So as of yesterday morning, I stopped even trying to finish NaNo.

It wasn't going to happen, no matter how much I wanted it to. The one thing that makes me happy about the whole thing, aside from the fact that I like the story and definitely plan to continue to the end as soon as my Yuletide's done, is that it really wasn't my fault in terms of writer's block. I knew as soon as overtime started up at work that it would be a miracle if I finished NaNo, but I was crossing my fingers on that count even though it just wasn't going to work out.

I haven't won since 2004, and I know precisely why not, too -- because I'm basically in customer service. I went from a job in shipping in DC to a job at a factory making CDs and DVDs to my current job answering questions about Medicare prescription plans over the phone. The DHL job picked up hours in November because of the holidays. Overtime started in November at the factory gig before of Christmas. And overtime starts at my current job around the end of October or beginning of November due to the annual enrollment period.

In essence, there could not be a worse time of year for me to try and pound out 50,000 words in a month than in November. I'd probably have a harder time in December due to overtime and Christmas prep, but every other month on the calendar would be a better fit for me than November. It's my one pet peeve about NaNo, really. I just wish it were any other month, or better yet that it were year-round and that we could pick the month that would work best for us. (Take next year. November's going to suck for me, because I'll have school AND overtime to deal with. August, on the other hand, would be PERFECT. It's between semesters, and there usually isn't any overtime to be had in August.)

So ... yeah. NaNo's a bust for me this year.

That said, I did get about 20,000 words out of the deal, and the good thing about only getting this far is that it gives me a chance to actually stop for a bit, step away from the story to work on my Yuletide, then come back and build some freaking structure into the damn thing. I really do like what I've started and where I'm going. It's just a matter of finishing.

So, instead of spending all day yesterday hunched over a laptop, I spent yesterday ... er, hunched over a laptop catching up on Community. ABED! TROY! ABED AND TROY! :D

Today is going to be another calm before the storm for me, as instead of going into work and putting this vacation day aside so that I can beef up my overtime for this upcoming paycheck I think I'm just going to take advantage of the day off and relax. What I really want to do is head down to the new IMAX theater and see a movie, but I have something like $87 in my checking account after paying my bills and rent and stuff this week, and that eighty-seven bucks has to last me until next Thursday night. So I think I'm just going to dye my hair, straighten up my apartment, hit the cafe, and then spend the rest of the day screwing around.

Today is so totally a mental health day for me, honestly, because after today I'll be working every single day until Christmas. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for my Android, that's all I've got to say. Otherwise I would miss out on emails and LJ and current events and pretty much everything that happens in the world for the next twenty-five days.

In completely unrelated news, Anne Hathaway and James Franco are hosting the Oscars this year. That is going to be delightfully charming and cracktastically weird with a side of questionable sexuality, respectively.

At this rate, I will probably not finish NaNo. And if I wanted to win so badly, I should skip overtime today rather than throwing away nine hours of writing time. But I do have the next two days off, and nowhere to go and nothing to do in those two days other than write, and write, and write some more.

All of that said, apparently what my brain really wants to listen to to spur it to write is classical Christmas music. Considering my usual stance on Christmas music of any kind, I can only imagine this is the NaNo version of when the military plays incredibly loud rock music 24/7 to get foreign dictators to leave their compounds.

Who wants to read a bit of my NaNo?

( Sally's sort of my favoritest ever. )

*

I'm currently at 11,248 words, which is obviously way behind where I'm supposed to be. That said, I have all day to write, I have the "Melancholia - The Sounds of Indie Sadness" station playing on my computer, and I have Cheetos and Pepsi enough to last me another couple of hours at least. The goal for today is to just get something down for all of the scenes I scribbled down over the past week or so, then print out what I have and get it assembled and outlined. I'm not trying for any specific word count right now, simply because if I don't reach it I'm going to be terribly disappointed, so I'm just going to stick with the "every extra word is one more word towards the goal" outlook.

The good thing -- if you want to look at it like that -- is that I probably won't be taking overtime the first couple of days this week simply because I refuse to take overtime where I know full well I'll simply end up on the phone. The first two or three days this week, my supervisor has pretty much assured all of us in my department that like it or not, we'll be on the phones all day long. I'm okay with it, really, even though my usual job requires me to make the occasional outbound call and that's it. We only need to take inbounds when it's busy, and tomorrow starts the annual enrollment period, so ... phones.

Of course, that means I'll get home at eight p.m. on Monday and Tuesday and I'll have four extra hours to write those days, which'll be nice, because I'll be pushing it to find writing time for the rest of the month. I'm really hoping that I can push and get 50k by the 28th, though. If I can pull that off, I can go to work on November 29th and 30th instead of using them as vacation days, then letting them pay me for the vacation time anyway.

Aaaand it's time to go write again. I'm not allowing myself to watch this week's SPN until I get to 20k or I finish adding all the bits I want to add to the story, whichever comes first.

*buckles down*

I told the guy who sits across the row from me at work that if I don't crack 13k by the time I have to go to work tomorrow, he can feel free to punch me in the face.

I only found out an hour later that he thought I said I was going to punch HIM in the face. Which is clearly a load of bollocks, as he's roughly the size of the Jolly Green Giant, and me attempting to punch him in the face would require me to get my hands on a low-flying airplane to actually reach his face.

In other news, I miss television, wish my face would stop breaking out, have Cheetos and Pepsi, and am starting to get the impression that the only way I'm ever going to publish the growing and festering pile of urban-fantasy snark that is my NaNo novel is just throwing my hands in the air and going straight-out ebook with this bastard.

Oh, and I bought tape. So now I can outline! You know, after I get around to that 13k. Now, if you'll all excuse me, I have to go write my grumpy cardigan-wearing unshaven chain-smoking archivist into some situations she is clearly not prepared for, like zombie-killing and bestowing polite compliments.

Cigarettes And Shambles:



I feel like this is going to be like it was the year I won, where I was behind for most of the month, skipping around writing whatever scenes popped into my head, and then one day I printed them all out and constructed the outline around them, and then I sat down on Thanksgiving and pounded out ten thousand words in one day and caught up and then some.

That said, I really wish I could focus a bit more, but I figure that if I can get my Lexapro dosage up, that'll help out.

Now I have about thirteen minutes until I have to leave for work and I spent a few of those minutes uploading Chuck Palahniuk's Diary onto my MP3 player, which would be fine except that I'm pretty sure I am never, EVER getting off the phones again. Or at the very least, that I won't get off the phones this week unless I take a fuckton of overtime. Which I will if they offer it, although I already told more than a few people that I'm not taking overtime if it means I have to be on the phones and I meant it. I'm already on the phones enough, thank you very much.

I can't wait until the ridiculous overtime kicks in already, seriously, because I'm pretty sure as soon as it does I'm giving my two weeks at Wegmans. Not that I don't like it -- hell, I'd quit my day job if Wegmans offered full-time and paid as much -- but it's ridiculous for me to throw away fifteen hours a week working there when I could work overtime at my day job for twice what Wegmans pays me. I may need two jobs again once the enrollment period ends, but ... well, fuck, maybe I'll get lucky and the magical book contract fairy will flutter down from on high and ...

... yeah, I didn't think so, either. *sigh*

Cigarettes And Shambles:



I have to write four thousand words tomorrow (or today, considering the time) to catch up, but I'm hoping I can get ahead for a change since I'm going to need to with the week I have coming up. If they offer overtime at my day job I'm taking it -- the way our supervisor made it sound during our overtime shift today, most of us will probably be spending every scheduled hour we have until the end of the year on the phones taking calls, UGH -- so every minute of free time counts.

... apparently putting up a Paypal button to save your fanfic site is much, MUCH more difficult than, say, fighting worthy charities for grant money to pay for your servers.

I don't know which I find more appalling right now: that, or Rand Paul winning in Kentucky. (... oh, FFS.)

As for NaNo, I am behind where I was hoping to be at this point. But then again I didn't plot a damn thing and I'm basically just throwing plot points at the wall to see if they stick, and they all seem to be sticking no matter how freaking ludicrous. For added fun I've been skipping around writing bits and pieces and between all of them scattered across the length of the entire book, I've still only written two named male characters out of a current list of about twenty or so characters. And one of them is a transvestite. Do with that info what you will.

That said, as of right now ...

Cigarettes And Shambles:



I'll be happy if I can go to work on Thursday morning with 15k. Even if it's a scattered mess, 15k is still a good chunk of the way to my goal right there. :)

Cigarettes And Shambles:



I got most of that done last night before bed, and this morning has been a round of bill-paying and hair-styling and generally savoring the fact that I normally would be at work right now, and very possibly would be on the phones talking to angry and/or confused elderly people at this very moment.

Instead I am at my computer desk with my story open in one window and a QI episode open in another, huddled under my electric blanket, eating Cheetos and Pepsi and trying to up my word count before I have to go into work at Wegmans tonight. Why I can't do this every day is a goddamn crime.

*happy sigh*

(I'm also still trying to decide if I want to leave a little early for work and go get my hair cut super-short. On the one hand, I like my hair long and it took a long time to get it this long. On the other hand, between overtime, two jobs, school and trying to write it's a bitch to get my hair under control for a half-hour every day, and I think it's making my skin break out, and i also like it super-short. Urgh.)

How did I not know they're showing an interview the Top Gear guys on 60 Minutes?! Oh, man, it's a good thing they appear to be running a bit late.

So guess what? NANO STARTS A WEEK FROM NOW, THAT'S WHAT. \O/ I still need to work on a lot of it, but I'm really genuinely excited for it, even more so than I was a month ago when I was a little afraid I'd still be all depressed and blocked when NaNo rolled around, but hey, I wrote fic this weekend! Short fic, but still! I CAN STILL WRITE, Y'ALL.

I've never hooked up with the local NaNo group, but they're having a kick-off party at the Barnes and Noble on Saturday afternoon and I'm seriously thinking about going. It'll be the start of my long weekend anyway, and it'll be nice to meet up with other writers in the area. It'll dig a few hours out of my plans to plot next weekend, but I'm hoping to make up for it during the week anyway.

( TAR )

By the way, if you've never wallowed into the depths of Design*Sponge's Living In series, you are missing out.

For the record, I know that everybody's been asking lately who wants to be on their NaNo filters, and I just wanted to put out the blanket statement that yes, I want to be on all of your NaNo filters. I'll be doing NaNo myself and it helps to know other people are putting themselves through the same sort of hell.

Those of you who've been around for a while know I don't have a NaNo filter. You're here, you're reading, you get to suffer along with me. Or laugh at me as I suffer, in any event. ;)

I cannot WAIT for NaNo, by the way. I had something like seven or eight vacation days from work and no reason to use them, so I took the first two days of November off and I'm pretty much off for the last week and a half of the month as well, interrupted only by the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving and possibly Black Friday (we still don't know if we're getting that off yet).

As for my NaNo idea itself, I'm still worldbuilding. I still haven't figured out if I'm going AU or post-apocalyptic future or how this is going to work, but there are a LOT of rules to go over and I've got a month to work on it.

*

Aaaaaand then there's Yuletide.

I think I know what I'm asking for:

( Cutting for those who'd like to avoid my probable prompts. )

*

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand then there's fic. Which I am writing. Er, right now.

We'll see if I actually get it finished today.

*

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand then there's my original stuff.

Aside from NaNo I've got a couple of short stories I want to work on and some other novel ideas I've put aside for a rainy day. Writing the fanfic that I've got open right now is part of that, because I seriously need to stretch my writing muscles.

Here's hoping I can get something done this weekend, though. I could use the pick-me-up, quite frankly. (My mom's taking me clothes-shopping for my birthday, which is nice and I appreciate it and I could certainly use new jeans, but at the same time I'm disappointed I won't be getting an eReader. I can't really afford to buy one for myself, especially with Christmas coming up, and I'd rather have a new netbook for Christmas because I need one with school coming up since the one I currently have hasn't been working right for a while. And I certainly don't expect my parents to splurge on more than one expensive piece of electronic equipment at a time, nor will they. Sooooo, no eReader for the girl with three paperbacks in her purse at any given time then. Ugh, me and my First World problems. *sigh*)