Monthly Archives: November 2011

Why I’m Thankful for Hitchhikers

24 Thursday Nov 2011

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This year, along with my family, what tops my list of Things to Be Thankful For is hitchhikers. Intergalactic hitchhikers, to be specific, as memorialized in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

As a few people know, about seven months ago I got engaged to, by my estimates, the coolest person in the world. What fewer people know is that Douglas Adams is a large part of the reason why this came to pass.

Back in 2004, I was in a summer theater production of Grease: The Musical Watered Down for High School Productions But Retaining the Message That You Should Change Yourself to Make People Like You. My talented and beautiful sister, Elisabeth, would come home every night complaining about her dance partner, who apparently had two left feet so bad it was a miracle he could walk straight. Fortunately for all players involved, the kid who was playing Eugene flaked, and the director decided that Andrew’s adolescent klutziness and comedic talents might be better suited to play the school nerd than a dancer in the chorus. Lizzie was happy because she got to dance with someone better, and started chatting with Andrew more. The topic of program bios came up, specifically the “crazy” quotes some people include, and the following conversation ensued:

Elisabeth: One year, my sister put “So long and thanks for all the fish” in her bio.

Andrew: Nice. That was actually my least favorite book in the series.

Elisabeth: Wait, you’ve read those books??

Andrew: Yes…

Elisabeth: No one reads those books. You need to talk to Jessica. She needs someone she can talk about books with.

The rest, as they say, is history.

So this year, I’m thankful that I’ll have dinner with the most wonderful family I could ever hope for, I’m thankful my pecan pie looks and smells good coming out of the oven, I’m thankful that I’m in a year and a half of adventurous wedding planning before I get to spend my life with the guy I love more than anything, and I am thankful that one night, young Douglas Adams wondered if intergalactic hitchhikers would need a travel guide, and unwittingly set things in motion to make me happier than I knew I could be.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My NaNoWriMo Theme Song

18 Friday Nov 2011

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One of the things you learn when you’ve written just over 30,000 words in 18 days is that sometimes, you need a little push to get those words on the page. The answer, for many of us? Music. The first year I did NaNo, back in 2007, I was following Neil Gaiman’s blog religiously. He posted a little gem that had made him smile called “Georgette Plays a Goth,” and I fell utterly in love. The bright, unbelievably catchy, nigh-indiscernible song of a waitress who likes to dress like a Goth from time to time had just the right up-tempo perkiness to shake me up and get another couple hundred words out. It is basically my NaNoWriMo anthem at this point: I only listen to it during November, but in November, by gum, I listen the heck out of this song. Ladies and gentlemen, the magic of Tullycraft:

(G-g-g-georgette)

Aaaaaahhhhhh

10 Thursday Nov 2011

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Okay. So I’ve got just over 18,000 words, which is good, and work is mostly holding together, and I am insisting that this is not a cold, just a last burst of allergies, and there’s about a quarter of a made-from-scratch apple pie in the fridge. Things are hectic, but mostly good. I’m sorry I haven’t been around here, but basically every second I have I’m either writing NaNo or reading Madame Bovary for class. Fine, I am playing some Bejeweled as well, but only when my brain is too fried for more productive tasks.

There’s an impressively coherent new article up on the Canary Review about publishing NaNo novels, so probably check that out if you want to read something that’s not a total spazzfest. And now for a list of the things I bribe myself with in order to get words done:

  1. Slice of aforementioned pie (700 words)
  2. Episode of Dr. Who (1000 words)
  3. 1 and 2 together (meet daily quota even though I don’t feel like writing)
  4. Walk in the park (400 words)
  5. Bake something interesting (2000 words)
  6. Game of Bejeweled (350 words)
  7. Chapter of latest Discworld novel (400 words)

10,000 Words!

05 Saturday Nov 2011

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The 10K mark has historically been the tipping point where I knew I was going to have to see NaNo all the way through, and I just hit it! A day early, no less. I have no doubt I’ll need the word buffer later, but at the moment I’m riding high, and I have an apple pie in the oven to boot. My whole apartment smells like cinnamon and butter. Life is good.

NaNoWriMo: The first 4 days

04 Friday Nov 2011

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I’m feeling cautiously optimistic here: I’m on par (even a little ahead) right now with NaNoWriMo, and hope to put more words in the bank as buffer against the dreaded Slump that tends to hit somewhere during the second week. It’s amazing to learn how much writing time I actually can wrestle out of my schedule, without sacrificing too much. I’m perhaps sneaking an extra few minutes here and there at work to pound out 100 words now and again, but I’m still keeping an eye on my projects, so I’m feeling okay.

The freeing aspect really is the quantity-over-quality permission you get while doing NaNo. I don’t have to worry if the scene sucks, or the whole story: get those 1,667 words out today and fix it in December. Most of my short stories run between 1,500 and 2,000 words. I’m writing just over 2,000 a day right now. It doesn’t matter if I write three terrible ones for every one story that’s half decent, because that rate will still leave me with about 8 workable stories at the end of the month, which is still a respectable productivity rate. It’s also helpful to allow myself to spew all the editorial and backstory, because I believe characters get rounder the more you know about them, and that it shows even when you cut it all out in a later draft, because what you leave is what’s truest to them. I tend to forget this in regular writing time because the spewing is ugly, and I’m reluctant to spend my valuable morning minutes writing something I know I’ll cut.

I need to go check on work now so that I can jot down another paragraph or two once everything’s in order, but I wanted to let you know we’re off to a good start, at least. Also, I’m temporarily suspending Flash Fridays, but I will post some story excerpts here in the next day or so. Onward to more words!

NaNo Word Count Update: 6, 820 (154 words ahead)

In Case I Drop Off the Map

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

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NaNoWriMo has officially begun! I stayed up for midnight last night and banged out my first 500 words before collapsing into bed. The hope (as it is every time I do this) is to get 2000 words done per day rather than 1667, so I have enough of a buffer to take the occasional breather day off. That hasn’t worked for me yet, but we will see!

Since I am trying to get 2K of fiction out daily, though, please understand I will most likely be posting less often here, although I’ll try and pop in from time to time (hopefully after meeting daily quota).

If you are reading this and happen to be doing NaNo yourself, feel free to let me know at any time what you are writing, what your word count is, and how the writing’s going! I am glad we are in this crazy thing together.

Word count: 1,890