can I sleep now?

I've pillaged. I've plundered. And I'm done.

I'm not sure how. I think I've lost feeling in my left pinky finger and rubbed the "n" permanently off my keyboard. But I've finished with a grand total of 50406 words.

I'm dead tired and I have to work tomorrow. Can I sleep now?

Quote of the Day: Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind. ~Catherine Drinker Bowen, Atlantic, December 1957

knee deep in NANOness

I apologize to the three, possible four people that follow my blog. The end of October and the beginning of November have been massive months for everything, including a conglomeration of projects.

Halloween marked a scary day. I began the initial read through of the first draft of my novel. It was tough to let it sit for about a month without looking at it and changing bits and pieces. I thought about my story a lot though, and kept an "After Notes" document open for things that popped into my head that I wanted to add, take away, or research. After I finished my NANO words for the day on 10/31 (because I knew Nov. 1 I would be working all day for EOM) I printed out my newly formatted manuscript, all 390 pages of it, and snapped open a fresh red pen. And so it began.. I'm only about 60 pages into it and let's just say there is probably more red on the page than black. Needless to say, I made copious notes, and lines and comments and questions and stars and underlines. It's actually kind of fun. I feel like a teacher, giving the student tons of feedback. It's overwhelming to know what I will come back to once the first read-through is complete, but I'm just trying to take it one step at a time.

I bought two books, From First Draft to Finished Novel, by Karen Wiesner, a sequel to her first book, First Draft in 30 Days, and Revision & Self-Editing by James Scott Bell. Karen's books are wonderful. I even have a novel outlined with her program, ready to be written, but I held off on that one because it's a time-travel and I wanted to begin with a more contemporary romantic suspense for my debut. See, I've got this all planned out! ;-P Anyway, I know Karen, with her more anal style and organization techniques, will get me to a final product. And Mr. Bell, I loved his book on Plot & Structure, so I could only assume anything he did for the Write Great Fiction series would be top notch.

Other than that, I'm about 11,000 words into my NANOWRIMO project. For those of you who've never heard of such a thing, it's National Novel Writing Month. Which happens to be November. Chris Baty began this thing a while back in San Francisco, where people get together and write like crazy to say they have written a 50,000 word novel. I'm sure there's a lot more to it. You can check it out a the website and maybe participate next year! I had heard of it before, but it seems to be gaining more and more popularity. I say power to everyone who is willing to try! And for those who succeed, you are one step ahead of many people who call themselves writers! Keep it going!

I'm working on my mechanic/financial analyst category romance and it's coming along nicely. I already had the plot set to go, but NANO really helps get your characters and creative license moving. It'll be tough in a couple weeks when Thanksgiving comes around and then EOM AGAIN for me. But I'm gonna try my darndest to make that 50,000 mark. Shae is already calling for a write-a-thon. I'm always game.

So let's do this!

Quote of the Day: A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960