Off on Thanksgiving "Break"

Yes, the quotation marks are intentional, because while it may be Thanksgiving, it's hardly a break.  I'm flying home this afternoon for three full days of delicious food and family togetherness.  Unfortunately, in those three days, I also need to write most, if not all, of the following:

• 20 pages of my history seminar paper
• 6-page paper on the relationship between Stalin and Shostakovich
• 6-page paper on the role of the idealized American farmer in presidential elections
• 7-minute presentation on the concept of republican motherhood and citizenship in the early American republic
• 12-minute presentation on the Nazi use of traditional German music

So, while I am very eager to go home and see my family and eat tasty food, I'm wigging out a little about the amount of work that I need to complete.  Let's just say I'll be making judicious use of my 12 hours of travel time.  On the upside, I have two new albums to listen to as I work: Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster and Adam Lambert's For Your Entertainment (snagged for 99 cents through Amazon's mp3 sale).  So far, I quite like most of the songs on both, and they're very catchy.

Probably won't be updating over the break, so Happy Thanksgiving (or generic harvest holiday) to all.

50K

I passed 50,000 words around 1 AM today.  I will have a long post up in a few days reflecting on NaNoWriMo and the month, but at the moment I am tasked with an obscene amount of homework.

See you on the other side.

Reflections from 45K and beyond

I passed 45,000 last night.  Then I woke up this morning, went about my morning routine, sat down after drinking some heavily sweetened coffee to test - and discovered that my blood sugar was low.  The only good thing about that is it means that I've gotten my average blood sugars down to a low enough range that I no longer actively feel low.

...which is also somewhat dangerous, and means I'll have to bring back traditions like testing in the middle of the night.  Ugh.

As for my novel, it's finally going somewhere.  Not by 50K, by any means, but at least the action is picking up.  I may be able to finish it by 60,000 words.  The write-in and workshop yesterday was very helpful (and reasonably well-attended), and I hope future leaders of Grinnell NaNoWriMo will continue it.

How strange - to think that next year, I'll be doing NaNoWriMo in a totally different place.

Breathe.

Whew, what a hectic last few days it's been.  Some pretty big important deadlines are coming up, too - starting work on my history seminar paper, which will clock in between 25 and 30 pages, and at some point I need to do the research for my final presentation in my other history class, my presentation in my American lit class, and my American lit paper.  In other words, it's not going to get any easier, especially since everything seems to be due around Dec. 4th.  Urrrgh.

I have decided to stop stressing about post-graduation plans and just let things happen.  It's not the end of the world if I don't have my entire future prepared on May 25, 2010.  I will probably make this decision about twenty more times before it actually sticks.

NaNoWriMo, at least, provides a nice escape whenever I need a break.  I'm at 36,162 words right now, so even if I only write about 1000 per day (which seems likely) I'll make it right on time.  Plus, Thursday is our special all-day Write-In and workshop with Professor Josh Emmons, and I should be there for most of the day (only two classes on Thursdays, and no work), so I could rack up another 5-7K right there.

Disappointingly enough, it turns out you can't just decide to have good blood sugar numbers and then be 100 all the time; instead, there is a constant fight against highs and lows.  Grrrr.  But I'm working on it.

In exciting news, I have my tickets for the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner next weekend, which will be loads of fun, and four days later I fly home for Thanksgiving.  If I can get through this week, at least I'll get a bit of a break.

...or not

Forgot that this was an incredibly busy weekend.  I'm still well ahead, so I will continue to write 1667 words each day and coast across the finish line that way.

Day 12, cont'd

Final count for the night: 31,183 words.  There's half an hour left in the night, but I've got an important meeting with my history seminar professor about my final paper proposal tomorrow morning, so I think I'll go to bed.

It was very nice to get back to writing today.  I think I'll shoot for 35K tomorrow.

Day 12

29,034 words right now.  I'll definitely crack 30K by midnight, but more would be nice...I think I'll play it by ear, though.

In history class, we read poems by Mayakovsky and Osip Mandelstam, both poets writing under Stalin's regime.  Both incredibly sad, but beautiful poetry.

Back to work

Now that I'm back to work, nothing in my life is safe from inclusion in my novel.  For example, this morning I woke up with a pounding headache...and promptly spent a page on my character waking up feeling terrible.  Sadly, this did not remedy my own headache, but it certainly helped with my word count.

Tasks this weekend include watching a Shostakovich opera, writing a 2-4 page introduction (and more) for my seminar paper, and researching my final presentation for the opera class.  Did I mention this weekend is also Drag Show (Friday) and Fetish (Saturday)?  So...no hope of catching up on sleep, then.

Taking a break

It's a good thing I've built up a bit of a word cushion, because the next few days will be beastly.  My expanded proposal for my history seminar paper is due tomorrow by 4:30 PM, which requires skimming the rest of my sources and then writing 2-3 pages, but one of my sources (a giant book) is library-only.  Tomorrow after CS, I'll have to devote a few hours to reading it.

I've also got a computer science mid-term exam on Wednesday, and would like to get the bulk of my studying done tonight.  After that, the week should get significantly easier, and we're having a bit of a dinner-party on Friday night with old friends from my first year of college.  I'm making rum cake, possibly the first recipe I ever wrote (and one of my favorites).

Still mulling over the question of what to do immediately after graduating.  Lots to think about.

Oops.

Well, I didn't hit 30K.  Didn't even come close, really - 26,634 was my final total last night.  I was distracted, you see, by the fact that the U.S. House of Representatives passed the health care reform bill.

I try (and frequently fail) to keep this blog fairly free of politics, so I will simply say that I was incredibly glad to see the bill pass.  Yes, some changes were made - by Democrats - that I really dislike.  I'm hoping those will be fixed when they get to the Senate.  But whatever happens, this is a major victory.

Day 7

I think I'm going to shoot for 30K tonight.  However, I managed to slice the top of my thumb while cutting open an English muffin (stupidest way to cut yourself ever) and my typing speed has been significantly slowed by this fact.  So we'll see if I actually make it by midnight (~4 hours to write 5K).

Also, I've realized that the Victorian setting is a bit too confining for my characters, so I'm going to angle this heavily towards steampunk and use that as the explanation for why it's suddenly okay for my characters to refer to each other by their first names.  And be together in a room without a chaperone.

My workspace

In case you were curious, here's a photo of my desk.  Click to see the full photo.

1) Egg timer for Word Wars with...myself

2) Empty Pocky box.  Excellent NaNoWriMo snack.

3) Coffee mug that holds 32+ oz of coffee

4) My sorely neglected school to-do list

5) "Don't get it right, get it written", taken from No Plot? No Problem!

6) Johnnie Walker, for super-productive weekends

The postcards are a fairly random collection - a First World War Navy propaganda poster, purchased at the Imperial War Museum, Quito Rojo by Oswaldo Guayasamin, purchased at the Guayasamin Foundation in Quito, Ecuador, and two postcards of work by Theo Ellsworth.  Up above, I have a Canaletto postcard of the Grand Canal in Venice, a Hokusai from "Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji", and a Yes We Did card from MoveOn.org.  Plus my Iowa voter registration card, a Boca Juniors scarf that kept me semi-warm at a Boca Juniors-Brasil game in Buenos Aires, and two NaNoWriMo stickers from last year's donor goodies package.

Yes, it's cluttered.  It was cleaner before I started actually working at my desk.

Day 6

I'm at 25,359 words total.  Things are really starting to pick up, plot-wise, so that's cool too.  I've written 5052 words today - not quite up to yesterday's record of 6914 words (yes, I calculated it incorrectly last night), but still quite respectable.  I may write more in a little while, but right now I'm going to have some celebratory Johnnie Walker Black Label.  And possibly some ramen.  These two foods may never have been consumed at the same time by the same person in the history of humanity.  I am such a trailblazer.

Also, had my preregistration meeting today.  Next semester:

CSC 207: Algorithms & Object-Oriented Design

CSC 323: Software Development

ENG 295: Advanced Fiction Seminar

ENG 332: Haunted Victorians

I'll also be a T.A. for CSC 151, which is the intro comp sci class.  It's going to be an awesome semester if I get all the classes I want.  And don't die of work.

Day 5, cont'd

Final total for Day 5: 20,307 words.  Niiiiiice.  Once again, I will go pass out in bed.  Tomorrow morning I'll read "Fall of the House of Usher" for English class and finish my opera review paper.

NaNoWriMo, Day 5

I'm up to 15,555 words so far, and I have all afternoon (until my Very Important Television) plus the write-in tonight.  I bet I could hit 20K by midnight tonight.

...Crap.  Now that I've said it, I have to do it.  Adios, naptime.

Getting Day 5 off to a good start

I don't know when this happened, but somehow I have this compulsion to always be up and doing things by 8 AM.  It's absurd, but I feel like I'm wasting time.  Unfortunately, I rarely go to sleep before 1 or 2 AM, even if I'm in bed by midnight, so it all works out to 'not enough sleep for Nora'.

Today, though, things are going well.  My bowl-sized Grinnell mug is full of hot coffee, and I have a plate full of freshly baked homemade cranberry walnut bread.  It reminds me of the morning after Thanksgiving, when my dad can't go to work and so he builds a fire in the fireplace and we do family stuff like sit around reading or play Boggle and the dogs fall asleep on the rug in front of the fireplace.

Instead, I'm sitting at my desk contemplating my plans for the day and how best to fit writing in.  I have a Writing Lab appointment for one of my papers at 11 AM, so I think I'll write until 10 AM and then work on the paper.

EDIT:
I'd forgotten how much I love The Clockwise Witness.  I think it's one of the loveliest songs I've heard.  Click to listen.

Day 4

Rough day today, and I'm about to pass out I'm so tired.  Total is 13,393.  I'll go for 17,500 tomorrow, it's an easy day.

Day 3 - success!

Booyah.  Write-In was a huge success, loads of people showed up, and I won a Word War by nearly 200 words.

Also, my final total for the day is 12,312 words.  Not too shabby.

Now, bed.

Grinnell NaNoWriMo

Tonight is our belated Kick-Off Party and first Write-In, so I have my fingers crossed for good attendance...and some rousing Word Wars.  Hopefully my co-leader will remember to bring her trusty egg timer so we can properly time it all.

Haven't done any writing yet today (I've been too dead from homework, and my friend dragged me out of my room and said "I haven't seen you since Sunday, you have to spend some time out here with us!"), but I'm about to begin.  Let's see how it goes.  I'd really like to hit 10K by midnight.

NaNo takes its toll

I can tell by the half-eaten bowl of ramen on my desk - last night was rough. I stopped working on my novel too late, and when I went to do my computer science homework, I discovered that my C compiler wouldn't compile. Meaning I had no way of testing the programs I was supposed to write for my homework. Granted, I should've started much earlier, but there's nothing like staring at the wrong side of 6 AM and realizing there's no way you can complete the work for a class you really enjoy. I did well enough on the first midterm that I'll be okay, if this is a one-time thing. I just need to plan my time out better.

Currently looming: a revised bibliography for my history seminar (eeek!) and a 3-page review of Tosca, from the point of view of a specific person. Plus, the library has helpfully recalled two of my Interlibrary Loan books that are vital to my history seminar paper, so I've got to trek over there after work this afternoon and beg them to let me keep the books for another two weeks.

Also, I brilliantly agreed to substitute for two different people at work today, which means a scattered three hours of work on what's supposed to be a day off. I love my job, but they're starting to joke about me living there.

Ending on a positive note: one of the English professors at Grinnell and a talented published author, Josh Emmons, has agreed to help out with NaNoWriMo at Grinnell. Meaning we will have some pretty awesome events coming up. That knowledge soothes my sleep-deprived brain.

Day 2, cont'd.

Final total for the day: 7,595 words. That's around 2250 written today, I think - not quite what I'd like, and I could probably do a lot more in the next half hour, but I absolutely have to start on my CS homework now or I'll be dead tomorrow.

Also, I'm afraid all my written work will start to sound like 19th-century British English. The perils of semi-historical fiction.

Day 2

Ugh. Wrote maybe 100 words at work today, and now I'm about to write more - blatantly ignoring the fact that I have CS homework due tomorrow at 10 AM (usually takes me 3-4 hours to complete) and was going to try to write a first draft of my history essay for an 11:40 AM meeting.

NaNoWriMo, I love you, but you're hell on my GPA.

Day 1, final count

My final count for the day: 5,225 words. I really hit a fantastic patch over the last few hours, wrote nearly 3000 words in about two and a half hours.

Now, to bed, so I can wake up and do my neglected computer science homework (due Tuesday, but it'll take a while).

Day 1, continued

Well, it took me three hours to write the first 1000 words, and my goal for today was 5000 words...I'm thinking that's unlikely unless I can pick up the pace. I do, of course, have silly stuff like homework to finish for Monday...maybe I'll wake up early tomorrow morning.

NaNoWriMo, Day 1

The novel-writing has begun! My novel is off to a bit of a slow start, due to the fact that a) last night was Halloween and b) my main character has only just reached India. Once I kill off her husband, though, things should pick up.

For anyone who's curious, here's a photo of my Halloween costume: