The Big DumpTruck

7000 words in, I finally have a plot. Or at least a purpose. And characters. The full plot will probably not reveal itself until the end of the month, meaning I'll have a lot more work to do to get it into a finished state. Which, based on history, I will never do. I'm writing about my kid, his friend, and his cousins. It is fiction, I swear. My niece does not own a store that only sells cups and saucers. She's 9 - owning a store like that is years in her future.

I don't know why I keep doing NaNoWriMo, but I'm at the point where I almost have to do it, or I'll feel bad about it. So I give up a few hours of my November, no big deal, right?

So while I'm working on this, please send snacks.

Labels: nanowrimo, writing

My novel sucks. But it usually does. I went off on a long ramble in an attempt to hit 10k words this morning. I need to write 4k this morning to be back where I'm supposed to be by now. "Supposed to be" is relative, of course. I'm sure if I focused I could actually be close to done. I just get easily distracted by shiny objects, like the "Watch Instantly" feature on Netflix that was finally released to beta for Macintosh. I may never leave my comfy chair again.

Here's the excerpt for you. Not criticism is allowed, the whole point is to write, not to write well.

I flipped open my phone to read the text message. I have to do that because of the model phone I have. It is so funny, if this were 10 years ago, I would be so mady in love with this phone, and the simple act of flipping it open would give me thrill like no other because it is so futuristic and I could pretend I am James T. Kirk. Not that I wouldn't do that even if I did not have a flip phone that looks a bit like a tri-corder. I want to state for the record that I am not a science fiction geek, but I am a television geek and while the two may seem very similar they are very different. The only reason I think having a tri-corder phone is cool is because it was on a famous television show. Actually, I would probably be just as excited to have the telephone on the wall from Lassie or the one at the top of the telephone pole from Green Acres. Okay, the last part might be a little bit of a stretch. While I am a huge Green Acres fan, the thought of having to climb up to the top of a telephone pole to answer the phone or make a call is a little daunting to me. Daunting might not even be the right word, but after a while, I'm pretty sure I would balance an old-fashioned answering machine up on the top of the pole and never answer the phone again. That’s another thing. In today's world of phone company voice mail, there is no way in hell I could ever get to the top of a telephone pole to answer the phone before it went to voice mail.

Labels: nanowrimo, stuff

Netflix streaming for Macs was released as a beta. I am doomed. I will never finish my Nano Novel now. Curse you, Netflix!

The first movie I tested was "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." I believe that movie has the longest opening credit sequence in the history of movies. Five minutes of animated credits. Junior thought I was watching a cartoon. I watched 10 minutes before realizing that I shouldn't be watching a movie until I finish my NaNoWriMo word count for the day. Bad Jody!

Labels: movies, nanowrimo

This is my 7th or 8th year of doing NaNoWriMo, and every year I go into it with a slightly different attitude. This year I was looking forward to it for the past two weeks (of course - when I wasn't allowed to type a word) but this morning there was very little if any excitement. And I had things that needed to be done today that did not allow me to sit and write, including spending 5, yes 5, hours at the baseball field while my son played his game AND the one that followed, because they didn't have enough kids. He was psyched because the 2nd game was far more laid back and he got to try catching for the first time. He caught for two innings - the first and the last, and definitely did better the 2nd time. Maybe it won't be a bad thing for him to try to pick up, although personally, I would never want to be a catcher. Way way way too much pressure. That kind of stuff doesn't seem to bother him, though.

So anyway, I hit the minimum word could for today (the words I'm typing here don't count. D'oh!) which is good, but really, I should have been able to do much better. The first day of Nano you should be like a crazed monkey, just typing until you pass out, especially if the first day of Nano is on a weekend. I feel like I did not take advantage of the free gift of November 1st falling on a Saturday. Oh well, too late to do much about it.

For the record, the first few pages of the novel are kind of a young adult thing, because I realized that my son and his friend are going to want to see what I've done with the names we all came up with for my characters. I don't know if I'll be able to carry this through 30 days, and there are no clear plot ideas yet (unfortunately for me, I actually try to NOT think about my Nano novel prior to November 1st because that feels like cheating. But that means I don't have any idea what the hell I'm writing about for the first couple of days. We'll have to see how that goes.

Labels: baseball, nanowrimo

Man, this was a hard year for me. I really strongly disliked my novel, and I did not have the heart to just sort of start into a new novel halfway through. Although to get me through the final burst of words I needed today to get past the 50k mark I decided to make one of my main characters a prostitute that nobody knew was a prostitute (including me prior to today) and I was able to zoom up and over the 50k mark. Okay, bummer that it's over, because this is really the only month of the year that I get anything written, but I am kind of glad to have some of my time free to do other things without feeling guilty that I'm not writing.

In conclusion, I actually think I might pick up my 2006 Nano novel and start editing it and maybe work on an ending. I think of all the Nanonovels I've written, that's the only one that has any kind of potential because it actually has a plot.

Labels: nanowrimo

Because nobody is checking in over on my Nano blog, I figured I'd do a Nano update here. We're in the final stretch. My novel is horrific. The Nano slogan "No Plot, No Problem" has never been put to better use than my novel, which, while it hints slightly at a plot in the first 8000 words or so, never actually comes around and has one. It is so far from being a finished novel that it makes last year's look like a Pulitzer Prize Winner. I'm stunned at the difference, actually. I think last year I thought my plot idea was pretty cool and it was very workable (it was about a compulsive shopper) and this one (about a guy who finds out his parents were circus freaks but then doesn't do anything about it, based on what I've written so far) stinks.

There are only 11k words left, and I really want to just finish the danged thing so I can do other stuff.

Labels: nanowrimo

Last night I passed the 25k mark. Now I only have to hit 50k before the clock strikes midnight and November turns into December. I think maybe I can do it. I had a really good rush of pointless prose last night, so that's nice.

Mike Lowell is staying in Boston, so you'll have to excuse me if I'm giddy for a few. He's my favorite player (Papi has a special place in my heart forever, but Mike Lowell is my boyfriend). In fact, that's how I refer to him. It's always "My boyfriend Mike Lowell." I saw a photo of my boyfriend Mike Lowell down at Disney the other day. I was pretty sad that he didn't do that the day after they won the World Series, but I would never question my boyfriend Mike Lowell's decisions.

Let's see, what else is going on? Oh, I was going to ask if anyone here owned one of those digital photo frames, and if you do, do you like it and would you recommend it? I am trying to write a Christmas list for Santa, you see, and I want one of those but I don't want Santa to spend a lot of money on it. It's not like I can't just pull photos up on my computer if I really need to see them. I just like the idea of having a photo frame on my desk so that I can just swap out the pictures with the weather.

Speaking of which, we're on snow alert. We may get [breathlessly] a snowflake or two. Junior is doing the happy 4th Grade dance. I tried to explain that the snow isn't going to stick, and that we don't have to track down his boots just yet. But damn, I had better track down his boots. I wonder if they still fit? Doubt it.

(Christine and Nicholle, you pay attention, okay? Nothing you buy will ever fit a whole year later, and you can't buy stuff on sale at the end of the season because you don't know what size they will be when it's time to wear it. This is the most ANNOYING thing about kids. They just outgrow stuff constantly. Sometimes, within days of you buying it, I kid you not. Always make sure you have at least ONE pair of shorts or one sweater that's a size larger than your kid currently wears because it's a sad day when you wake up and it's 90 degrees and they suddenly don't have any shorts to wear to camp. Ahem.)

Labels: clothing, junior, kids, Mike Lowell, nanowrimo, Red_Sox

So far one of last year's Nano-ers has joined up to contribute over at the new and improved Nano Blog (2007 NaNoWriMo Rest Area). So what about the rest of you? Or some new people? I'll just yammer like a crazy person with or without you, you know?

In other news, it is FREEZING OUTSIDE! Oh man, it might not have been the best weather in Florida ("sunshine state" my large white arse) but at least it wasn't 30 degrees when I left the hotel in the morning!

Still no pictures for you. I'm guessing it might be Sunday before I have some. I'm very sorry about that, but that's just the way it's been going this week. If someone figures out how to slow down time a bit, I may get to it Saturday, or even do a little tonight, but I still have to get the pictures off Mr. Dump's laptop (we took his old PC with us) and onto my Mac, where my editing software lives. What, you think this stuff just magically happens?

Labels: nanowrimo, weather

It's that time of year again! NaNoWriMo 2007 is upon us, and if you haven't signed up yet, go sign up and then join us on the Nano blog I'm setting up for more detailed posting and sharing. Last year 5 of us contributed to that blog, and we were all happy and sad to see December arrive. (You don't have to sign up to just read, but if you want to contribute, sign up and then let me know to "upgrade" you.)

So I woke up this morning, declared the word "The" to be the first word of my novel and dozed off for another 10 minutes. Writing is hard work. Since then I have decided that "The" is probably not going to be the first word, but no editing allowed when you're trying to write 50,000 words in a month, so I'll just write around the "the" and use it later.

For those waiting for Disney pictures, I have to work my way through about 5 gig worth of them. For those of you not waiting for Disney pictures, be happy, I haven't gone through them all yet.

Labels: fun, nanowrimo, writing

I forgot I signed up for the Nanowrimo offshoot called "Script Frenzy". I've committed to writing the script for a 2 hour movie this month. That's really going to fill up my spare time, isn't it?

I wonder what I should write a movie about?

Labels: nanowrimo, script, writing

Just in time for Jody Day, I got a package in the mail. I could not rip the package open fast enough, I tell you. Inside was the most glorious site ever. EVER. My novel, in book form. Oh my Lord in heaven, I just held it and giggled, because it was a real, live book. A crappy book, let's be clear, but I was holding a perfectly wonderful trade paperback version of my Nano Novel. The Candy Pooping Moose, with my name right there on the cover.

I wish I'd taken more time doing the PDF because I was missing a title page and some other stuff, but as I mentioned before, I uploaded it to Lulu.com the day before the deadline for the free copy. So I stupidly left out the title page, and other important bookly stuff. But that doesn't matter much because I'm not selling copies, only one exists and it's mine.

I started to read parts of it and found that in places, it is tremendously amusing. Maybe I'm not completely talentless. So now I'm thinking I'll attempt to clean it up some, maybe more than some, and make it available to you, my adoring public. I mean, what the hell, right? But it won't be any time soon, as out of the 50,000 words of the novel, only 30,000 of them are actually usable, and as I mentioned before, it doesn't have an ending.

Keep poking me with a stick and I'll see what I can do.

Jody, author

Labels: books, nanowrimo, writing