Word count for the wee hours

Final count, now that I'm going to bed in preparation for a long day of Obama phonebanking tomorrow:

3,049.

Sweet.

Day One, Hour One

As of 1 AM, November 1: 2,215 words.

Yee-haw.

Making up for lost time

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted - I've been spending so much time volunteering for Obama that I haven't had much of a break. Haven't done too much writing lately besides my short story for the Fiction Writing Seminar, but NaNoWriMo is only a few days away!

I'm so excited - NaNo is my favorite time of the year, and if I can just get a few assignments out of the way, and survive the election, it's going to be crazy fun. Particularly with the big group of participants we have here at Grinnell.

In other, unrelated news, I've discovered the world of podcasts on iTunes, particularly video cooking podcasts, and am wasting loads of time. Yeah.

Grinnell NaNoWriMo

We had our very first meeting for the Grinnell College chapter of National Novel Writing Month, and it was a rousing success. Fifteen (!!!) people showed up, and another three couldn't make it but requested to be put on the mailing list. Of course, not everyone will come to meetings, but it's a great start. Now my co-leader (also the Grinnell ML) and I are working on a budget request for food and prizes.

I cannot wait for November, and not just because it'll mean a break in my schoolwork and the election.

Pandora

I'd just like to express my love for Pandora, which is free Internet radio and totally customizable. I can't remember who introduced me to it, but I thought I'd share the love.

Back to work.

Short story revisions

I'm working on revising my first short story from my Fiction Writing Seminar course. It's set in Port Orford, Oregon, a place with a very unique feel to it, and so it's been difficult for me to really capture the setting in my story. Of course, all the critiques in the workshop mentioned wanting a better grounding in place, so I'll just have to buck up and find a way to do it.

I've noticed a certain trend in some of my stories - not all of them, because there are some very notable exceptions to this - that I don't like. Particularly in stories using first-person narration, I have a fairly passive, under-characterised female narrator who has a close friendship with a very dynamic, clearly delineated male character. It may be a function of the POV, or it may be that I was stuck on this story and fell back on a familiar style when I was writing it. If I think about it, my 2005 NaNoWriMo novel, also in first-person, follows this model, while the 2006 and 2007 novels as well as the 2006 NaNoWriDay novel do not. They're all in third-person and feature strong female protagonists.

Something to think about.

Also, I promised myself I wouldn't turn this into a political blog, but I just have to say: register to vote. And then vote for Obama. Please.