NaNoWriMo: I didn’t reach my 50,000 words on the one hand, but my initial goal was never to do that. It was to simply get myself sitting down and writing. So I must say, I’m looking at my official 32,532 words with great pride.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: for me, the biggest obstacle is the first step of sitting down and opening up my writing software. Once I place my fingers on the keys, the magic happens. I’m not sure why I have such a block about sitting down and just doing it, since I really enjoy the process so much. But one step at a time, right?

Starting tomorrow, I will have a new widget thingie on the sidebar, showing my word count for whichever novel I’ll be working on. I wasn’t able to keep going with the NaNoWriMo novel these past few days because of deadlines, and also because it suddenly seemed to me that I had to change the narrative from third person omniscient to first person, but only for the scenes involving the main protagonist. Who also wants a name change, too. (I’m not too sure about that one.)

NaBloPoMo: I was actually on track with blogging every day in November (despite what the dates on the posts tell you – I personally count a day as that period of time before I sleep and wake up to the next day. Blogging software has a more rigid, machine-driven view of “a day”.) And then I went and forgot to post yesterday!

So I very nearly posted every day here. Not too shabby, I think.

Art Every Day Month for November: I couldn’t keep up. Too many deadlines, and I also discovered that the writing took priority. I only did four pieces of work, and only posted three of them because I truly didn’t like the fourth one. I may do this challenge again, but probably not until the new year.

It’s been a good month. Ive still not had the time to check out all my favourite blogs regularly, but hopefully, because the deadlines are lighter in December, I’ll be able to get back to it. It’s one of the most enjoyable things about blogging, I’ve been discovering.

I was surfing around, and came across this quote by Stephen King. It sounds like it’s from On Writing, though I’m not sure.

“Read four hours a day and write four hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can’t expect to become a good writer.” – Stephen King

I love On Writing – it’s one of the most motivating writing books around. So I have that on my desk to re-read. Earlier this month I started up my book review blog, and I have been loving it. Not only that, I’ve been reading steadily. Four hours a day? Sounds good to me. And I can get that other four hours of writing in, too. Just have to figure out when to squish in the paying work, that’s all.

And then, after reading this quote, I found Jolie at Cuppa Jolie. In her I Made It! 5000 Words Today … post talked about something her blog friend Holly had told her that really helped:

First, Holly mentioned (somewhere along the line) about being at a macro level instead of micro. Keeping this in mind helped me bunches. It’s the big picture story I’m working on. I can go back later, when I’m more in tune with the story and the characters, and add the details that will make all the difference. Right now, I need to make the character walk and talk and doing that helped me get to 5000 words.

That last bit especially – “Right now, I need to make the character walk and talk …”

That’s all I needed to do. Just make my characters walk and talk and move them forward. And when I started to think that way, I knew I would be able to start writing more of the novel again.

So last night, I went to bed feeling motivated again. Then, this morning, lying there in that stage between awake and asleep, a new plot piece came to me. It’s a wonderful plot piece – it makes the villain more villainy, adds more drama, and ties up some loose ends!

I’m off to write now! I don’t think I’ll get 5000 words in today, but at least I actually feel like I have something to write now.

Reading novels can actually be quite hazardous around here. One thing I’ve been keeping my eye on is not starting a book late in the day. When I do that, chances are good that I won’t get into bed until 3 a.m., which doesn’t work for me that well anymore.

This week has been a really good week for crime thrillers. I started the week off with Caro Ramsay’s Absolution, which is set in Glasgow, Scotland. This is Ramsay’s first novel, and I will definitely be keeping my eye out for more of her writing. Having said that, though, I enjoyed Absolution more for the writing – Ramsay writes in the literary crime tradition of PD James, Elizabeth George and Reginald Hill – than I did for the actual plot and characters. First of all – and this doesn’t happen to me very often – I knew who the murderer was from the moment he was introduced. In fact, I kept reading thinking it couldn’t possibly be this person, because it was just so obvious, so there must be some sort of tricky splendid twist waiting to surprise me at the end … only there wasn’t. I also didn’t like the main character at all. But the writing made up for these two negatives for me, so Ramsay is definitely a writer I will be keeping on my to-read list.

I moved from Absolution to another Scottish writer, Ian Rankin. The Naming of the Dead is the first Inspector Rebus novel I’ve read, and I found myself wondering why it took me so long to pick up a Rankin book. The Naming of the Dead is a thick twist-filled, suspenseful crime thriller of the type I particularly enjoy reading, and I liked both Rebus and his sidekick Siobhan Clarke very much. Which is nice, because there’s a long list of Rankin/Rebus books for me to catch-up on.

My final read this past week was Kathy Reichs’ Bones to Ashes. The plot, as is usual in a Reichs book, is wonderfully twisty and filled with surprises. I’m not as fond of the writing style, though. I find the “if only I had known” endings to the chapters just a little too old-style gothic heroine for my taste, and I don’t really like stories where the protaganist is threatened by the murderer, which is something that seems to happen a lot to Temperance Brennan.

This coming week? I’m juggling quite a few deadlines, so I probably won’t get as much reading done as I’d like. But I’m prepping for NaNoWriMo, and now that I’ve discovered that I get inspired to write after I read, I’m definitely going to keep hitting those books!

Decluttering … or Freeing Up Energy

Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon cleaning my office. I work from home, and it was getting seriously painful looking at the stacks and stacks of books, papers and courier packages sitting on every available surface, plus portions of the floor. I somehow found room in my office bookshelves for the latest batches of books that I’ve bought recently. I also created a To Be Read corner, which helped a lot!

I stumbled on five filled notebooks – my Morning Pages from quite a few years back. It’s been a couple of years now since I’ve been doing Morning Pages, but back when I did them, I was very good about not reading them over. These scribblings definitely aren’t meant to be read over! So I had a good time tearing out all the pages, and then shredding them, although only half the pages are shredded – I burnt out the shredder! It’s fine today, and I’ll probably resume my shredding later on today.

So now I’m sitting here, at my clean desk, feeling very uncluttered. It’s remarkable how refreshing decluttering can be.

Immediately after I did my clean-up, I felt rejuvenated, as if I’d freed up some energy that had been trapped (as I’m sure it was). And I was able to write the final update on our Thanksgiving dinner at our food blog (considering our Thanksgiving here in Canada was last weekend, I definitely procrastinated on this one!): Our Bon Appetit 2008 Thanksgiving Dinner.

In addition to freeing up energy, it also felt like I’d freed up time, as well. I was able to start reading Kelly Rae’s Taking Flight, which I’ve had for a couple of weeks now. I’m not destined to really get into this book just yet, though: I put it down somewhere last night just before putting Dylan to bed, and I can’t find it anywhere now!

The rest of the evening was spent watching Die Hard (the first one) with Ward and my son Sean. Sean’s doing his individual study unit on Die Hard for his Film Studies class (all I can say is, I definitely would have enjoyed Film Studies in high school, if it had been offered!). Ward threw together some lovely appetizers for the movie, including a Tilapia Po’Boy that was just amazing, and some seared rare beef slices.

All in all, yesterday was a Very Good Day.

The Big Draw

Looking back on this week, I see that I’m behind on a few things – mainly: blogging here daily, and the Big Draw. Dylan, of course, has been far more diligent than I have been when it comes to drawing daily. He always seems to have his markers out and about, and even with days filled with games, computer time, reading, trains, playing, jumping in the leaves, eating his favorite foods, library time, clay time – he still has time to draw. He truly is an artist.

Car and Driver. Crayola markers.

Valentine Heart for Mommy. Crayola markers.

Boat. Crayola markers.

Mail. Crayola marker.

On Inspiration

I’ve been discovering something about myself (self-discoveries are always so wonderful, and it’s just amazing how there’s always more and more to discover, no matter how old you are).

Inspiration ebbs and flows for me. I recently was talking with some dear friends about this, and bringing a great deal of self-judgment into this discovery. They each nudged me back into alignment, an acceptance of all of who I am. So today, I’m at peace with the ebb and flow of inspiration in my life, and can now truly see that the down time of withdrawal is something as precious as the passionate flow of inspiration on fire.

Which, by the way, is one reason why my blogging here ebbs and flows, too!

Writing

I’ve been in prep mode for NaNoWriMo, which is coming up very soon. Since I signed up, I’ve decided on the idea that I’ll be turning into a novel. This was actually looking like quite a tough decision, as I have several gems on hand, some of which I’ve carried with me and developed for years. But interestingly enough, choosing the idea was easy. I discovered there was one idea I have, for a mainstream mystery, that just kept nagging at me. Basically, it was jumping up and down saying “pick me! pick me!”. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

So this past week, I’ve been playing around with my characters. I’ve created various mindmaps for my major characters, and I’m currently reading James Frey’s How to Write a Damn Good Mystery, which is both funny and has some good tips. I will likely begin writing my character profiles this week, and by November 1 I should be good to go for NaNoWriMo.

Bliss

This coming week, my intention is to live blissfully, in the midst of the seeming chaos of life, family and deadlines.