Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Off-Budget Day 1 and NaNoWriMo

Food first, then fun.

I started off my off budget month in a flurry of eating. Went to Denny's very early yesterday morning to have something that had been calling to me for a while- the cheese stick sammich thing- even though I know I said I wasn't going to gorge on dairy.

Shouldn't have, by the way. I still hurt from that. Also must have gone through about 5 glasses of full sugar coke. Om nom nom.

Then home, where I chatted at you guys while telling my intestines that gurgling isn't refined.

The intestines eventually got quiet(er), and I hit the grocery store.

It was a junk food kinda day, in case you hadn't already guessed.

Picked up a bag of chips (half off!) and a pint of Ice Cream.

Chips were so-so, but the Ice Cream? ZOMG, happy party in my mouth. I've been dreaming of this stuff since the end of February. The Purely Decadent stuff? It's vegan, they make one with coconut milk, one with almost all soy milk... it's like *real* ice cream, and at my store it's the same price as a pint of that Haagen dazs stuff. Also, the cookie dough? It's Gluten Free. You know of another gluten free cookie dough ice cream that tastes good? Or even exists?

Oh, and did I mention- it's a *real* pint, not one of those wimpy size modified 15 or 14.5 oz ones. Actually says "one pint" on it. How win is that?

So yeah, I ate half of it yesterday, all of the chips... Will finish the ice cream today, and pick up some veggies to nom with my food later today.

NaNoWriMo-

I'm gonna go out on a limb here, peeps. I've started (against my better judgement and desires to actually get stuff done) to use Twitter. I'm gonna give you guys my Twitter ID. It has my *really real* name attached. Please don't IRL stalk me.

What? Paranoid? Me? Just a bit.

Online stalking is ok. It's just the showing up at my grocery store, mom's house, gas station, front door stuff that creeps me out. A lot.

So you can follow me @lazyjayn. If there's a pic of Bear the dog instead of a human, you've found me.

It's also my NaNo name... friend requests accepted.

So, resources...

  • I don't know if I've pointed it out before, but I'm in love with Write or Die. There's an online version, or you can buy a desktop one for like $10 (not associated, just in love). The program is in their sidebar, just put in words or time, pick level of evil, and click start. Don't forget to save your work, either.
  • I'm listening to Apocalyptica while I write- (most of) the music is fast and there aren't a lot of words to distract me. Good for pumping out wordcount. Better if I know where I'm going first. May change if I ever get to know my characters.
  • Harlequin (the romance novel people) are doing some seriously cool stuff over on their blog and community pages and whatnot. There are chats, editors doing some (very limited) quick turn around reviews, blog updates with super useful information, and a chance at the end to submit a first chapter to them by December 15th with guaranteed response by the end of January. Talk about jumping the line with that- 6 weeks instead of 12-15. Win.
  • Also, I follow Lynn Viehl's blog. She's a multi (multi multi) published author who manages some pretty serious production every year. Last November she NaNo'd with the unwashed masses and she's doing it again this year. Puts up super useful link lists, offers a view of things from the "other side", and is just generally human.
Right, think that'll help?

None of it's helping me right now. I took off in what turns out to be totally the wrong direction with... um, yeah, no idea where I'm going, no one talking in my head (that sounds good, right? but it's really not) and no real outline. I have just over 1300 words (behind already, ack!) which I'm keeping.

I'm starting over, though. The words I have sound dead. They don't have my voice (at all), and are very tell-y. And it was physically painful to write them. I think I'm keeping the characters, I'll just be playing with them differently. Right now my heroine is whiny and my hero's an ass. Not a good start.

So I'm going to spend an hour or so writing them through, get some outlining done, and maybe do the query for today's eharlequin challenge to set the direction in my head. Then I'll set my stage, drop my characters in it, and see what they *actually* do.

No write or die tho- not until I know who they are and what they're doing. As painful as it is to *read* whiny confused heroines, it's at least twice as bad to write them, know it, and be able to do nothing to stop the dratted twit from doing it.

So yeah, that's me so far.

Other NaNo-ers?

3 comments:

  1. I am now following you on Twitter! I just use Twitter as a harmless escape. It is sort of fun sometimes. I will now admit to you that I had no idea what "NaNoWriMo" was or if I was a "NaNo-er". So I googled and felt dumb but I learned something though. LOL!

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  2. You were right, excellent resources for *me*. And I'm at 2111 words right now, which isn't totally humiliating. So yay me.

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  3. Tiff- Hmm... maybe I should have included a link to *that* too...

    Amie, there were other links somewhere- geeky stuff, like free trial scrivener, but you should be able to find that from the OLL NaNo home page.

    Oh, and I totally forgot one! I'll add it tomorrow.

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