Workaholia

…is the name of the hypothetical company that girlfriday and I will erect (snerk) to take over the world and whatever and such. At least, that’s what we say whenever we swing from one end of the workaholia extreme (supreme laziness) to the other (drama drama drama recap recap recap oh a drink!).

me: Oh my god with the new dramas.

girlfriday: Seriously, May?

me: Do you suppose we could learn to write faster? Or be more efficient?

girlfriday: That’s an idea. Well, I don’t know if we could write faster, but we could try sleeping less.

Karma and cat spittle

So my cat, aka The Brat, is sick. Nothing serious, just a mild cold that has her sneezing frequently, though she’s just as active as ever. Sometimes her sneezes send spittle flying over her fur, which she’ll then groom right off, which I think cannot be sanitary. Then again, we’re dealing with animals to whom licking equals sanitizing process, so maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Anyway, the other day while she was sitting on the window ledge looking outside, she almost sneezed herself off her perch. Yeah, I laughed. What? It was funny!

The Brat is on most days a persnickety, aloof ball of floof — adorable and yet completely immune to cuddles. Which can be sadly frustrating when I want to shower her in kisses and she’s all, Aw, Mom, geroffme! This is so not cool! Ooh, birds! Really, I think she just barely permits me to hug her; it certainly ain’t for her benefit. So the one nice thing about when she feels a little under the weather (and I mean a case of the sniffles, nothing more) is that she gets more affectionate.

Like the other night when I was getting ready to sleep. Normally she pretends to be wholly unconcerned with the whole bedding-down process, although I can totally see her eyeing me, belying her feigned indifference — and then she sneaks into bed after I’ve settled down. Because she’s up and about before I am in the mornings, sometimes I wonder if she thinks she’s fooling me. WHATEVER, CAT. I wake up in the middle of the night when you’re draped all over my legs, YOU BIG FAKER.

But with her being all snuffly, she promptly laid down on my chest for once, curling up as close as she could to my neck, tucking herself right under my chin. I pet her as she purred, and I thought to myself, yay, she’s being sweet! How cute! We are bonding!

And then she sneezed on my face.

Why hello there, November. You again?

Has it really been a year since I last wrote in this blog? I’m not doing the Nano thing this year (am plenty busy without it), but I’m thinking I should probably use this space more.

Was looking at a blog the other day (a half-personal, half-professional sort of dealio), and it was so witty, disarming, and enjoyable to read that I thought to myself, with equal measures envy and resolve, “I should really write a blog.”

Pause.

“Like that one, I mean.”

Funny to think that DB started out on this humble little space here and has since moved on to more expansive, more expensive pastures. Not that it’s run any differently than it was back then, despite the occasional and inevitable “It USED to be so much BETTER!” pointed sigh. (Can sighs be pointed? In my mind they are, with the offended party doing their best to breathe their disapproval in my general direction. I just pretend not to notice, leaving that affront hanging in the air with nowhere to go but back to its sender, who may dispose of it as they will.)

Day 1, again

Here we are again.

It sort of feels like Day 1 is a bit of a cheat, because I don’t have a clear-cut narrative structure in place, but since it’s the first day I have the luxury of just spitting out scenes that I know will come later. No need to organize the thoughts or write scenes sequentially since I’m just getting words on the blank page, the faster the better, because the sooner there’s black on that white, the less daunting it is to keep adding more black to that white. The scenes written today (really, more like barfed up) don’t as yet have a defined place in the overall plot, but I know the emotional context. So it’s a bit like splattering gobs of color at the wall in an effort to create a Jackson Pollock-like work of art and ending up with a Jackson Pollock-like mess of paint.

But hey, I’ll take word count wherever I can.

NaNoWriMo: Take two

All right. Dusting off this old blog again. (Who even still READS this? *curious*)

So last year I made it about a week before I flamed out. I was disappointed to leave the game so early, but in retrospect that was actually not so bad. I’d have loved to have finished, of course, but at least I got a good taste of Nano and a nice (if small) chunk of writing to show for it.

This year I’m a lot less prepared — I only remembered Nanowrimo was encroaching a few days ago — and therefore my mind is all a-jumble with the various ideas I’ve got spinning in this headspace. I’ve got an idea in the works, which I’ve been tossing around in my brain for the better part of the last five years. (I know! Five years! That’s a lot of procrastination, but in case you didn’t know, I am the master of that.) It’s one of those ideas that made me and my love of flippancy a little uncomfortable with its earnest spirit. Plus, I was maybe-sorta “saving” the idea for later, for when I became a better writer and could do it better justice. (It occurs to me that this may be yet another excuse to procrastinate so I wouldn’t have to write it, while feeling okay about writing it because hey, at least my reasons were good!) I suppose this is the point where I bitchslap that flinching ego of mine and tell it to grow a pair and just do it.

Last year I was super-prepared with outlines and color-coded folders with notes and character bios and relationship charts, and I faded in the first week. So maybe this year the lack of preparation might work to my benefit. Well, I can hope.

Uh, where’d November go?

Clearly I have been remiss. I’ve actually been writing since my last post, but I haven’t been keeping up with my Nanometer, and now ’tis all over. It’s okay, though, because Nano has been a good kick in the pants, if not an end in and of itself. Getting into the habit of daily writing (or, in the absence thereof, at least daily guilt — guilt hopefully leading to writing) is a good enough result for me.

As for the Nanobook that wasn’t, I got a little farther in the plot before another idea started beckoning to me. I was good in November at ignoring all distractionary (it’s a word if I MAKE it a word) writing projects, which I was assured was the right thing to do by Meg Cabot in her Nano email. You know, the email about the plastic crate full of abandoned projects that got left for newer, shinier projects, only to remain moldering and unfinished for years to come?

Anyway, am trying to convince myself that it’s not cheating to skip projects since Nanowrimo month is over. Faulty logic, I haz it. It’s hard though, because the Nano project is a low-concept sort of mainstream fiction piece, while the other project is a high-concept sci-fi-y megalith of an idea with tons of characters and an intricate backbone of intertwining storylines and political machinations. Who wants to do simple, lighthearted fiction when one can be lost in the thrill of worldbuilding instead?

Has anyone ever had success juggling two projects at once? Or is this a case of “Just pick one and stick with it”?

Day 9

NaNoWriMo Days 5-9. Last year I thought about joining in Nano about a week in, but got defeatist, thinking, “Eh, I missed a quarter of the time, there’s no way I can do it.” I should have just done it (aside from the whole not-really-having-much-of-an-idea issue) because I missed a chunk of this first week but goshdarnitgollygeewhiz I’m gonna stick it out and get to 50,000 if it kills me. That last caveat worries me.

So this week sucked — you know, just one of those work-drowned, everything-irritates, cranky weeks. I picked up an extra project for work and I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew, and then somehow manage to pull it out at the last minute. It’s a gift? Then again, probably also a curse, since the last-minute tearing of hair and panicking would be greatly reduced if time management were I skill I chose to cultivate. I don’t. Not because it’s not a worthwhile skill to know, but because I’ve never managed to find the time to figure it out. Catch-22, you are caught. And sometimes I have this crazy desire to just go into The Other Blog and just blitz it to nothingness, bye-bye, *poof*, such is my frustration. I don’t think I actually would, but some days, I’m mighty tempted. Grr. Arg.

On the upside, I’m making a Nano comeback! Or, I’d better be. I got a bunch of outlining down yesterday for some of the later developments of the story, and I’m sure the outliners out there can agree that a little extra time working on solidifying an outline beats a mindless 5,000 word count. Of course, I’d still like that 5,000 word count. But thanks be that I’m not a strict outliner, or it’d take me all of Nano Month to get everything nailed down where it needs to be.

Now, I’ve just got to finish the Work Beast so I can get down to the Nano Beast.