dirty words

Didn't make it to the end of NaNo. I feel like I fought the good fight, but bronchitis fought harder. Wrote some terrible prose, met some great peeps, learned Scrivener.

The important thing is: Tony Dovolani and Melissa Rycroft won Dancing With the Stars. (I'm happy beyond all reason, because it was possibly the happiest moment on DWTS ever and everybody flipped out and SEE, they didn't win their mirrorball trophy til their second try - or fourteenth try for Tony - and I'll get you next time, NaNo!)

Seriously, LOOK HOW HAPPY EVERYONE IS FOR THEM. I AM ALSO THIS HAPPY FOR THEM.



As for me, NaNo/DWTS/my hope of someday breathing again is all inspiring me to plan a year-long NanoAnno project for 2013 to build a habit of prolificness. I'm not going to say I'll do 50K a month or something (and don't even get me STARTED on those people trying to write A Million Words in a year and tallying up every word they text and write on a shopping list and you could not pay me enough to spend a whole year counting). I'm thinking like 300K words or 50 completed things (and mixing and matching allowed - so I could write 25 completed things + 150K words). The idea needs work. I've been awake for about 2 hours, so time to go back to sleep!

Love to all! <3 <3

I wonder what it's like to be on the right side of the nano pacing line? (The right side in judgment terms. If you're ahead of pace you're actually above the diagonal pacing line, which means visually it looks like you're to the left of it.)

Anyway! I know "maths" is legitimately something people say in countries that are not in North America, but whenever I see it I think of "many maths" the way one might say "many sheeps."

So! I have now writ 28,015 words.

This means I have 21,985 left to write in the next 5 days (+ however many minutes left between now and bedtime, but let's say 5 days as the nearest day-integer).

That's 4,397/day! Which is slightly less than 5,000 per day and slightly greater than HOLY CRAP, THAT'S A LOT OF WORDS.

However, if you were to break that down strictly by number of calendar hours (assuming 24 hours per day), that would be 183.20 words per hour, or 3.05 words per minute - which is such a low number of words per minute that if you were to set that as your goal in Mario Teaches Typing, Mario would flat out refuse to get on the floating stone if it was really going to cross the field of lava at such a ridiculously slow pace. This doesn't allow for sleeping and working and eating and driving/walking/texting/breathing, but in a pure hard world of plural math this is completely possible.

I mean, I could absolutely think of 3.05 words a minute even while sleeping, I think, and then I would just have to type them in. And as a transcriptionist, I clocked in at over 100 words per minute.

According to maths, I've already won!

I can now round up to victory!



Being halfway to any sort of destination makes me want a very specific McDonald's meal (kids' sized chicken nuggets, honey, animal crackers, toy), because there was a McDonalds-having rest stop halfway in between Toronto (where my family lived for a while) and Stratford (where my mom's family lived - and, as was usually the cause for these trips, my dentist, who was no doubt thrilled about us ruining all his hard cleaning work with honey and animal crackers).

Basically: HALFWAAAAY! Plan for novel has changed yet again. Like you do!

Plan: each day of holiday weekend, deep-clean 1 room of my apartment and write 8K words.

Actual: Sleeping, lung-puking [those long asthmatic coughing fits / "my lungs are FULL OF STUFF OMG WTF"], being too lazy to write/clean/turn on Netflix. Too lazy for Netflix, people.

I had such high hopes for my Nano progress this year! On the big, big, big upside, this year's November Sickness is only physical. Not being crippled by mental illness is way, way better than feeling smug because I hadn't upped my meds for so many years. Noted!

That said, while my family never really celebrated Thanksgiving and I had planned to be bopping around between write-ins instead of going to a Big Family Gathering, Thanksgiving alone is more lonely than regular days alone. (Especially when one is too sick/lazy to turn on Netflix. Captain Picard is good company, yo. Ditto Twilight Sparkle and/or crazy Olly Steeds. Screw you, Netflix, for taking my Stargates away from me!)

So if anyone's around, can we talk about fun fandom things? Or Nano things? Or how it's totally OK to live in squalor for a few more days because standing is hard? :)

ETA: Talked to my parents, who awesomely were like "Dude, sick days don't count for Nano. You should just add them all onto the end." I love how my parents still sorta think they can write me notes to get me out of anything when I'm sick. Then my mom prescribed tea, and "Watch Janeway in the bathtub episode." My parents are the actual best.

Then we discussed how they were watching Goldfinger, and I told them the story of how I was supposed to pick a "classic American name" for a 9th grade global studies mock Yalta conference or something and I chose "Pussy Galore" without realizing the implications. I mean, she was a GREAT AMERICAN HEROINE, okay?

... with viruskind.

Be it established that upon an invasion of the body of viruskind, the expected amount of sick is understood to be X days, virus-type dependent.

I propose that I will allow my body to host said virus for X+1 days if I am permitted to defer the onset of sick for up to 1 week, such that the time of sick shall fall at a more convenient time.

What say you, virus caucus?

Seriously, I love so many things to come out of Occupy Wall Street. Even if you're not an anarchist or a pot smoker or would never sleep outside in the cold or stand in front of pepper spray, these are my 3 favorite things to come out of the Occupy movement lately:

1. #OccupySandy, which is providing real, immediate assistance on the ground in Staten Island and other affected areas and has been doing so since before the storm even hit. If you've got a few dollars and want to send them some much-needed supplies, some people started an Amazon registry and are driving them every day to places displaced survivors need them most: Couple's Style: Warm and Non-Perishable.

2. Rolling Jubilee - The People's Bailout, part of #StrikeDebt. This is awesome practically for those it will help and symbolically for everyone. Random people donate money - a dollar, $20, whatever. Rolling Jubilee pools it together and buys distressed debt on the credit resale market (largely medical debt, which causes 60% of bankruptcies). This is the debt that lenders resell to predatory collection agencies for pennies on the dollar. Instead, Rolling Jubilee buys as much debt as it can (for 5 cents per dollar) and just forgives the debt completely. Random strangers = freed from part or all of their debt! I donated my coffee money for the week, which will free somebody of $400 of debt - I couldn't make $400 of difference on my own, but through this, I can! Tonight was their official launch, and they got $250K in donations already, which will take OVER FIVE MILLION DOLLARS off the backs of struggling Americans! (International people: I imagine that either somebody in your home country will be on this by the end of the week, or your tax and lending codes don't allow predatory debt resale which means your society on the whole is probably better off.)

3. Me, having hope for humanity and the future. :) #Occupy isn't a monolithic entity. People and groups claiming that name do a lot of things in a lot of places, only some of which I agree with (ballot burners, I'm looking at you) - but that's what happens with a leaderless, stockholder-less movement. The part that warms my heart and makes me happy-cry is that people who don't have to, who aren't getting credit or being paid or being told to do it, are grouping together wherever they are and using what they have to stand with the weak against the strong. Even in our consumerist culture, we haven't completely forgotten. <3

Portland has a lot of hardcore nano-ers who hit 50k by day 10 and then complain they're behind THEIR goal for the month, which is 3 novels or 180,000 words or something equally impressive. Then I'm like "Not only am I 10,000 words behind, but the words I have totally suck!" It makes me want to go back to fanfic where just using the right OTP gets you halfway there! Bumming me out, I tell you.

What's really bumming me out - and harshing my word count - is this head/chest/full-body cold that's been grinding me down since Friday. When I get sick, it tends to get worse each day instead of better (I mean, eventually it gets better, but the worst is days 5-7 or so instead of day 1). I need to remember that in the future so I can stock up on soup and cereal and THINGS I NEED TO LIVE! Also, you'd think that being wrapped in blankets forced to hide away from other humans would result in writing, but so far it has only resulted in sleeping and whining.

Hey, nano veterans, what do you do when you realize your novel needs a major stylistic change? Mine is way too dry and serious, and it needs more fun and snark and sex... but that means personality-shifting characters and changing a lot of basic stuff. Do you just make a little line break, write "okay, just pretend a bunch of other stuff happened in the last 10,000 words" and then continue the plot? Normally I'd delete about 80% of what's here and rewrite, but that's not really a November-friendly option.

I can't help thinking that soup would make all of this better, but the store is like BLOCKS away.

ETA: Starvation averted. Punnily named Thai place located a smaller number of blocks away from me. Take-out, then words, then sleeping. Huzzah!

I think I'm writing one of those Cardassian epics that Julian Bashir hated so much on DS9, where there's a cast of hundreds and every generation makes the same mistakes and eventually gives their lives over to the service of the state.

However, my place LOOKS like I'm making a lot of headway on nano so far, because I have no clean clothes, no clean dishes, and it's freezing-ass cold in here because I haven't yet tarped my windows or moved my furniture away from heaters so I can use them.

Totally not-nano question: Do we know if Jennifer Keller was on Atlantis as an underling prior to taking over for Carson, or did she arrive after "Sunday"? IT'S IMPORTANT BECAUSE OF REASONS. I totally wish I were writing Sparkvember instead.

Today an unexpected character showed up. His name is Paolo. Maybe he will do something!

Title: “First Snow”
Rating: PG
Summary: Elizabeth's in a funk, and John has a plan. Well, he doesn't, but he's going to come up with one.
Bingo prompt: Winter
Set: Season 2

( over at sparktober! )