Friday, October 28, 2011

Putting a Price on Nostalgia

Just a few days left till NaNoWriMo. I will NOT be staying up until midnight on the 31st so I can start writing as soon as November begins. I thought about it, considering there's really nothing I need to do on Tuesday, and I thought it might be fun, but I'm just not a night owl. So, instead I'll be going to bed as usual, and then waking up bright and early on Tuesday to get started. (Lucky for me, "bright" and early on November 1st sounds a lot earlier than it really is.)

I'm hoping to knock out 10K on that first day. As I said, I have nothing else on the schedule that day, I'll have the apartment to myself for the majority of it, and I definitely think it's doable, especially considering that I have a really clear idea of how the beginning of the novel is going to go. This will be the most I've ever written in a single day . . . assuming, of course, that I succeed, and I really see no reason why I shouldn't.

In other news, my 10-year reunion has finally been scheduled, and I will most definitely NOT be attending. I was kind of up in the air about it anyway, since I already see a good chunk of my high school friends fairly regularly (most of whom weren't even from my graduating year), and I'm FB friends with most other people I hung out with, so it's not like we've had no contact. There's only really a handful of people I'd be interested in seeing, and of course no guarantee they'd even be there. Not to mention I don't really feel like I've accomplished anything since graduating, which is maybe a stupid reason not to want to go, but I know I can't be alone in that.

Anyway, I just got notification that the date and venue are set, and the price is $50/person. So, $100 for both Pat & I to go. To something I wasn't sure I wanted to go to anyway. So . . . yeah, skipping that. There'll be other reunions, and maybe I'll feel differently in 5 or 10 or 15 years.

Or, ya know, next year, when it's time for Pat's reunion. Though that will be more his decision than mine.

Friday, October 21, 2011

It's That Time Again . . .

Time to make one random post and then disappear for another six weeks, you ask?

Fair question, but no. Time for NaNoWriMo!

I didn't participate last year. I wanted to, but I really didn't have any good ideas, or at least not any ideas that I was excited about. Actually about a week before November started, I had one pretty much handed to me, that I thought had promise, but I just couldn't get into it.

This year, on the other hand . . .

Well, first of all I actually logged onto the forums when they relaunched (every year in October, they wipe the site clean and start over again, to get ready for that year's NaNo), and it was exciting to be swept up in it from the beginning. There was a lot of extra excitement this year, because they switched over from one kind of forum host to another, so everything's even newer and shinier than normal. (It's also causing a fair amount of bugs, but mostly minor inconveniences and features that haven't been implemented yet.)

So, I started looking through a series of novel ideas I had stored away, things that never got very far into the planning stage. At first I thought I'd give last year's idea another go, but quickly decided that if I couldn't get excited about it then, I probably wouldn't get excited about it now. So I looked instead to the ideas I'd had and filed away during those nebulous periods between NaNo's, when the ideas come in small, strange glimpses, but there's no real push to do anything with them.

One idea from this list really jumped out at me, so I went with it. Got quite a bit of planning done for it (more than I've ever done for any project before), and then decided to set it aside for these next couple weeks so I don't get burned out on it before I even start writing.

So, in regards to that 6-week gap . . . I'll probably be posting a bit more frequently with updates. And I'll probably continue posting a bit more frequently even AFTER NaNo, since I'll have gotten into the "writing zone" again.

And then somewhere around January I'll probably go back to a more sporadic schedule.

Update on Pat: very busy at work, lots of overtime, not a lot of down time. So, that's why you haven't seen him around recently. I, on the other hand, have no such excuse.