11,500 words--amidst painting, novocaine, dancing. . .

Painting the dining room is good alpha-wave brain activity (though Boots the New Kitten's thorough enjoyment of the plastic drop cloth is probably not).

Serendipitously, just as I've gotten to the messiest part of the middle of the novel (which, by the way, is currently called "The Book Drop Dwarves"), I've gotten to the smoothest part of repairing the cracked and crumbling dining room wall.

So I'm taking the advice of the goddess-in-children's-author-form Donna Jo Napoli, who said at Chautauqua in 2006 something like this:

"I write my first draft very fast. It is AWFUL. I just keep driving forward, trying to get the emotion down. I never go back. If I'm writing along and suddenly discover I need a dog in this scene, and it should have been introduced it in the last chapter, I just scroll back to the last chapter and write DOG in big capital letters, and then GO ON!"

So now I have pop-ups like LIBRARY MONKEY and FIRE-EATING SALAMANDER--ANGEL? sprinkling my text with weirdness.

My amazing critique group, the Ladies of the Gordian Knot, is coming to my house this Saturday. By then, I'll have the dining room painted. But I think I'll not print anything out. I'll just tell them about the salamander and let them ask questions.


(For the thoroughly bored--a current list of the word-count by chapter:

• Ch. 1: 1545
• Ch. 2: 4280
• Ch. 3: 2880
• Ch. 4: 1650
• Ch. 5: 1135)

10,000 words: Happy Birthday to me

Yay!

I got up to 10,000 words, and in the process invented a creature that is somewhat like a salamandar, somewhat like a chameleon, somewhat like a GI Joe, and somewhat like an angel.

This is why I prefer editing to producing.

Still, 10,000 words feels good.
Other things that feel good:

• Dancing
  
• Celebrating my 44th birthday at the new place on the Loop that replaced Saleems
  
• Kitten fur
• Homemade birthday card

To all of you who wished me happy birthday on Facebook: I love you, and I'm sorry to be such a horrible Facebook Friend.

8300 words--and an empty house starting Monday

Today I read the Second Encouraging Email from the NaNoWriMo people. It seems that we are supposed to be thinking about plot more than character at this point, which is quite messy and depressing . . . so let's talk about something else.

Like how it feels when one of your dearest friends comes for a visit, and you allow yourself to do almost no housecleaning and almost no cooking and almost no sleeping and almost no writing just so you can talk.

If you don't grieve for too long at the end of the visit, you may find that you have enough energy to wash up all those dishes, scrub the bathroom sink, go blueberry picking with five-kids-and-two-moms AND write 1,000 words or so.

Plus, you might decide to go English Country Dancing with your husband as a way to celebrate your 44th birthday.

Then, if you have lived a VERY good life, you just might get the whole house to yourself for a week while your family goes to visit someone else's relatives on Monday.

Peace out!

7075 words--and three chapters drafted

As it turns out, telling everyone you know that you're writing a novel in a month is a good strategy. No one in my family laughed at me, and I even got a goodly amount of sloppy copy on the page. I also have three "chapters" completely drafted.

But I must confess the numbers:

• Chapter One: 1255 words
• Chapter Two: 4275 words
• Chapter Three 1545 words

Clearly, Chapter Two is hogging its share of the spotlight--but in such cases, we assume both that chapter borders are fluid and that no one will remember what they used to be after they become what they should be.

Here in Bedford, Indiana, we were going to have a Parade, an Ice Cream Social, and Fireworks today. But the rain fell, all but invisible, all day. So we now hear only distant firecrackers--and I hear as well my parents' voices in the living room, talking with old friends. It is the sound of no fireworks, and it is comforting.

6200 words--and a break for the holiday

I do know, in fact, that this is only the second day of July, which means that I am only just now officially beginning my journey into LyNoWriMo.

But since I also knew I'd be going to Indiana's cornfield's for the Fourth, I got a head-start. I'll likely get very little writing done this week, and even less blogging.

But I do have 6200 words.
Yay.

5300 and counting

Today I have woven
words into a day--
the words I wrote to
the ghost child of my fancy
with the words I spoke to
the love child of my heart.

Today: 850 words for a total of 4350(ish)

Stephanie Bearce is always stepping in to save my life. She can't help it; it's just one of the super-human things she does as part of her quotidian.

Most recently, she came into my home and cleared out the piles of STUFF that I was too horrified to even acknowledge were taking up space. (Stephanie sang and whistled and kept my daughter entertained; I kept ducking downstairs to inject black coffee into my system.)

Then--AFTER saving my life that way, she saved it again by saying, "Before I leave, let's look at that novel manuscript you brought to the retreat." I fumbled about trying to find which computer my outline and plot summary might be stored on. She sat back and got comfortable, paying not a bit attention to my dithering. She read the summary on the computer screen, made a number of insanely cogent comments, and then went off to put the finishing touches on world peace.

And now (third time's the charm, after all) the manuscript we talked about that day is saving my life again. As I may have mentioned earlier, I need a complete novel ms. for LA in Aug. Guess which one I'm working on? Right. The one I dithered about that day with Stephanie. It now has about 4350 messy, incoherent, life-saving words.

Thanks, lady.