I AM A WINNER!!!!!!

I DID IT!  I wrote 51,669 words!   Boo Yah to me!   

Thanksgiving and NaNoWriMo

We had 16 people here for Thanksgiving, and everything went well.  Afterward, while all the food settled, we played "Guess Who" with the little kids in one room,  while people in the other room played "Sequence".  Then we played "Bananagrams", now the guys are watching "Punkin Chunkin".

I tallied up my word count, I am up to 47,007 words.  One more writing session and I will be a winner of NaNoWriMo!

Characters

Characters: We write what they do, they don't do what we write.

I read this quote before I started NaNoWriMo, but didn't really understand it until I started writing. It is so amazing, when you have a fictional character in your head, and you write as fast as you can, he just starts doing things that you really didn't plan. I am quite enjoying seeing what my characters are doing.

My word count for Nov. 22 was 45,058.  That was five days ahead on my word count.

North of London somewhere

I about choked when I saw this news article about the Beatles.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/15/apple-itunes-gets-rights-beatles/?test=faces

The headline was: Apple iTunes, at Long Last, Gets Rights to Beatles Tunes

The first sentence: What's up Apple's sleeve? Apparently, Manchester's favorite mopheads.

EXCUSE ME????? The Beatles are from LIVERPOOL. Apparently the Wall Street Journal must have them mixed up with Davy Jones.


NANOWRIMO UPDATE: I have written 35,593 words as of Tuesday evening, the required quota for Tuesday is 26,672. So I am 8,921 words ahead.

My latest plot twist: The main character, Becky, is worried about her fictional daughter, who is a cruise ship performer. The entire ship has been quarantined because of an ebola outbreak.

There's nothing to it

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." ~Walter Smith

I thought this was a funny quote about writing. But, don't worry. I'm still having an easy time coming up with things to type. I have invented a fictional daughter in law named Twink. She has pink hair, and is fun to write about.

I've Been Writing, Not Counting

I know you haven't heard my word count for a few days.

I have written 31,732 words.

The recommended total for today was 21,671. I have actually written enough words that I could take a break until Friday the 19th.

Theres a little chart on my personal account on NaNoWriMo where it charts my progress. The chart showed that if I continue writing as much as I'm writing, I will get done on Novemeber 21 instead of Nov. 30. I am quite proud of myself.

The Book That Hasn't Been Written Yet

If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ~Toni Morrison

I'm still plugging along with my NaNoWriMo novel. It has been easier than I thought, so far.

I have already completely changed a bunch of it. I've changed from telling it in Third Person, to First Person, I've changed where the main character (Becky) is living, and numerous other things.

I'm not letting anyone read it, even when it is done. But for your reading pleasure, here is one section that I am deleting, so you can go ahead and read it. It won't be in the finished book.

Dr. Suess had it right, you shouldn’t have too many Daves. Oliver Boliver Butt, Marvin O’Gravel Balloon Face, Stinky, Harris Tweed, what were those other names he came up with in that book? I had memorized it at one time, back when the boys were little.

Nathan was most enamored with that book, even when his older brothers wanted me to read something else, Nathan would throw a fit and scream “Weed Owiver Bowiver Butt, Mommy!!”

“Okay, okay,” I would say, trying to calm him down. “I’ll read it after this one” at the same time trying to keep Blake from poking me in the eye with “Are You My Mother”.

How did we come up with all those names? I had always wanted seven children, but six was all Karl could put up with. Six names were hard enough to agree on. From eighth grade onward, I had pictured naming a child after someone in Gone with the Wind, Rhett, or Scarlett maybe, but Karl wouldn’t have it.

I didn’t want any names to start with the same letter either. I could make a job chart faster using just the first letters of the kids- DCNBJM. Just like that, I could recite that list of letters in my sleep.

It annoyed me to make Family Home Evening charts, though, because with parents and kids together there was an overlap of B. B for Becky and B for Blake. For me and Blake, I had to use two letters instead of just one. It didn’t have the same rhythm to see K, Be, D,C,N,Bl,J,M. Why didn’t I think of that before I named our fourth son Blake?

I had liked the name Devin, too, and could have given that name to our second son, but I caught myself before I made that mistake. Our first son Drew started with a D, so after Drew I had to name the next boy Cody. In this family, one alphabet letter for one person, that was the rule.

In this section, Becky sounds a bit critical of Karl. Karl isn't Wayne, in case you are wondering.

Word War

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHnlxuW73kE

When writing NaNoWriMo, you can use this program to have writing contests with other writers. You set the word count and the time, and both of you type as fast as you can, and see who can type the fastest.

Family Time

We had all three of our married sons and their families over here for dinner tonight. Delicious food, and Tiffany and Adam made homemade donuts for dessert. It was great fun.

Also, I am keeping up with the novel writing. I am consistently writing more than the required 1667 words per day, I have been averaging 2613 per day. Today, I am supposed to be up to 11,669, and instead, I am up to 18,291. Hurray for me! Only 31,709 words left to go!

Good Progress for Novel, but not for Fed

I am supposed to have 5,001 words written. As of last evening Nov. 3, I have written 10,438 words in my novel. I have already written 1/5th of the novel, in only 3 days! You only need 50,000 words to win NaNoWriMo. I might win it in two weeks, at this rate.

I forgot to report on how bummed I was last Thursday when icky Gretchen won Project Runway. I didn't like her. And I never once loved any of her clothing. Thats all I can say about that.

And here is the song I was singing about most parts of the election results: "Oh frabjous day, callooh callay, he chortled in his joy"- Lewis Carroll.

I wasn't frabjous about B.J. Lawson's election, of course, since he lost to David Price. I even volunteered at B.J.'s election office, and he still lost. Sad.




But I am most sad, very very sad, about the Fed's decision to print 600 Billion Dollars out of thin air. They are going to print 75 billion dollars a month. I am more depressed about this than I have been in a long time. Our money's buying power will be decreased by 20 percent right off the bat. To anyone who is reading this, Please Please get your food storage. Soon prices may be so high you won't be able to get it.

Book Sale postponed to February

NaNoWriMo report: Quota for Tues, Nov. 2nd, 2 days in:

3334.

The number of words I have typed:

6,830 !!!

They said the first week is the easiest, so you should write as much as you can, they say the 2nd and 3rd weeks are the hardest and it will be a hard slog to get through them. So as fast as the ideas come, I type them.




Book Sale
I was looking forward to going to the Wake County Library Book Sale this month, but I went to their site and found out it is postponed.

http://www.wakegov.com/libraries/events/booksale/default.htm

No Book Sale in November 2010

Wake County Public Library's Annual Book Sale will be in the Exposition Center at the NC State Fairgrounds in February 2011.
Plans are under way to make the book sale hosted by Wake County Public Libraries an even larger event than in past years. After many years of talking about moving the sale to the NC State Fairgrounds (1025 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, NC 27607), we finally have a contract to use the Exposition Center on that site from February 17–20, 2011. In addition, the site has ample parking, easy access and is easily identifiable for the public.

The sale usually occurs in November just prior to the Thanksgiving holidays, but the new location was not available this calendar year, and thus, the move to a new timeframe was necessary. Plans include making the book sale a family experience to share with children, including such potential ideas as face painting, story telling and our Bookmobile. The pricing structure, program additions and volunteer recruitment information will be forthcoming after the Christmas holiday season.

Can I really do it?

Starting today, I'm going to try to write 1,660 words per day for 30 days, as I compete in National Novel Writing Month, or "NaNoWriMo". That will equal 50,000 words. I will try to report on my wordcount every day, or as often as I can. Wish me luck.

TODAY, I TYPED 3216 WORDS.

If I really want to give myself some rewards or punishments (to make me write faster) I am thinking of using Dr. Wicked's "Write-or-Die" program. Watch the YouTube to see how it works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdLLo08cJKY

If you use this program, you can choose to have 3 different levels of consequences for when you stop typing. You set a word goal and a time goal, then start typing.

Gentle- If you stop, a window will pop up and say, "You stopped writing."

Normal- If you stop, a very annoying song will start playing.

Kamikaze- If you stop, the most recently typed words of your document start deleting, one word at a time.

Building up steam to write a novel

In only 3 weeks from yesterday, I am going to start a writing marathon and write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November. I am participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which you can read about HERE.

Or you can read about it on my blog, posts written 3-2-2010 through 3-5-2010.

I am making a big long chart on the wall in Tara's room with all my characters, and plot, and story arc and everything else I don't want to forget. I have been gathering plot and character material for almost a year, so there is too much to just keep in my head, I have to organize it visually.

This could be the biggest waste of time i have ever scheduled. Or it might make me crazy. But I think it will teach me a lot, and I hope that I will feel like I really accomplished something worthwhile.

Past three weeks

Well, we've been home from the cruise for almost three weeks, and I still have piles of stuff to do. The first week and a half was spent getting ready to teach in Tennessee, then we came home from that and I needed to sew a little jacket for Rachel so she could wear it over her bridesmaid dress tomorrow.

I have also been getting ready for the stake day of service, which will happen on Sat. April 24. I'm in charge of the baby quilt project. People have been donating fabric and I have been making some patchwork quilt tops. On the 24th we will be cutting fabric and batting and making kits to give to the Relief Societies and Young Women to finish.

I finished painting my master bathroom, but the other two bathrooms are only partially painted. I probably won't get back to that project for a month or two.

My molar chipped last week, so I just got a temporary crown yesterday, and will get my permanent crown in three weeks. Now I can't chew gum, which was my way of dealing with food cravings, so I know I won't be losing weight until I get that new crown on.

I am still looking forward to writing a novel in November with NaNoWriMo http://www.nanowrimo.org/. But I was surprised to find out that Tara decided to participate in the companion Script Writing contest, which is called Script Frenzy http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/. In that one, you are supposed to write a one-hundred page script during the month of April. I don't know yet how committed she is to finishing it.


Since I am a "natural-disaster-junkie", I've had a lot to dwell on lately. In 2010 we've had big (6.9 and up) earthquakes in Haiti (7.0 Jan. 12), Chile (8.8 Feb. 27), Baja California (7.2 Apr. 4), and China (6.9 Apr. 14). Four big earthquakes within 60 days of each other. Plus, the same day of the China earthquake, the big fireball/meteorite exploded in the sky over the Midwest USA and now the volcano in Iceland is causing airlines to cancel 17,000 airline flights a day over Europe.

Can you say "signs of the times"?

It might be a good time to get a few more emergency preparedness supplies.

Light at the End of Seminary

Yesterday we moved everything out of the stake center high council room, and on Monday I will start teaching seminary in the new Morrisville building, 1/2 mile from my home. No more driving 9 miles to seminary!

I may be released from seminary in just a few months, yet if I am released, I am totally apprehensive to find out what calling I will get next. I am hoping it is a normal, average calling, like Primary teacher or something that I've done a million times before. I am really ready to have a rest from these hours I spend each day on seminary. However, I'll leave it up to God, I suppose if He wants to give me some other hard calling I will deal with it.

I am finally starting to think I can get back into teaching quilting.

I would really like to start learning how to use New Family Search, I hope I can do that a bunch in the coming year.

I also have a goal to go through the whole "Preach My Gospel" book and do every single exercise in it. I have read the whole thing already, but didn't do any of the exercises. I think that will be much more helpful to do this next time.

(I have all these big goals, like doing NaNoWriMo and Preach My Gospel and Family History, as if I'm going to have tons and grundles of free time suddenly. I'm sure it won't quite work out that way.)

Tara is going to BYU in the fall. Seth & Janette have no idea where they are going after BYU graduation in April. Adam is also graduating from NCSU, no news yet on what he and Tiffany will be doing next. Bryce will be an EFY counselor in the Midwest all summer and will be home 2 weeks at the end of August, probably he and Tara will drive out to BYU together. Then Wayne and I will just have Zac left at home for 2 years, that will be really weird.

Oh, I'll tell you a story about my granddaughter, Elizabeth. She has decided that having a pet fish would be good, so when she was at my house she took a Little People toy (it was a plastic girl, didn't look anything like a fish) and put it in a glass of water and carried it around all day. "This is my fish." And she protected it with her life, and wouldn't let anyone touch it or pour out the water. And she fed it a cracker.

Rules for NaNoWriMo

In case you are curious, here are the rules from their website: http://www.nanowrimo.org/hownanoworks

Occasionally, participants write in to ask about the rules of the event. We don't have many! But because we've found that creativity is often heightened by constraints (and communities bolstered by shared goals) we have evolved a handful of rules over the years. The rules state that, to be an official NaNoWriMo winner, you must…

Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.

Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people's works).

Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you're writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!

Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.

Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.

Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

50,000 Words of Crap

I don't usually say "crap" because my mother taught me it was a cuss word, but that was in the title of this section from the NaNoWriMo website, http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/faq.

(From the website) If I'm just writing 50,000 words of crap, why bother? Why not just write a real novel later, when I have more time?

There are three reasons.

1) If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Novel writing is mostly a "one day" event. As in "One day, I'd like to write a novel." Here's the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists. The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those self-defeating worries and START. Once you have the first five chapters under your belt, the rest will come easily. Or painfully. But it will come. And you'll have friends to help you see it through to 50k.

2) Aiming low is the best way to succeed. With entry-level novel writing, shooting for the moon is the surest way to get nowhere. With high expectations, everything you write will sound cheesy and awkward. Once you start evaluating your story in terms of word count, you take that pressure off yourself. And you'll start surprising yourself with a great bit of dialogue here and a ingenious plot twist there. Characters will start doing things you never expected, taking the story places you'd never imagined. There will be much execrable prose, yes. But amidst the crap, there will be beauty. A lot of it.

3) Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.

It sounds like a fun challenge. I can hardly wait!

Calmed Down Yet?

Are you over your shock that I'm going to write a novel? Do you feel sorry that I am so delusional, and want to talk me out of it? Don't worry, I don't have any high hopes about this, and I don't believe it will ever be published, I am writing it purely for the exercise and to say that I've done it. I picture it like running a marathon--what do you really get out of it but a little medal and a lot of satisfaction? So don't worry that I'm going to be sorely disappointed.



If you read the website,
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/hownanoworks you will find out how to participate.

(from their website)How NaNoWriMo Works (in Ten Easy Steps)

1) Sign up for the event by clicking the "Sign Up Now" link at the top of the site. It's right there above "National."

2) Check your email and read the ginormous email our noveling robots send you. It will have "Love" in the subject line, and may be hiding in your Junk folder.

3) Log into your account and use the links on the My NaNoWriMo page to set your timezone, affiliate with a region, and tell us a little bit about yourself.

4) Begin procrastinating by reading through all the great advice and funny stories in the forums. Post some stories and questions of your own. Get excited. Get nervous. Try to rope someone else into doing this with you. Eat lots of chocolate and stockpile noveling rewards.

5) On November 1, begin writing your novel. Your goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight, local time, on November 30th. You write on your own computer, using whatever software you prefer.

6) This is not as scary as it sounds.

7) Starting November 1, you can update your word count in that box at the top of the site, and post excerpts of your work for others to read. Watch your word-count accumulate and story take shape. Feel a little giddy.

8) Write with other NaNoWriMo participants in your area. Write by yourself. Write. Write. Write.

9) If you write 50,000 words of fiction by midnight, local time, November 30th, you can upload your novel for official verification, and be added to our hallowed Winner’s Page and receive a handsome winner’s certificate and web badge. We'll post step-by-step instructions on how to scramble and upload your novel starting in mid-November.

10) Win or lose, you rock for even trying.

A Shocking New Goal

I am going to completely stun all of you with this revelation. I think I really want to write a novel.

You are probably saying, "What the Heck! Mom is a QUILTER not a NOVELIST! WHAT HAS GOTTEN INTO HER????"

Well, a few years ago, when I was dead set on writing a how-to-quilt book, I checked out lots of books from the library about how to get published. I basically wanted to know how to type the book in the correct format, how to find a publisher, etc. Instead, I kept accidentally checking out books on how to write a novel. And the more I read them, the more I said to myself, "I could do that!"

Just like you, I have had lots of crazy and weird and thought-provoking things that have either happened in my own life, or I have been a witness to them happening in other people's lives, and the more these little anecdotes rattle around in my brain the more they collide and form plotlines and dialogue and IT COULD REALLY BE A GOOD NOVEL. So there.

The most interesting book on writing that I came across, was one called No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, by Chris Baty. He started the National Novel Writing Month ( called NaNoWriMo) in 1999 with 21 friends, and they all made a goal to write 50,000 words in 30 days. By the next year, 140 people signed up, and 21 of them succeeded in writing 50,000 words.

Last year, 2009, they had 119,301 adult participants worldwide, and 21,683 had achieved the goal. It looks like loads of fun, and I want to do it too. (Only 1,667 words per day, shouldn't be TOO hard.)

National Novel Writing Month is Nov. 1-Nov. 30, and unless I have a super hard new church calling after seminary ends, writing a novel is what I will be doing that month. Anyone want to join me?

Check out the website: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano

(from their website) What is NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.