully easier to write, chapter. The fingerless gloves really add some by-the-light-of-the-moon-in-a-dusty-attic-struggling-writer ambiance, ha. Hey, whatever works, right?

And here you thought I quit. Fear not, I just went to Canada for the weekend - probably not the best idea in the middle of an intense NaNo-ing month - but it was planned before I committed to NaNo. I brought my laptop along with me, all set to type away the four hours spent in the car and make great headway on my autobiography. However, apparently typing in moving vehicles doesn't have the best effect on my stomach so, less than 250 words in, I was calling it quits. Long story short, I came back from Canada completely exhausted and more than 5000 words behind my goal.

Yet, here I am today, almost 1000 words ahead of my daily goal. (Thank God, since the overwhelming, super-stressful part of college is quickly approaching.) I'm not quite sure how it happened, but it did, and I'm excited about it. Jackie and I went to a very Ithaca cafe in the Commons today for a change of venue to NaNo. I've decided it's something that isn't quite as necessary for an autobiography as for a piece of fiction, but it was nice nonetheless. I like the atmosphere of cafes - very conducive to novel-writing.

Looking forward to Staying Up Until the Sun Comes Up!
Expect some craziness then, if not sooner.

Offering up a few pearls of wisdom: first of all, please ignore the nano counter to the left. Something screwy is up with them, and as a result, our word count goal is significantly A. different from each other and B. completely off the actual target. Do, however, look at the bold number in black: that's our amassed word count, and it's accurate. Observe it and be in awe of it. Also, I workshopped one of my pieces in my autobio class today; I was a bit surprised at the feedback I got. Apparently my professor, and a few of my classmates, think that I'm holding back in my writing. I never, ever considered that to be true -- but now I'm starting to have doubts about that. Maybe I do hold back. And now, for the first time all nano, I'm having writer's block. I'm meaning to start a piece about my family & holidays, but for some reason, it's a lot harder than I thought. I think I'm afraid of not being completely honest and saying what I want to say, although I don't know why I should not want to write it. I feel like I'm perfectly good at going on and on about things (consider the amount of pages I've written about my pets & fostering), but not so good at revealing everything at its core. Oh, I don't know.

Tomorrow Meg and I are going to the commons to write in one of the cafes. Maybe inspiration and honesty will stop in to say hi.

Writing nonfiction, at least at this point in the nano game, is so much easier than writing fiction. And my hamsters -- my darling boys -- are SO noisy at night!!!!!

Apparently, I am a nocturnal writer. Two nights of NaNo, two nights where I made my word count within the eleven o'clock hour. I'm just slightly ahead of schedule, which I would love to keep up because, right now, it's all that's keeping me on the "ham" side of the plate in this thing.

So the first 48 hours of so of nano have been just fine. Meg and I toasted each other with our sparkling grape juice and got to work right at midnight. We wrote together for about a half hour, and we each got around 800 words. I wrote a little more after she left, and by the time I went to bed, I had already reached my word count. I continued to write after I slept and went to class, but now, two days into it, I'm afraid there's been a change of plans. I think I've decided to do nonfiction -- I had wanted to do it over the summer, and had planned on it. But that's before I had to write my autobio for class; I thought fiction would be good in addition. But come to think of it, I really do feel that at this point in my life, right now, the best thing for me, is to write nonfiction. I want to write a full-length autobio. I look at it this way: chances are, I'll never be motivated to write a book length autobio again (unlesss I do it in another year's nano, but why not do it when it's fresh in my mind?), and I can always write fiction another time. So, as soon as I convince myself fully, I will switch over to nonfiction. I wrote almost 5k of my autobio last night and this morning, so I won't even be behind. We'll see.

In other news: Nano (aka Schizo) and Ace are the best, smartest hamsters ever!! I just adore them already.