Support Project As[I]Am & Keep Me Accountable this NaNoWriMo!

A widget of my NaNo completion stats; if you want more details, check out this link.

To donate, you can subscribe to our Patreon and become a monthly donor or, for one-time donors, go through our PayPal.

It's the start of National Novel Writing Month and I'm going to dedicate my messy 50,000 words towards completing a draft of the novel draft I have been working on concertedly for the past year.

I also devised a way that you can keep me accountable to that goal while also supporting Project As[I]Am, the online Asian American arts and activism publication that I work on (see the silly video with my cat in it above -- forgive me for not looking fully into the camera!).

For every day that I complete my NaNo benchmark goal of 1,667 words, I am asking for your support in donating $3 (or more) to As[I]Am. You can check the widget up top to see my progress. By the end of the month, I will not only have made my word count goal, but I will have also earned enough to produce the next issue and podcast. Check out the one we've got up, "Our Greatest Resource," in case you haven't already.

If you don't have the funds to donate at this time but want to support us with a skill and/or promote to your friends, that is more than enough as well -- get in touch with me on Twitter or via email.

 

"You Sure About That?": Where I've Been Since November

A builder working on the ranna ghor (kitchen) at our village home.

I set out at the beginning of November with the intention to prioritize myself over my worries, and the universe replied: “you sure about that?” A few weeks ago, I made a chart of what has been pulling at my attention. It takes up the full 8.5x11” sheet and I’m pretty sure that it could take up even more if I let it.

The whole month, I felt very scattered. I had to concede defeat to NaNoWriMo at around 20,000 words. I went to my family’s village for a few days. I took a 10 day trip to Kolkata for my first time in India. Project As[I]Am released its fall issue, Unpalatable, and submitted a grant application (fingers crossed on that!). I’ve felt alternately drained and guilty that I haven’t been doing enough. If you took a look at my internet history, you’d see a slew of bookmarks for self-care interspersed with those for productivity tips. I’m not quite sure what I’ve been looking for, but I’m devouring advice.

Once I had made up my chart, I started putting things into categories: creating, absorbing, reacting, practicing, and completing. I started noticing some things. For instance, it’s hard to ‘practice’ personal rituals when you’re heavily focusing on ‘completing’ tasks. A lot of my energy this past month has been spent ‘reacting’ to personal circumstances – these events can be positive or negative, but they take up energy nonetheless. Hoping that Kolkata would be something like a reset button, I took some much needed time away.

While there, I started turning on my audio recorder as I walked around the streets. I picked up the sounds of fireworks and drums for puja, people chatting outside of parks, rustling papers in an archival library. And street traffic, endless street traffic.

I’m adding these recordings to the stockpile of bits and bobs that I’ve got lying around. Chronologically, I’m at the halfway point in my stay overseas and my creative output really reflects that. When writing for NaNoWriMo, the middle is the biggest slog for me. Beginnings and endings are deliciously dramatic by comparison. In the middle, I make lists of things that need to happen, but won’t for quite a while. I’ve been sleeping more during the daytime and staying awake at nights. All of it has been gathering and more gathering, as I try to condense my focus into a few larger projects rather than spreading myself thin.

So, if you haven't heard from me in the past month (or several...), then know that this is part of my re-commitment process. There may not be leaves on this tree now, but wait for summer and you'll see!

Don't Leave Yourself Behind

I have a piece out in The Atlantic today! For me, this is a huge milestone and also a very important piece, so give it a read.

A chocolate cake with red jello balls on top.

It’s the day before NaNo and all through the house… I’m throwing around drafts and outlines trying to get settled in.

As usual, my writing mind is exhilarated by the constraint and the mad fury that is writing 50,000 words in a single month. I’ve been working on a lot of shorter projects and have tried to build my discipline with research, writing, pitching, etc. But I am drawn to staying in a character’s head for a longer period of time, testing worldview and characteristics for pages and pages rather than paragraphs – even if much of it gets chopped later on.

Armed with a few earlier draft pages, I’ll be growing my story during quick timed exercises. I tend to work better with an overly formulaic structure that pushes me to think creatively within it. I also tend to work better under the cover of night with a bright screen in my face. We’ll see how annoyed my family members become with the cranky, somewhat sleep-deprived version of me that will undoubtedly show up by the end of the month.

I turned 24 this past week. It was a silly sort of day. Here in Dhaka, my family doesn’t really do birthdays. A cake was delivered; a biryani was cooked; several truly terrible jokes about age were told. In the evening, I started a new small notebook and wrote down a birthday intention for the upcoming year. This year: don’t leave yourself behind.

I spent a lot of age 23 in boom-bust cycles. I moved three and a half times – across NYC, across the country, across the ocean. I changed jobs four to five times. I attended births, organized events, grew a magazine, survived yet another long winter… And although I did a lot of great healing work for myself during that time, I also felt like a large part of it was spent worrying.

The challenges of living abroad are simply different challenges. I still worry, of course. But I am blessed to have more time and energy to invest in myself and my own work. Though I don’t have the expectation of returning to the US an entirely changed woman (I will certainly still be a workaholic and a chronic list-maker), I hope that I can return with the skills to hold space for myself no matter how intense the world around me.

With that in mind, let's take a deep breath and start novel-ing!

Write or Die: NaNoWriMo 2011

I haven't been very creative as of late.

My blog has shriveled to a post a week, I have not committed myself to daily creative time, and my energy has been slowly flagging as the temperatures dip lower and lower here in NYC.

So you may be wondering how I will possibly write 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) this year. And to that I say: you and I both! But I think that giving myself a good kick in the pants because of a formal event might be a good start to getting back towards normalcy. If there was ever a jumpstart to writing, NaNo would be that spark. And so, today, off I go into the vast wilderness that is novel-writing. Ideas after the jump!

Project x Project: Winner!

Allow me to take the liberty of using this post as blatant self-congratulation. I won National Novel Writing Month, and this morning I really didn't think it was possible. But, after some well-timed procrastination, in just this day alone, I wrote 15,000 words and FINISHED!

Good luck to everyone that is still chugging along - you can do it! I did, and I was in the hole yesterday night.

Also, that monkey up there? That's totally me when I finished.

My writing and stories are available for your reading pleasure.

Project x Project: Balancing Act

This is just a short post that's going to roll in under the radar - I've been trying to furiously catch up on word count today, so I've written 3000+ words and have come up to 25,150. I need to be at 30,006 by tomorrow at midnight, so between then and now I have to write about 5000 words to catch up. Never fear though! I think I can do it, and do it well.
But, I wanted to talk about how it is to balance a really busy personal life with a really busy professional/academic life because I have to do that pretty much every day of my Barnard life.
I think that strategizing is always really important if you want to undertake something outside of your prescribed work that isn't considered a "leisure activity." For me, writing and blogging is slowly becoming part of my personal "work," just like making arts and crafts is both for love and profit. So, some strategies that I try to employ (albeit, not always consistently) will follow below:

1. Know your busy days and give yourself a break during those
I know that for me, Thursday is my longest day (9am to 9pm!), so I try to do any homework I have before or after that day so that I can just chill in the middle

2. Make time that is solely for your personal project(s), make time that is solely for your professional/academic project(s), and make time just for goofing off!
When you want to be a successful Barnard woman, or a successful person anywhere, it can sometimes feel like you have no time for anything else. You are consumed by work. But I think that making a specific time for things like hanging around on your bed, picking out your morning clothes, or just doing simple relaxing things are not just fun, but they're necessary to keeping you sane.

3. Don't stick with an activity that you hate
Just because you're involved with it doesn't mean that you have to stay. Sure, it's hard to quit something, but the assessment question is always: will it make me more happy to replace this with something else? That something else could be free time OR another project - that is up to you.

4. Prioritization is key
I've said it before and I've said it again: lists, prioritized lists especially, are the way to force yourself to achieve in any situation.

5. Put yourself in "dangerous" situations sometimes
Risk taking is something that is super important when you are doing any sort of project. On a personal level, my risk-taking involves making friendships that are concrete and lasting here. That is hard for me to do because I'm afraid of being hurt sometimes. But how else can you reach out in that situation? For whatever goal you're working on, take small risks that lead to bigger ones, and make sure that everything you do feels right.

6. Finally, and most importantly, it's OK to fail!!
Failure is part of the process too. Do you think that my NaNo novel is going to come out with a glowing halo on it? No way! It's going to be a steaming pile of something you don't want to get on your shoe, but if I really want it to shine, I'll work on it till the bitter end, and if I don't, I'll chalk it up to failure and move on. I think that the most important thing about failure is letting it happen, letting it wash over you, and then letting yourself be free of those complex emotions surrounding it.

That's it for tonight! Maybe I'll come up with more tips later on, but for now, I'm going to sleep!

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in some other lessons I've learned, including 3 Ways I Beat Writer's Block to a Pulp.

Haiku Moment

Pressure building up,

Holding on to my reason,

Storing up my time.

Still working on the NaNo, and all my other projects - I hope to take some time for myself to just calm down, so Thanksgiving break will be that time. Let me know if you want to hang out because I'll be in New York City the entire time!

More poetry is also available for your perusal.

Project x Project: Playing Catch Up

Today I worked on just about everything but NaNo, which I told myself that I was going to catch up on completely. I did not write one word all weekend and, as a consequence, have to write 6107 words at least by tonight's end to be on track. I think I can do it, but that word count on paper just seems like a really daunting task.
Which means that I'm going to talk about confidence building and what that means in a project.

I sometimes get nervous about big projects. I feel like I don't have enough a. resources, b. stamina, c. intellect, or d. time to do any of it. And sometimes I don't even get off the starting blocks because of this mindset. But, to take a lesson from the SOCLR leadership handbook, I believe that Vision and Passion are the two most important things that a leader needs to have. And thus, to be a leader, I have to follow through regardless of the other things I may lack. I have to tell myself that they will come up along the way if I keep working.
That is my first piece of advice: just keep working. NaNo has taught me that, if you get discouraged, you just need to write through it. You just need to push on because there is always time for revision - in December. And nothing builds confidence as much as having a large body of work under your belt, even if it's far from perfect.

My second piece of advice pertains to an organizer's nightmare: juggling commitments. What happens when you're writing a paper, working two jobs, working on a novel, writing grant proposals, and trying to get a decent amount of sleep all at the same time? Chaos, obviously.
But I think that the chaos can be cut down if you work on prioritization. If you need a day for yourself, take it. If you need a few extra hours of sleep, go for it, so long as whatever you're working on is not too time sensitive. I think the point is to take care of yourself before any of the fabulous projects you're working on. You are not your projects, and you will have as much time as you need.

Finally, in pursuing all of your visions, somewhere along the line your passion may dwindle out. I am guilty of this, guilty of giving up in the face of the obstacles that I see in my way. But I think that, instead of putting down the burden when working on a tough project, it might just need to be re-framed.
I have experimented with this idea when it comes to work. Sometimes I just don't want to go into the office or do some other commitment - but, if I think about it in a positive light, it helps me get through. Now, I'm not going to lie, it doesn't make the experience completely enjoyable all the time, but at least it can keep you going while you are recuperating from the passion doldrums. The next time you have to do a difficult task, try to find the positive things that make it worthwhile: for instance, although it might be isolating in the library, at least you get to read something good for a while! Or, at least, hopefully.

Alright, now I'm on to my 6107 for tonight. Wish me luck!

Project x Project: How Did This Start? Moments in a Writing Life (NaNo Day 5)

I have had a lot of embarrassing moments in my writing career.
Looking back on it now, it seems that my childhood addiction was paper. I have half-finished or quarter-finished or even one-page-out-of-150 finished journals lying about my house, ones that have not been cracked open for years (fortunately, nowadays I am re-using that paper for my class notes).
As a pre-teen and teenager, I wrote depressing poetry that was cringe-worthy - my journals were full of unrequited love notes (as I had many a great crushes in my youth) and poems that expressed my angst and depression in stranger language than I thought possible to construct.
I felt unafraid in the 6th grade to print out my 100+ page unedited novel, put it in a binder, and present it to my middle school English teacher for editing. He never got it back to me, and I was too shy to ask for it back. That was also a year that I started writing query letters to editors about whether they would take that meager bit of work.
I submitted poems to several contests, some of which were for children much younger than me, and ended up feeling embarrassed and even more misunderstood.
And then there were the diaries...

When I list these anecdotes out, I still cringe and giggle nervously. But I am also weirdly thankful that they happened. Because I now feel like a much more mature writer than I was when I started. In between those silly flights of fancy, I also got out there to take classes at Richard Hugo House, read my work at poetry slams, and feel strong in starting (and sometimes finishing) a long piece. I got to experience the full gamut of emotions - from apathy to zeal - of writing.
And now, as I hurriedly try to get back on word count for my NaNo novel, I realize that becoming a writer is something akin to climbing a craggy dragon's back while it's still trying to buck you off. A laughable and enormous task, but one that can only be taken one scale at a time.
I leave you with a thought proposed to me by my African American literature professor: whatever you write now will eventually be published as your juvenalia, your early works before you penned the Nobel prize winner.

7,003 words

Read more about my NaNoWriMo attempts and successes.

Project x Project: Questions (NaNo Day 4)

I can already tell that Wednesdays and Thursdays are going to be the hardest ones to keep up on NaNo. After returning to school and not having the entire day to gallavant off into novel land, I have been slammed with late hours and been mired in writer's block.
But, all is not lost. Pushing NaNo into the small spaces of my life really forces me to do it without editing or breaks or anything like that. After reading the pep talk today, I was also really inspired by the idea that things don't have to have a direction to be relevant - Mercedes Lackey was talking about fanfiction, but I think it can apply to everything.
So, here's my little adjunct for the writers out there that want to get started on something: start with a question.
What must your character do in order to get from one place to another?
What will your character be wearing?
What will the world be like?
What is the purpose of this gadget?
What color is the sky?
All of these things can change throughout the progression of your work, but if you are taking the thing on as a whole, it might become daunting. Writing out the questions allows me to frame things as a dialogue in my mind - even better, bouncing ideas off of someone else can generate a more pronounced effect.
I think that when we are trying to create something, it's best to take it in these small chunks and work them into the broader piece. And the moment of generation can be daunting to a lot of people. So pose questions to yourself about what and why and where and how and who. See where it takes you.

And my update on word count for today? It's 11:40pm and I haven't done my word count for today, but I am on par with the 3 day count, so I'll get there!

Read more about my NaNoWriMo attempts and successes.

Monthlies: Planning for November (and NaNo Update!)

Check out this TED Talk video about innovation. It's by Steven Johnson, the guy who wrote
Everything Bad is Good For You. (Kudos to Tracy V. Wilson for putting it up and writing NaNo!)

Planner? Check. Red pen? Check. Thoughts crowding my brain like an angry bunch of tourists in a hotel elevator? Check.
Every month I set down a list of goals for myself, and this one is no different. Other than the obvious ones such as "Write NaNo," I make ones on healthy living and on putting myself out there. It gives some structure to the ideas that I want to uphold during that month - if I don't get around to all of them, that's fine, but I try to at least keep them in the back of my mind for reference. And, at the end of the month, I make another list of accomplishments that keeps me fresh and feeling good about myself.
I know that many websites will tell you about the glory of setting goals down on paper and making sure that you do them, and I will emphatically support them. But, in my case, I take the list as a loose construction of ideas rather than one that is set in stone. For example, I want to start working out more regularly, so I put that down as one of my monthly goals. I didn't specify what I wanted to do - yoga every week or swimming three days a week or what have you - I just put it down as a tiny reminder that this is what I was thinking of earlier in the month as something I wanted to try. No pressure.
Being the memory crafter I am, I also really like to look back at these lists and see what I was thinking over the year. Did it change? Did it stay the same? Afterward, I'll make a collage or something about all my ideas, whether they are laughable or great.
Another thing that I've been picking up with greater fervor these days is a "Worry Journal." Although the title may make you think that it's all bad news, I use my worry journal as a place for ideas that are pingponging around in my brain. Mine manifests itself as a large pink-papered legal pad that I first used in conjunction with The Life Organizer but morphed into a less formal endeavor. I put down expansions of those goals, ideas for writing, piece of things that I like, etc, inside that notebook. And soon I might start using it as I used to do my sketch journals - pasting things in and bringing together disparate objects all into one place.
Anyway, what you must have gathered from this episode of list talking is that I am a major records keeper. Well, I am, and a darn proud one too.

October was the month of getting out there, since I had felt that I was hermitting out more than I should. I found myself in some interesting places, such as Pala Pizza, Bluestockings, the Hollaback lecture, and the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear (which you'll hear me spew on about for a long while).
November is the month of personal projects for me; I want to finish NaNo, work on collage, work on some self-assigned drawing projects that aren't related to class, and especially to work on making connections in the blog and zine communities. Right now these plans are in their infancy, but I'm outlining small steps to make them a reality.

What would your monthly goals be? What would your accomplishments for last month look like?

As for the NaNo update, I made word count yesterday but I have not yet written my words for today and I don't know whether I can get to it (eek!), but I'm hoping to get it done on the weekend and to charge ahead then. The first day back at school is a tough one for writers!

Read more about my NaNoWriMo attempts and successes.

Project x Project: NaNoWriMo Day 2

(I carried this plant all the way back from Virginia)

For everyone out there who feels like they're drowning in word count: you are not alone.
Today my roommate and I returned from Virginia to New York City. Our cumulative journey consisted of a 4.5 hour bus ride, a 30 minute cab ride at stomach-churning speeds, a nice Italian dinner and an hour braving the supermarket lines so that we wouldn't go hungry for the next week. All in all, we were out from 11am to 8:30pm. And I haven't worked on my NaNo yet.
I'm trying to channel both inner harmony and the energy to stay awake long enough to finish my word count. Wish me luck.

Oh, and, happy election day!

Read more about my NaNoWriMo attempts and successes.

Project x Project: NaNoWriMo 2010 & On Location: The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

For those of you who don't know, National Novel Writing Month occurs every year in November. It's a time when writers come out of their holes and join in an online race to the finish - 50,000 words written within the month. And I am doing it. Again.
I have "won" for the past two years (which means that I've written two novels) and participated for the past four. I feel like a seasoned veteran when I say that, but I also feel completely new every time I sit down to type out the requisite word count for each day, approximately 1667 words (if I have told you 2500, please forgive me!)
This year I will be busting through a long-held fear of mine: starting on my sci fi trilogy. I have always wanted to bridge the gap between literary fiction and sci fi, because in the Venn diagram of readers, there seems to be very little overlap in those who read each of those categories. A lofty goal? Perhaps. But that's what this month is all about - experimentation and improvement.
And this month I want to tack on another little experiment to this month: daily blogging. Maybe I'm going insane, but my mind is telling me that if I tack on just another hour spent writing (about something completely different, perhaps) in my blog will help me grow as a committed blogger. Which has been on my to-do list of things to become for much too long.
What will I write about? Perhaps a few sentences about how my novel is going. Perhaps about my daily outfits photo shoot (oh yeah, that's still going on). Or perhaps it will be about some amazing rally that I went to over the weekend...

And with that unsubtle segue, we come to how I am spending my fall break: in Washington DC as one of the 150,000 to 200,000 attendees of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear!
My roommate graciously provided accommodations since her home is located in Alexandria, VA (very near to DC, for those not as knowledgeable about East Coast geography). We took a 6 hour bus ride (that should have been 4 hours) down here on Friday night, and then piled into the subway on Saturday morning for an exciting day of rally fever.
I must admit, the biggest rally I had been to before this one was the MLK Day rallies in Seattle. This rally outclassed them by about 149,000+ people. There was a fever in the air when we got on the subway. The entire Mall was filled up by the start of the rally, and we were fortunate enough to meet up with Mr. Stephen Bronskill and get tickets to go up front.
Here are the conclusions I've drawn from this rally:
1. Subways. New York subways are FAR superior to DC (and no, that's not me just being a snooty New Yorker - if your trains aren't large enough to fill the entire subway platform, you have a problem)
2. Signs. People are really creative when asked to make signs about anything. I was snapping photos of anything and everything I found interesting, and there was a lot!
3. Adam & Jamie As much as I love the Mythbusters, I really don't think they should perform live. Ever again.
4. Public Displays of Affection Perhaps my only complaint about the rally was a pair of teenagers making out in front of me the entire time... I think it was just inappropriate for that situation.
5. Stars The Roots? John Legend? Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)? OZZIE?! My excitement mounted each time they brought out a guest - it was so fantastic!
6. Songs I am going to be singing Love Train and The Greatest, Strongest Country in the World forever now... please look up videos of the rally for the second one, it was a skit by Jon and Stephen that was really addictive.
7. Message. Aside from the hilarity, it was really comforting to know that so many people understand that the media is overblowing the issues and that we shouldn't treat each other poorly based on their opinions.

Overall, I was extremely happy to be able to attend this event and even more excited that Stephen could provide us with such a great position in the crowd. So much thanks to be given to that man!

P.S.
My pictures are available at Deviantart!

Follow me around the world with my other On Location posts!
Check out some more posts featuring my photography.

Hound

Hound

I used Word Nerd today and got this word. I was almost going to find another one - it was so difficult for me to think about where to find this word (I am not a dog owner, nor did I have a thought towards embodying this verb). For a while, I thought I should just do another downward dog pose from yoga and call it a day.
And then, I started cutting.
All the little college packets that I collected in order to save paper/have fun craft items to work with have now been cut up or recycled, making it much easier for me to start my new mission of collages and decoupage! Hoorah! However, I still have about 20+ magazines in a box that desperately need to be shown the same treatment. Hmm... long weekend, perhaps?
Anyway, I got some really great pictures and captions, so I just grabbed a large slab of black paper and started strewing them around and... WHABASH! There was the hound I was looking for.
An attractive black and white dog photograph - now attached to all the eye-catching college mail that many many many colleges have sent me [even after I had gotten accepted Early Decision and sent in everything, geez]
Anyway, aside from that, today was a Thursday schedule, so we danced around trying to figure out our assignments and thanked our lucky stars that there were no tests and/or crises today. We still got to watch the Spirit Week video and Madame Sanchez was our sub in French [a Filipino woman who had coached my Highland tennis team - how time flies...]
As well, last night I wrote the monolithic sum of 1256 words in order to do the re-writing assignment for my editing class tomorrow. It was crazy! I don't know how I churned out that type of word count every day during NaNoWriMo (but then, of course, the point of NaNo is really to churn out as much crap as possible; for re-writing, you actually have to think)
That accomplished, I realize I have been spending gregarious amounts of time on myself. Quite refreshing, actually, but I am not sure how long it will last... hopefully throughout my lifetime, but who knows?

Which leads me to the question: what have you done for yourself today?

Check out some more posts featuring my photography.

Amazed, Crazed, and Overly Tired

It's December 1st and I am sitting here quite amazed at the NaNo novel I just punched out of myself. 50,252 words according to the NaNo counter, 50,039 according to mine [I prefer the former]. It's the end of our 4 day break and it feels like nothing - but it was fun nothing, so I can't really complain. I am waiting on new tech, nervous about college, happy to be playing Hermia, and returning to yoga. I am feeling very good, but also ready to break out.
[Just to prepare, there will be only a few sentences that don't begin with 'I' in this post - as I am so tired of writing interesting sentences that I am going to write in simple "subject-verb-complement" form]
I realize that I complain a lot. Though I pride myself on not complaining about work, I complain about people - and even now I am trying to make excuses that I 'don't do it as much as others' or I 'am usually joking around' or I 'tell it to certain people' but I think it's a larger thing than that. I'm not sure I can get rid of it, but perhaps I am able to think about what I'm saying/repeating more?
Yoga, o' delicious yoga, brought me back to earth a little bit today. I haven't gone for a while, and so I haven't been able to soak up all the juicy wisdom that transpires in that hour and a half. {sidenote: isn't it funny that when you are busy, you cut out probably the most vital things as 'extra'?} But today, I just got to focus on me - happy me, delicious me, that me where I can love without consequence. I think that's what I lack a lot of the time. Maybe it's just in the words we use or the critical way we are assessed, but I find that I've been lacking self-love for a while. It's very important to actually be proud of yourself, and I tell other people that all the time but... sometimes the teacher doesn't take the lesson, you know?
Finally, I have decided to seek my fortune in some other gainful employment than chasing after false dreams [cryptic, right? well, at least I get it]. I am going to let drama class solve it, and I am going to let my personality decide whether it is right. That's the way to go.
Yip, yip, yoray!

Read more posts about my multiple National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) attempts and successes.

An Unspecial Report

Man, that was perhaps the hardest thing I've had to do this year.
Getting myself back on track with the NaNo word count was really difficult today - I was two days behind and I just got up to the necessary for yesterday. That means I still have to write about 1667 words for today but, thankfully, that number is no longer tripled by my stagnation period.
Other than that, I stopped freaking out because I have finally applied to college! Yeah, that's right, now I have to be killed by the waiting period until exactly one month from now [I will just try to keep myself busy - which shouldn't be too hard because we still have two weeks of NaNo and are starting a play].
Though we had an assembly AND a day off this week, I felt like there was less time than usual to do everything. There was just a whirlwind of things to do, say, think about, prepare for, everything! We had a newspaper issue meeting, T.A.T.U training and presentations, a drama meeting, were told to prepare for our oral French presentations; I had to get my recommendations sent out, Extended Essay edited, chapters read, money counted, classes taken - after school on Wednesday I just sort of jumped ship out of anxiety [hooray for bookstores!] Friday I saw Ka-chan and hung out with her for hours and didn't go home [which made me happy, a break from the usual] and then went to a movie with Hugo-kun [Quantum of Solace was hyped up so much but it really wasn't the best Bond ever...]
The rest of this weekend I'm going to take for myself and planning for the future. My missions are too numerous to list, but I need to at least rest so that death does not befall me too early.
College, where art thou?

Read more posts about my multiple National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) attempts and successes.

NaNo-ing

This year I have pledged to myself that I will win NaNoWriMo.
And this promise, so far, seems to be on track. But I am still teetering right on the edge of whether there will be another 35,000 words jumping at the edges of my psyche by the end of the month - it is, of course, the dreaded week two and I only barely skidded in my word count last night with a magic flush of brilliance soaring in at about 1am. There is a lot to be said for the magic of tea and hot chocolate.
Thus, to keep myself motivated, I am going to log in some incentives [read: bribes] and some general writing tips [read: get-off-your-butt tricks].

- WHEN I win NaNo, I will buy a fabulous t-shirt from them
- WHEN I win NaNo, I will have earned the title "The Most Fabulous Novelist in Existence!"
- WHEN I win NaNo, I will start on my other projects from years past and try to scoop them into barely legible first drafts so that I can have a mass editing party later on
- WHEN I win NaNo, I will get to sleep for three years
Having Trouble Writing?
- Reach for a new medium [computer got old last night, so the typewriter really helped! and then when people went to bed, pen and paper is the most discreet of objects]
- Storyboard! [using www.bubbl.us or paper or lists, any way is fine]
- Pick up a craft that you can pour your hands into and think about the writing
- Gnaw on the idea of what will be more important to you in the future [a novel or that English homework? a novel or that finished scarf?]
- Play Tetris [I know it sounds distracting, but playing always makes me feel guilty and I go back to writing soon enough!]
- Talk to your friends about your writing [Heathy is a gentle push! Ka-chan will ask how it's going. Many others will just be envious that you're doing something crazy!]

I am going to write 50,000 words in this month and I will be the better person for it! I WILL LIVE UP TO BEING THE MOST FABULOUS NOVELIST IN EXISTENCE!

Read more posts about my multiple National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) attempts and successes.