I Did It!!

I wrote a frickin' book! I officially finished NaNoWriMo today and if you go to my profile, my word count will proudly display that I am a "winner" and that my final word count is 51,315 words. And that's where it's staying. I'm done! I thought that I might finish today but the bigger chance was that I would finish on Friday. But I started writing and the ending just took off. This is what I've been waiting for! I actually knew how I wanted to end the book, so I was excited about writing again.

It's a relief to be done, but at the same time, I'm going to miss it. I don't know what I'm going to do now when I'm bored at work :p Overall, I think I'm happy with my story, but it's going to need some serious editing before it's readable to anyone and I'm sure it'll jump to about 75,000 words by the time I finish expanding it. But I'm leaving it alone for now. I don't think I'm touching it again until next year...maybe in January sometime. I've had enough of that story for now!

Biggest surprise of the whole experience was today as I was writing one of the final scenes. I got real emotional with one part and I was not expecting that at all! It's funny how characters that you create become so real and our minds play tricks on us. Here I am making up the story, it's coming from my brain, but at the same time, I'm processing it like I'm reading this touching story that's already written. Very weird.

But anyway, it's done! One of my biggest goals in life has always been to write a novel. It was one of those things that I always thought I'd say but never do. Or I pictured myself writing in a park sometime after I retired, but never now. So it's a great feeling to have accomplished that goal. And thanks everyone for your encouragement along the way and a special thank you to Deslily who stopped by my blog nearly every day after checking my progress to cheer me on.

Now I have to go find some real work to do....

Trying To Stay With It & NaNo Day er...8

Do you ever pick up a book and just want to put it back on the shelf so bad or just give it away but feel guilty for not reading it? That's how I am with The Age of Innocence right now. This is the second time I've tried to read this one and this book is so not my thing. I'm on my third day of reading it and I'm only 28 pages into it and it's been 28 pages of real effort, let me tell you. Normally, I'd just call it a "did not finish" and give it away to someone, but I feel like I have to see this one out. Someone tell me it gets better...please.

The reason I feel like I have to read this one is two fold. Number 1, it's for the classics challenge. Now I just read Rebecca, so I could substitute that one for this one, but it's also (number 2) for The Pulitzer Project and that would just drive me crazy if I read all of the Pulitzer winners and then didn't finish just this one. So I'm going to have to read it eventually to complete the Pulitzer list so I might as well finish it now, right?

These high society books are just not my thing. There are just too many names and too many families and no action at all. They go to an opera, they have dinner, they have a party. Mr. so and so talks to Mrs. so and so who's daughter is betrothed to Mrs. so and so's son...you know how it goes. And the funny thing is, I enjoy the period piece films and mini-series that the BBC and Masterpiece Theatre produce, but I can't get into this type of literature for some reason. It just doesn't hold my interest. Who knows. I know lots of people love this book, so maybe if I get further than page 30 I'll start enjoying it.

On the NaNo front, today was excellent! I had a rush of ideas and exceeded the word goal of the day which was somewhere in the 13,000 range and went up to 14,497 words. Then the coolest thing happened. As I was writing dialogue for one of my characters, this one line came out of his mouth and I suddenly knew the ending of my book! Until he said what he said, I had no idea where I was going with this story. Now I do. And I jotted it all down with all of the twists and turns of where I want it to go so that I don't forget any of it. Now I just have to figure out how to get this story to that point. That's the next challenge.

Tomorrow's Friday, yay!

NaNoWriMo Day 2 And Reading Decisions

Day 2 of NaNoWriMo has come and gone for me. I think I'm putting away my typing fingers for the afternoon after reaching 4,071 words today. I'm happy with what I've got done so far, so I'm taking the rest of the night off. 16 pages: a prologue, chapter 1, and chapter 2 complete...all rough drafts of course...VERY rough! I posted the first part of chapter 2 on my nano profile if anyone's interested, though keep in mind that serious revisions will have to be made!! But revision time is in December, right now we are supposed to just aim at getting 50,000 words typed by November 30th. For some reason the site took out all of the indentations from my paragraphs and the site is way too slow for me to be bothered with going back to fix it, so excuse that. I've put a link to my NaNo profile in my sidebar, so you can follow my progress there if you so desire :)

So on to reading decisions. I've got my reading all mapped out for the month of November and probably the beginning of December. I'll be finishing up the Classics challenge, 2nds challenge, and Four-Legged Friends challenge this month and into next. Here's what November looks like:

-Finish Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
-The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
-Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
-The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
-Varjak Paw by S.F. Said
-The Bleeding Dusk by Colleen Gleason (yay! I won an ARC :)
-A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
-Watership Down by Richard Adams
-Great Joy by Kate DiCamillo

After that, I devised a system for all of these challenges, lol. Ok, so I wrote down all of the books that I've signed up for to read in 2008 and I've already commited myself to 50 books next year!! I made myself feel better by reminding myself that I didn't sign up for the 888 challenge which would've been a 64 book commitment in itself. So, how on earth would I ever choose which book to read next with 50 books to choose from with all of these challenges?? I went with the obvious answer and put all of the titles in a hat and that's how I'll choose what I'm reading in 2008...I'll pick each book out one at a time from the hat! That way it adds a little excitement to me when it comes to what I get to read next. Ok, it's getting bad, huh?

Now I'll go look forward to a great weekend of football with LSU playing Alabama and the Saints against Jacksonville! Both games should be great!

New Challenges And First Day Of NaNo!

There are a couple of new challenges that are catching my eye out there, so I'm signing up for 2 more! I'm calling 2008 "clean off the the TBR Bookshelf year". So I'm going to go ahead and admit that I've officially lost it by signing up for all these challenges, but it's all in good cause, because I own all of these books. And if I don't succeed in completing all of them, I won't be too hard on myself because at least I got some of the stuff cleared off the shelf.

The first challenge is really cool! It's being hosted by Annie and it's the What's in a Name? Challenge! This one runs all the way from January til December and you pick 1 book from each of the 6 following categories:

1. A Book with a color in it's title: The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint
2. A Book with an animal in it's title: Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest
3. A Book with a first name in it's title: Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser
4. A Book with a place in it's tile: Baltimore by Mike Mignola (kinda cheating here as Baltimore is actually the name of a character :p)
5. A Book with a weather event in it's title: Storm Front by Jim Butcher
6. A Book with a plant in it's title: Black Orchid by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean

The second challenge is Joy's Young Adult Challenge! This one is to read 12 young adult books in 12 months! Sign me up!

1. The Thief of Always by Clive Barker
2. Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
3. Tamsin by Peter Beagle
4. Tithe by Holly Black
5. The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint
6. The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
7. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
8. Freaks by Annette Curtis Klause
9. The Candy Shop War by Brandon Mull
10. Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague by Brandon Mull
11. Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen
12. Marked by PC and Kristin Cast

More exciting challenge news! Bellezza has plans to host a Japanese reading challenge which I'm really excited and in preparation has a month of NaBloPoMo (national blog posting month) posts all about Japanese literature for us. So stay tuned to her blog for more news on that.

Today was my first day of NaNoWriMo and I got 2,039 words written. I did most of this while at work :p So, basically I'm making myself a paid author. Today was fun...it started out sort of stressful, but once I got into my own story it started taking me away and I can see that this will be a fun...but very stressful month! Only 48,000 words to go....oh Jesus....

Where do tax dollars go exactly?

I've been sitting in my car for the last 3 1/2 hours because my sister got 2 flat tires last night on St. Charles. The flat tires were the result of 1 of an enormous amount of pot holes in New Orleans. My question is this...how hard is it to fill in a damn pot hole?! Every time I drive around uptown (particularly Carrollton and St. Charles) I feel like I'm driving on an obstacle course. How many people have gotten flat tires on New Orleans streets because of pot holes? Countless surely.

So where are our tax dollars going exactly? I know it's not all that expensive to fix a pot hole, but hey, we have the money to spray paint the grass green (see previous post). This whole city is just in shambles. If it weren't for the Saints bringing up the morale of New Orleans, God only knows how low peoples spirits would be. Everyone's still waiting for Blanco's wonderful "road home to recovery" money. I mean, the government gave us something like 46 billion dollars, and you can't see any of it. There's nothing being fixed in New Orleans. This city is becoming like the houses in Lakeview...already in bad condition, but now just collapsing on themselves. Grrrr.

Anyways, I'm hoping to get back to writing for a little while tonight so that I may be able to get chapter 2 done/posted before I start the week from hell. We'll see how successful I am at this.