nature does not hurry

Currently at 10,000.

I should be at 13,333 today and at 15,000 tomorrow. Since I won't be writing anymore tonight, that means I'm 5K behind. I was surprisingly social this weekend, so I'm not too bummed I didn't catch up to where I need to be. I've been averaging about 2K per writing session, and don't have anything going on this weekend, so even if I can't eke out two writing sessions on a couple of weekdays this week, I'll have plenty of writing time this weekend.

Some things I have learned:

• Taking the time to focus on worldbuilding up-front is helping me keep focus and will, I suspect, help me when it's time to revise.
  
• A bare-bones outline gives me the flexibility I love about writing on the fly without the frustration of not knowing where all these cool things are going to lead.
  
• I am getting better at making my nouns and verbs work for me, but I still have a ton of room for improvement.
  
• I still really like dialogue. Sometimes at the expense of everything else.
  

Tuesdays are obviously going to be my day off. Last night, I made it to 4,626 words. Today, I'm at about 5,000 words. I don't have the exact word count because they're handwritten, and I need to type them up, and that...will happen tomorrow.

I can't be too frustrated, since 5,000 words on day 3 is still on track for making 50K by the end of the month, and I had fun spending my time between work and my body balance class in downtown Puyallup. Enjoyed an excellent dinner at Bagel Boyz, poked around at Comic Evolution (which, probably unfortunately for my wallet, has a stamp card for graphic novels -- buy 7, get the 8th free) and left with volume 1 of Liquid City. I know how I'm rewarding myself by making word count for the week!

Now I am currently watching the remake of V. Or half-watching. I'm not too captivated by it yet. Though I do want to rewatch the original miniseries now.

Managed 2,945 words today. Am convinced they are all awful. Knowing what I know about my writing habits, they are, for the most part, awful, but I can edit awful. I can't edit nothing.

This is the first real workout I'm giving StoryMill, and I'm suitably impressed. I'd never made full use of the program, and I'm finding I love the character, location, and timeline aspects, and how easy it is to integrate everything. I'm still making paper notes because it's nice break from staring at the screen, but I can't even begin to explain how awesome it is to have everything -- including the revision notes I'm making for myself -- in one place.

I think I love StoryMill even more than I love my Circa notebooks. And I love Circa a little too much.

There's a write-in tomorrow at a Starbucks near my house. I'll be working when it starts, but it goes on for long enough that I should be able to pop in for about the last hour to hour and a half.

Went to my regional NaNo kickoff party this afternoon. It was nice to put some faces to usernames, and the games were fun. :D

As for my prep work...well, I almost done with my outline. I'm doing notecard plotting, a tactic I picked up from a friend that's based on Holly Lisle's Notecarding: Plotting Under Pressure article. Very loosely based on, since my cards are blank except for a brief action at the top. I'm at the stage where I'm ordering my notecards. Once I have the order, I'll flesh them out with a bit more information. And then as I'm writing, I'll add word count and other notes. So I guess I better work on my shorthand since the cards little 3x5ers.

(The cats are fascinated by the cards and think I am playing a game with them. So far, they have not attacked the cards I have scattered around me in a semicircle, but I know that look in their eyes. It's only a matter of time. Though I do have to give Cricket credit. Ms. Paper Fiend is showing remarkable self-restraint in the face of so! much! fun! paper!)

(Yes, I will be sharing cat stories. But only the entertaining ones. :p)

Woohoo! A week to go before NaNoWriMo starts! So, here's my to-do list:

This will be done by November 1, and you will enjoy it:
[ ] An outline. A real one, self, not "beginning stuff" followed by "middle stuff" and then "hi, ending!"
[ ] More names. Placeholder initials work for outline and plotting purposes. Not so much with getting a feel for the characters.
[ ] Tea research. Nail down where certain teas come from, the growing and harvest conditions, and figure out which ones my folks can grow/harvest close to home and which kinds will need to be imported.

That's...not nearly as much as I thought it would be. Of course, the outline could have a to-do list of its own. (Maybe it will once I start poking at it more.)