November 29, 2010
And the winner is…
The official certificate for all those participants who met the goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days
I’m going to take a well-deserved rest and tackle the enormous task of editing in the month of December. Stay tuned as I’ll share more over the next week or so.
November 25, 2010
The blessings of snow
How I'm going to look and feel on December 1st, post-NaNoWriMo
Day 24 and total word count is 44,013
I’ve been fortunate to have been able to stay home some this week and start my Thanksgiving holiday week a bit early, giving me time to crank out more words. My massage therapist yesterday could feel the physical effects the extra typing and sitting have been wreaking on my body. In the end though, my passion and discipline have fueled me and masked the pain well 
According to my stats, I’m ahead but the stats don’t take into account visiting family. Fortunately, I’m taking November 29th off, to finish up at 50,000+ words and call it a day. The picture above says it all.
November 18, 2010
The humorous side of novel writing
I couldn’t help but chuckle at our friend Guy Smith’s wry endeavor: Cynical Word of the Day from his website, Cynical Word of the Day. The word of the day from Thursday, November 17th, made my day so I’m including it in my blog post so you can laugh, too.
Cynical Word of the Day: "Novel"
November 15, 2010
Spontaneity, serendipity, and synchronicity
Day 14 and total word count is 28,785
Over the course of this weekend, spontaneous meanderings in the name of research for my novel has led to some surprising serendipitous occurrences and delightful synchronistic discoveries.
Spontaneity (n): The exhibiting of actions, impulses, or behaviour that are stimulated by internal processes.
Serendipity (n): An aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
Synchronicity (n): An apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more similar or identical events that are causally unrelated.
November 14, 2010
Past the half-way point
In honor of passing my half-way point, I created a vision or dream board about the success I see for my novel(s).
Day 13
Total Word Count: 26166
November 13, 2010
Is it getting hot in here or is it just me?
That was the refrain during last night’s Eastside NaNo Writers Group meet-up at Panera in Redmond.
The meeting room didn’t have a lot of ventilation so we’d occasionally get too hot during our timed “word wars” and have to open the doors and be subjected to the noisy patrons in the restuarant who couldn’t care less about the pressure we were under 
In the space of 90 minutes, we had 5 timed word wars, where we competed with one another to write more than the other. The prizes were miniature rubber ducks in some sort of costume. The person who wrote the most words at the end of the night won a lighted rubber ducky. A most prized possesion amongst us NaNos (participants in NaNoWriMo). The ducks have a history* unto themselves and I’ve put that info at the bottom of this post.
I, fortunately, have a military version one that Jason happened to have and was PERFECT for Veteran’s Day. Also, with his cap and uniform, he does have a commanding presence so he was quite “influential” last night in helping me write.
Now, if I were the obeying sort, I would have accomplished more than my evening’s word count but hey, I can always pay attention to his order tomorrow when I plan to play catch up big time.
Day 11: 19,925 words
*THE DUCK
For those of you who are new to Seattle NaNoWriMo, or haven’t heard yet, we have a thing for duckies in this region. Mostly the rubber ducky began as a way for wrimos to recognize each other in a café full of laptops. If you get to a write-in and you can’t find the NaNo contingent, the first thing to look for is a rubber duck. For the whole story of the duck and how it came to be our mascot, check out the hydrophobicduck community on LiveJournal or in our note on facebook. Short version: we’re poking fun at the University of Oregon. And we tend to include some ‘odd ducks’ in our novels. They’ve been hydrophobic, had antennae, been on fire, been in groups, been made into hats and made strange noises, been upside-down and THIS YEAR’S DUCK WILL BE CAMOUFLAGED OR OTHERWISE DIFFICULT TO SEE. It’s a fun exercise and should be an interesting way to get an extra few hundred words.
November 8, 2010
A weekend of stops and starts
Blindsided by research has been the theme this weekend. I feel the need to be as accurate as possible as I write rather than include placeholders everywhere. The problem with accuracy is that when you have only 30 days to write 50,000 words, you have to adopt a devil-may-care attitude and make a pact that accuracy will come in the edit passes to follow. Just the words, quantity versus quality, is what matters at this point.
Chalk it up to newbie nerves.
OR
The decade or more as a technical communicator where every piece of content requires the utmost accuracy AND often, quantity obscures the quality and the message is lost.
Day 7, 14477 words
I’m going to keep on keeping on.
P.S. I did make significant progress, however, on my sketchbook. (I am participating in The Sketchbook Project. More on that in another post.) The last thing I have to do is fill in the final word count of my novel on November 30, 2010. Woot!
