Awesome Name Award: Benedict Cumberbatch

Not so much awesome as it is astounding...

Oh, dear me.  You can't make that shit up.

Zombie Sean Bean Has Died Again

Wow, forget full-length tv shows and movies - the guy can't even survive a trailer....



1st thought: oooh, Sean Bean!
2nd thought (10 seconds later): oh shit, not again

NaNoWriMo November, Detox December and …. January Jones?

As I mentioned earlier, I took part in my first NaNoWriMo this past November and it was an interesting experience to say the least.  I swore I’d win and win I did…

…but not by the technical NaNo definition.  Granted, the NaNo rules aren’t very stringent but I didn’t approach NaNo as an attempt to write 50,000 words of a new novel in the month of November.  Instead, I saw it as an opportunity to push myself to write 50,000 words of fiction full stop.

I didn’t write all 50,000 words in the month of November.  I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days mostly during the month of November but about 5 days (less, really) weren’t in November.  Ok, so this may be “cheating” and some may say that I don’t deserve winner status.  But the reason I participated in NaNo at all was to write 50,000 words which I probably (ok, most certainly) wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t participated.  So, I see myself as ‘winning’ my goal even if it wasn’t the exact way I was supposed to do it.

NaNoWriMo November:

How did I feel about the NaNo experience?  If you are like me and you have difficulty getting yourself to write on a consistent basis then NaNo is for you.  It forced me to write 50,000 words in 30 days which isn’t an easy thing to do.  If you are the type of person who can consistently hack away at something then perhaps you don’t need the structure that NaNo provides. 

The problem with NaNo is that you need to write all the time (duh).  While this is what gets you to the 50,000 word count, the problem is that you write even when you don’t have anything (interesting) to write.  Some people are quite verbose and can write about anything easily.  I can’t.  I can’t write without knowing what to write or having an idea of where I want to go.  With NaNo you don’t really have the luxury of stopping for breath and thinking about the direction of your story.  So you write crap … a lot of it… which can be better than not writing at all.  So, I would recommend NaNo if you want to make headway in writing something.

Detox December:

As for December, you are supposed to spend it editing your newly finished novel. My story didn’t finish in 50,000 words which means I need to finish it before I can edit the damn thing.  I haven’t written much since NaNo ended (which I guess is further proof that NaNo works) and I won’t go into my love/hate dislike/really hate relationship with my story.  The point is that December was a detox from writing.  I barely wrote a word.  NaNo kicked my ass and I was done with writing after it was done with me.

In fact, I will share the dream I had on the night NaNo was over.  If this isn’t sign that I was done with writing then I don’t know what is.

I can’t say where I was with certainty.  It seems that was simultaneously in a resort in the Rocky Mountains and an old European city (think Prague).  I was in what appeared to be a doctor’s office in a really modern hospital in the old city and I was conversing with a man who magically changed from scrubs and a white lab coat to a spiffy suit.  The man looked like an older version of Liam Neeson with even greyer hair.  Anyways, I can’t remember much but at the end of the ‘conversation’ this man offers me an all-expense paid trip to Ireland.  This was a dream and I guess I wasn’t concerned about taking gifts from strangers so I was like HELL YES!  The man then asked for my name so he could give me the flight details but - get this - I couldn’t write my name down.  Seriously, in my dream I was physically incapable of writing my name on a piece of paper.  I kept on trying but the strokes of the pen couldn’t be put together to spell my name.

As soon as I woke up I knew that beneath the randomness and borderline phishing scam surface of my dream was a lesson.  The lesson was that I was done with writing and that I didn’t have it in me to write another word.  A detox from writing was definitely in order.

January Jones:

I know it’s ridiculous, but it sounded
nicely alliterative in my head…

***A massive thanks to my NaNo buddy Darcy who kept a crazy pace, kept me going and tried to keep me sane!