Writing the Ridiculous

Lo-fi Autumn

Rachel — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:11:05 +0000

Well! I got a bit behind. My internet went down shortly after I won NaNoWriMo and didn’t come up again until a week before Christmas! Thus I missed my planned autumnal retrospective in ipod/ipad photographs. I’m missing a few photos I wanted to include due to the general disorganization that follows being without internet for several weeks. I have to do things right away, it seems, or they don’t get done at all.

My Autumn was full of warm and toasty holiday feelings, the state fair, cozy crafting, baking and long walks.

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October 20, 2011, Har-Ber Village, Grove, Oklahoma

Rachel — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:13:09 +0000

Since I have finally caught up on my NaNoWriMo, here’s a post I meant to make before I got swept up in everything busy that November brings with it. Last month we went on the road with Shaun’s parents & their dog Matey to Har-Ber Village in Grove, Ok. I felt a bit bittersweet seeing so many beautiful and perfectly serviceable domestic items in a museum setting, but it was an enjoyable stroll through someone else’s nostalgia and involved many things I like quite a lot, antiques, long walks and pretty views.

NaNoWriMo: Day 14

Rachel — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:20:42 +0000

Hey! I managed to write yesterday, actually write! When I was grumpily lumping words of frustration into my word document on Saturday, I took a deep breath at the end and wrote a short paragraph summarizing what I needed to get done in my next few writing sessions. I got all of it done and more yesterday.

(Home.)

In a little under an hour and a half I got 3,338 words. It didn’t catch me all the way up, but I ended the day a mere 760 words behind, and I hope I can write at least that much above the requisite 1,667 and finally get back on top today.

22574 / 50000 words. 45% done!

NaNoWriMo: Week 2

Rachel — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:22:43 +0000

Week two has a reputation and mine lived up to it. Slogging and loathing of characters and situations. Stomachaches and headaches and burying my head under a pillow. I haven’t had a nanowrimo week two this atrocious in about 4 years. I’m looking forward to getting through the next few days, hitting 30,000 and coasting through the end of the month on the momentum that comes with it. Please please please.

On Saturday I went to ridiculous lengths in an attempt to get my word count up and squeezed out 1,022 words, too many of them were me having an argument with my novel within the word document, but I’ll take them. We were hashing out the plot.

Yesterday I gave up. It was a low point. I put up the Christmas tree instead of writing. It was soothing.

So now here I am, day 14 and I haven’t started writing yet. I’m a couple of days behind in word count, but I know I can pick those up somewhere in between here and 50k. Some beautiful day in the future things will be going so swimmingly that I’ll think nothing of putting 6k down in the course of a few hours. I’m trying to stay focused on that eventuality and not the part of me that is bored with my story, uninterested in my characters… but I shouldn’t even bring those things up! Off to write now! I hope.

19236 / 50000 words. 38% done!

NaNoWriMo: Days 4 – 6

Rachel — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:40:28 +0000

Well golly! I think my blogging this year is suffering a bit for the fact that I’m doing a photo project seriously while I work on my NaNoWriMo, but I’m very happy that I’m not just taking crummy ipod camera photos all month!

I added the additional challenge to the photo challenge that I always use my good camera with the 50mm 1.4 lens attached. No phoning it in!

I had a few light writing days in a row (and I haven’t written yet today!) because of other obligations but I was only 520 words behind on Sunday night.
On day 4 I finished the day with 1146 words, day 5 I wrote 1117 and day 6 a whopping 0.

Adding to the weekend excitement we had two earthquakes. Those are weird around here. Now I’ve experienced four of them in my whole life, and all of those were in the past year and a half. We have little ones a lot, I guess, but not usually something you can feel, but at 2am Saturday morning, we had a 4.7 that woke us up, it mostly felt like someone being really irritating with a hammer outside, or a really strong wind rattling the windows. We had another that evening that just kept going! This one was a 5.6. Both of them were about 70 miles from us, but I read that you feel them like crazy this side of the rocky mountains. Mostly it was a neat experience, honestly, though I hope it isn’t a regular thing! Our houses aren’t built with earthquakes in mind, and mine was built in the 1920s. The basement supports are just a bunch of sandstone slabs stacked on one another.

9480 / 50000 words. 19% done!

NaNoWriMo Day 2 & 3

Rachel — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 23:13:13 +0000

I’m trying to catch up here! I had a couple of really good writing days. Yesterday I wrote a whopping 4,257 words and today I managed 2,066, which is certainly not shabby. My novel feels a little formless this year, and while I’m certainly managing just fine, I don’t feel like it’s really found itself yet. I can’t wait for that switch when it feels like the novel is writing me.

That thing that happens where I suddenly get all sorts of other things done does seem to be burgeoning, however, and while the Halloween decor is still up (it’s so cold and windy, I wanna stay in by the furnace) and the sink is still full of cupcake related dishes, I did spend hours today working on a pretty rad video (that’s right, rad) which I hope to share soon-ish, as soon as it renders and uploads!

And of course I continue with the photo challenge I mentioned in my last entry, the prompt yesterday was “Stack of Books”, this is what I came up with.

I am currently rereading (aloud) Harry Potter & The Lord of The Rings (which sounds like a whole nother adventure), to Shaun. No Plot? No Problem! Is helping me slog through nanowrimo (current word count at this moment? 3045, but I hope to get to 4000 before the day is out) and the Illustrated Jane Eyre lives near my bed because I might, at any moment, decide to reread it for comfort.

7217 / 50000 words. 14% done!

NaNoWriMo Day 1

Rachel — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:45:03 +0000

1. Reflection

Doing this photo challenge that my friend bohemea (blog nsfw) came up with for November!

In addition, of course to NaNoWriMo. I got a slow start yesterday, feeling pretty wrung out from the Halloween festivities and excitements, 185 trick or treaters (our new record!), I was dragging my feet all day, and knowing that I was going to start this photo challenge, I really wanted to get my flickr photostream up to date, which meant editing and uploading all my photos from yesterday! I usually try to make a couple of big Halloween themed posts here on the blog, but time got away from me this year. You see lots of stuff here. Anyway, I wrote 894 words in the early evening, with Shaun for a bit of word warring. I almost forgot to make it funny! Luckily an old gossip named Charity Damask came onto the scene, permanent aflutter, to bring in some comic relief.

894 / 50000 words. 2% done!

Lo-fi Summer

Rachel — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:49:22 +0000

My summer was full of vow renewals, train trips, holidays, birthdays, ceiling fans, star trek, board games and people I love.

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I’m looking forward to the rest of 2011!

Golly!

Rachel — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:38:15 +0000

I want to thank everyone for the sweet compliments and comments on my blog post that made Freshly Pressed! It was quite a wonderful surprise and more traffic than my little blog has ever met with, I felt a bit overwhelmed, but very grateful! Thank you so very much!

Tulsa State Fair, Friday, October 7.

Rachel — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:24:43 +0000

I went out the state fair one last time with my mom, Jan, and my brother, Paul. We try to go together for an afternoon every year, it’s one of my favorite ways to spend time with my family.