I'm a Weiner! oh, I mean winner....

It's late, I'm tired... but I did it... I'm a winner: 50,164!
But the novel's not done.... so we'll see just how big of a winner I am if I ever finish this novel! But that's what December is for... It's been a great project, and I feel great about crossing that line!

It's time for sleep now...

9,699 words in 6 hours... bloody stumps for fingers

Mundane: Def: common; ordinary; banal; unimaginative. Or so says dictionary dot com... It's also a word that could easily and accurately describe the drivel that I write when I'm under the gun.

The great news is that I sequestered myself from reality for approximately 6 hours yesterday and hammered out close to 10,000 words on the novel. At my most productive hour, I wrote just over 2,000 words in an hour.

The bad news is that I found that I have the ability to write pure, unadulterated, boring mundane crap (hence the 2,000 words in an hour). Crappy dialogue, crappy descriptions, everything felt boring and so very not-special. However, if you recall the only measure of success is getting to that 50,000 word count by midnight on 11/30/09, so I am sticking with that as my motivator.

I was so motviated by my growing (albeit crap-ful) word count, I tracked it every half hour.

Intresting.... the peak productivity occurred after taking a break to share nachos and a part of the Vikings game with my children. I'm sure it was the chiki that helped me through, as you can see the massive amounts of caffeine I was consuming earlier in the morning had a cycling effect.

As of 3:23 central time on Sunday, November 22nd, I am back on track for my daily word count! Of course, I haven't written a word yet today, so as of midnight, I may be behind! Thanks for all of your encouraging words... they really do help!

The view from the peak of Mount Everest - 25,016 ft. (er... I mean words)

Looks mighty fine from here - sitting at my computer having successfully knocked out a full 25,016 words on my Nanowrimo project. I figure that since most mountain climbers don't have a helicopter pick them up at the top, and it's equally dangerous climbing down a mountain as it is climbing up - At this point, I am sitting on the top of novel writing world.

Of course, I am not actually surveying the words that I have written - there's the First Nano Rule (FNR) that states: Do not go back, do not read what you have written. Do not erase words. Just write words.

So, as far as I know, I've written 25,016 words that are sucky crap. There is every likelihood that it's true. And I have decided to follow the FNR because it's convenient for me. And since my only measure of success has been to finish the goal of 50,000 words in 30 days, it doesn't matter just how sucky craplike the story is.

And I'm a few thousand words behind on my daily count, but I think I should be able to make those up by the end of the week.

I am enjoying the process, though. I've added some level of interest to my character set, finally introduced the Male Main character in person to my Female Main character (it took forever)... so that should be a little interesting. My biggest fear right now is that it turns into a modern day Lust in the Dust or Corset Ripper novel. I've been putting in a few odd little references that obliquely relate to each other, should provide for an interesting ending..... and hopefully forestall Horace from sweeping Gene into his arms and riding off into the sunset on his motorcycle. I think she has to screw up and break his heart.... No happily ever after for my novel..... no no no....

Why my nano count has stalled.... I was too busy getting inspiration?

Got back from New York early yesterday - and instead of getting down to do some heavy duty make up writing, I spent the entire afternoon on the couch, intermittently sleeping, watching the Vikings game, snacking, and well.... definitely NOT writing for my NANO project.

No wonder I needed the sleep! We were in Manhattan a total of 44 hours, which meant that we had to have the "I'll sleep when I"m past the Newark airport" attitude.

Here's what we did in the those few precious hours, and whil we did sleep in the wee hours of the morning, I'm getting too old to do that for too many days in a row!

• Walked through Times square on way to have...
• Lunch and champagne at the Algonquin Hotel where the New Yorker was highly influenced by Dorothy Parker and yes, we saw the Round Table.
• Top of the Rock - Up top at the Rockefeller Center where they clearly took lessons from the Disney people in "how to squeeze every penny out of your guests in the shortest time period possible"
• Rockefeller center ice rink and holiday tree - skating yes... tree was there but surrounded by heavy duty scaffolding with many guys putting lights on the tree. Should look cool once the scffolding comes down!
• Walked through part of Central park with Hurrican Ida winds blowing.... damn near knocked us over.
• Took a break at Tavern on the Green for a cocktail... for those of you you who used to work at the same company as I do, you'll know that the "concept" of our course business was started there.
• continued wlaking and went through Natural History Museum and Hayden Planterium... very cool bunch of dead stuff.
• cab back to hotel, where we freshened up for Dinner at:
• Chez Josephine, an awesome restuarant in Theatre District - the whole place is an homage to Jospehine Baker... great food and the pianist could belt out those show tunes better than anyone I've ever met.
• tried to get in at Birdland, but they were sold out. Bummer. Settled for some other little bar where the trio ended up to be a two-o. Short visit..... wandered back to hotel, slept until I got out of the warm bed and went to get...
• Bagels and coffee from the Bagel Bar and was a wonderful wife and brought them back for my husband who was still sleeping...
• Walked down 6th Street to Madison Square Garden in search of a copy of NY Times... never found one until we got to the Newark airport the next day. Wierd
• Took a cab over the United Nations building. No tours available that day, but man, it was like stepping into a time capsule. I don't think anything has changed since North by Northwest was filmed.
• Walked back to Grand Central Station. Lunch was Hotdog from a street vendor, and no I didn't have any ketchup on it.
• Cabbed back to hotel and got ready to head down to West Village for merriment and music
• Went to Garage on Bleecker - too early for first show
• Came across a bunch of Puppy Parlors on Christopher street - doggies in the window type of place - one had a whole litter of Frech Bulldogs.... wiggle wiggle whiggle
• Scott bought his Black Wool winter Jazzman hat from a street vendor - a pork pie hat..
• Stopped at Greenwich Village Bistro for another drink, nice locally owned place, funny owner talking about the "old village",.... we agreed with her.
• Strolled down to Chez Jacqueline for tasty Frenchy dinner (in honor of the Frenchie bulldogs..) oohh la la.
• Went to Blue Note - one of THE jazz clubs to visit... everyone who is anyone has played there. And wow, do they pack in the patrons... damn fire code...
• Found Le Poisson Rouge after many attempts... we felt a little, er old to be there... Missed the first show and didn't want to hang out in the disco bar until the next... yes, we are old.
• cabbed back to Hotel, and stopped by BB King's club for a little more live music, and came across some drunk Canadian ladies who loved to dance and an english gentleman that lost his wife in the bar.
• Wandered abck to the hotel, stopped and got a couple of slices of pizza... crashed until wake up call for departure to Newark Airport.

Fabulous short vacation! Have too many blisters, still sleep deprived, and way behind on Nano... but I feel a writing binge coming my way.... maybe this afternoon!

Big Apple, watch out baby!

Just finished packing for a quick trip to New York. Just a long weekend, but we plan on getting as much jazz clubbing, foodie trolling and sight seeing done as possible. We'll see what this does to my plot development for my nanowrimo project. I can't imagine that it wouldn't inspire me somehow.... who knows, maybe my sad and sullen english teacher from a Winona-like town in MN hops on a plane and heads east with a stranger she just met.

I'm also planning on testing out Brian's Hairball in a drain theory....

16,182 words... Gypsy Gene is well on it's way!

In manuscript form, that's a total of 53 pages (TNR,12 font, double spaced, etc.). That is officially the longest work I have ever created alone, including college, work and fun. Even better, the characters don't bore me right now - although I don't like many of them - I don't know I would hang around any of them....

In fact, they have taken on a life of their own... words just get typed that form a character profile that I never imagined for this person. Case in point, just to get a sentence structure with the most power, a formerly straight secondary character all of a sudden was revealed to be gay! How did that happen? I'm not really sure, but it felt right as I was typing it, and damn, I've learned to just let my character development go with the flow.

So far, I can't see the finished product, but I know that I am keeping up with the daily goal, even getting ahead on some days. BAck to the cretive salt mines... oh, and that pesky day job... darn paycheck...

The first (and maybe last) excerpt of my Nano stuff

Per popular request (Ok, it really was just Thomas' request), I am baring my soul for all lurkers to poke holes in... and posting a section of the "novel" (hah!) that I am writing through Nanowrimo. I understand that posting these kinds of things is a little bit controversial, as it may jeopardize future publish-ability, but hell, I don't really care. It's not going to get published anyway.

So, I'm not going to set this up much, other than I was giggling when I wrote it, and it reminded me of all the work related happy hours we used to have (those were the days).... I read part of it to my loving and supportive husband... giggle, he did not. Smile in a "that's nice for you sweetheart way" he did. So much for feedback from him. Story line is about a high school English teacher who is generally unhappy and unfulfilled, but thinks she is "all that" (huh, good thing I'm not a teacher, or you all would see right through it). She regularly meets up with a friend for happy hour on Monday afternoon. Here it is... lay waste if you like, ignore if you want.

In the town of Winton, there were four restaurants that had liquor licenses, and over a dozen bars spread throughout the town limits. Since both Emily and Gene were teachers and “pillars” of the local community, they always chose to attend happy hour at a restaurant. What would the School Board think if they heard that two of their teacher stopped by the Queen of Hearts bar every Monday? Even worse, they couldn't imagine the wrathful lecture of Principal Amundson if he found out. It was a small town after all.

Tonight, they agreed to meet at Bananabee’s – a locally owned restaurant located in the strip mall at the west end of town. It used to be called Karl’s Kafe, but when Karl died, his son Kevin took it over and wanted to emulate a chain restaurant that was very popular up in the Twin Cities. Kevin investigated a franchise agreement with the chain, but realized he’d have to dump too much money into the place to get it up to snuff for the franchise, so instead, he played off the name, literally stole a copy of the menu, and just switched the names of the menu items. Voila, at Bananabees, you could get a Monte Cristo sandwich, but it was called "The Monte Carlo”. As an appetizer, you could order Jalapeno Toppers, instead of Poppers. It was a running joke in town that Kevin stayed up for a whole week, obsessed about dreaming up these names, and printed the new menus before he knew that his restaurant staff could actually cook the food. Gene had visited that other chain last year at a teaching convention, and in her opinion, Banabee’s Monte Carlo sandwich was much tastier, only because it was prepared with small town love, rather than assembled based on a laminated picture by picture recipe card.

Gene pulled into the Banabee’s lot to find Emily’s grey minivan already parked. Gene was proud of the fact that she still owned a two-door coupe, and had no need to compromise design for the ability to haul kids to soccer games and the like. Gene and her cocker spaniel were the only ones these days that rode in her car. She dodged an elderly couple on their way into the restaurant, probably headed to meet their friends for Linner.

There..... I did it..... now, I need to get back to the writing for fear of falling in the big behind with my Nanowrimo buddies. I'm up to 5,123 words.... 10% through and I'm still not sure where it's going.... next excerpt I post will actually be about the main character Gene, just haven't quite figured her out yet.

4,133 words in, and I'm still not sure if I like my main character

It was like the first day of school on November 1st, I had all my paper together and my pencils sharpened (well, the battery on my laptop charged, at least), and I woke up at 5:00 AM, with my story line ideas flowing out of my brain, like the water level rising against a dam after a spring rain. Quick, start the writing so you don't loose the gems...

It's like I couldn't keep the ideas inside my head anymore. I was typing as fast as I could, taking notes on the side so that I wouldn't forget that brilliant sidebar (she should always use a purple white board marker - that should be her trademark, her personality in a can), and the words just flew by. Soon, I was up to 500 words, and I had barely even begun the main character development. 700 words gone and I was just figuring out what her last name would be. 900 - Ha, that thing about the kid pewking on his way to gym class- that was a priceless line!

I needed to take a break and acknowledge my family's existence. And so I clicked on save, clicked on word count and was shocked that I had written over 1,000 words on the first day of nanowrimo. And it was 6:30 AM. Huh. So, it looks like quantity won't be an issue for me. Later in the morning, I tore down the dam again and lo and behold, I finished the day with 2008 words.

Which leaves the other measure - quality. The story line is definitely holding together so far (Especially since nothing but character introduction has happened), I don't' have any critical flaws in the plot - yet.

I'm introducing my character - Gene Gerard - as she passes through her day as a 9th grade English teacher and interacts with students, colleagues and faculty, so the reader could get to meet a lot of people in the first chapter of the book - probably too many.

My problem? As my character (Gene) moves through her day, the interactions she has are painting her as an unhappy, rigid, unfulfilled woman. Which is fine, but I don't' want the story line to take the obvious turn - where she finds true love and it makes her "whole" BLECHK.

In my efforts to not write Chick Lit... I will be looking for ways of filling the story with surprising plot turns so that the reader keeps guessing, rather than it following a formula.

As of this morning, I'm over 4,000 words. Trying to figure out a plot twist. I might post an excerpt tomorrow - feedback will always be appreciated and of course, I reserve the right to completely ignore it!

Heck, I'm not sure what I'm worried about - the work, called "Gypsy Gene" may never even have ink put to paper. It may just spend eternity on a flash drive in a drawer.