How to Get to Carnegie Hall (kinda)

Friends, let's talk writing. Specifically, your writing.

If you have a pen this fancy, on you go! If not, any
writing utensil will do. Doesn't matter.
Pick it up and start writing.
Source: André Bergonzzi on freeimages.com.

I see you trying. I see you struggling with the thoughts and feelings that are inside you that, if you could only find the right words, might reassure or inspire or help or in any way make a mark on someone who needed to hear from you today. I see you, and you aren't alone.

Maybe you want to reflect on a milestone in your life. Maybe you have lots of great things to say, but the tools you'd like to use to say them are rusty, dusty, or blunt from neglect. Maybe 2019 is the year you finally want to put into words how flowers newly blooming, or summertime, or the start of a new school year, or Christmas or New Year make you feel--you want to share this piece of your heart, but every time you try, you hope for a ting! and instead get a thunk.

The good news is: you can do this. The less good news is: you're going to have to work at it.

Don't go! This shouldn't be a surprise to you. After all, it's widely accepted that anything worth getting is going to cost you some sweat equity, and that anything that comes without a cost is likely to be valued less. And if you don't have time or energy for this right now, that's okay! Maybe this isn't your season for improving this skill. Let it go for now, concentrate on what you need to be concentrating on, and you'll come back to this one in due course.

This movie is filled with great quotes
about writing. And if you don't watch the
last 30 minutes, it even has a happy ending!
Source: Pinterest.

Still with me? Great. Now, I'm not going to give you a list of Top Ten Things Real Writers Do. Why not? Because it is the 21st century and we have search engines, my friends. If that's what you're after, better people than me can help you out. No, we're going to talk about the thing that will help you get more comfortable with expressing yourself in writing: practice, practice, practice.

Yep, if by the end of May you want to be able to share with confidence and fluency what your child's eighth grade graduation means to you, now's the time to be working on your voice. Start right now--get a pen, or open up a word doc, or create an account on Blogger, if that's how you roll. Start writing. Use 100 words to tell yourself your favorite thing about winter. You don't have to post it on Facebook, or make your spouse read it, or even show anyone at all. Just do it. Tomorrow, write another 100 words, this time about the blanket on your bed. Your preferred mug. The feeling of getting up a few minutes early, when everyone else is still asleep. 100 words not enough? Try for 250. And when you've no idea at all what you can write about today, here's a list of nonfiction writing prompts to get you started.

I personally don't plan to woo any
women, but the sentiment holds
regardless: if you want your message
to be received, laziness will not get
you there. (And for anyone looking to
woo me: listen to Mr. Keating.)
Source: Pinterest.

Don't try to be "good." Don't try to be "smart." At the beginning, don't try to make a beautiful point or even any point at all. Just practice getting words out. After a while, when you're ready, it's time to take an extra moment to consider what word you really mean in the middle of your sentence about your grandmother's antique clock. Was it old, or was it ancient? Was the ticking loud, or stentorian? Did it smell strong, or of mothballs and furniture polish? But don't be fancy just to be fancy. Use the right words to say what you mean.

Don't be afraid and don't get discouraged. Take heart from this tidbit I used to tell folks when I worked at UT's writing center: no one is born a good writer, just like no one is born walking and talking. They are skills, and they can all be learned. Even this one.

A few minutes every day, bit by bit, and you start to know what feels right when you write it down. What sounds like you. How to get as close as possible to transmitting the picture in your brain into your readers' brains as well. And maybe that's when you set up shop and get your own blog going, or a daily thought on Facebook, and start letting other people in to what you're thinking of. Or maybe you realize you like having all these words all to yourself.

And then, come the next significant date you wish to commemorate with a lovely Facebook post designed to touch hearts and minds, you'll be ready.

Post title is a reference to the well-known joke. If you've never heard it, that is a real bummer.

Subscribed

I feel a bit weird, most days, writing about nonsense when the world is on fire. I don't want to give anyone the impression that I don't care or am unaware that there is more to be done in the world than share something I thought of while running last weekend or whatever random thing I'm on about. But it seems to be through the unimportant that my brain occasionally accesses greater truths, and when I manage to get those down, sometimes it touches people or makes them think (although that's not likely to happen today). I don't know how or when or why that happens, but the fact that it does is enough to keep me writing even when I fell pretty silly about it.

So! That being said, let's talk next year's Broadway in Cincinnati season. It's gonna be a doozy.

I was hoping, so very hoping, that we were going to get Come From Away next year. It launches its national tour from Seattle in October, and we get so many national tours in their first year that I had high hopes, which were promptly dashed when I got my upcoming season email. Seriously, though, this place is lousy with the arts and I have no complaints. My friend Bill knew what he was talking about when he told me to take a closer look at Cincinnati, and just this week I realized I've finally moved to loving it here instead of just liking it.

But never mind what we aren't getting. Here's what we are: Nine touring shows, eight of them either freshly off of or still running on Broadway, six of them (if my Broadway brain is working properly) in the first year of their tour, five of them in the first U.S. national tour of the show, and two of them the last two Tony winners for Best Musical. I was at a show at Aronoff Center last night and we're all keyed up for next season, on a heightened level of excitement that launched us into the very-energetic-on-its-own School of Rock. Love. It. Here.

Yeah, I think I'm okay with this lineup.

The one I'm most excited about? Not Dear Even Hansen, not The Play that Goes Wrong. (Look that one up on YouTube. I'm delighted it's coming here.) Not even Hamilton, although I'm in a differently excited realm than usual for that. Nope, I'm most excited for Fiddler on the Roof.

Why, why, why that one? After all, I saw it on Broadway. I've seen it live more than any other show, ever (that's counting high school and community theatre versions). What's left to be excited about?

It's my mother's favourite show. And as such, it's the first musical I ever knew existed. I knew the words to "Tradition" and "Sunrise, Sunset" practically before I could talk. I had wanted to take her to NYC before the show ended on Broadway, but timing and money didn't work out for that, so I promised myself that as soon as it came near either of us on tour, we were going. I cannot wait to share this with her--I'm going to trade in my great-but-miles-from-the-stage subscription seat to get us seats in the front orchestra instead so she can see every emotion on every actor. It's eleven months away and I'm already counting the days until we have what is certain to be one of the best theatre experiences of my life. (She already knows this is my plan. I'm not ruining the surprise.)

And that's why I'm so excited for next year's Broadway season in Cincinnati. 

Strands of a Life

Legacy may be planting seeds in a garden you never get to see, but that doesn't tell us what to do with the gardens that are left to us. What we leave behind matters. But so does what we do with what's been left.

An old episode of Theatre People caught my ear recently, when Jeanine Tesori said, "A lot of the middle ages is taking the strands of your family's history and trying to decide what you're going to use in your own embroidery." I may not be quite to the middle ages just yet, but choosing my own strands is a thing I'm definitely thinking about this week.

Some literal family embroidery--my
grandmother's. This is a thread of hers that
is also in me. The fact that we shared this
was the sort of thing she might have
mentioned while she was still alive.

Some strands I left behind long before it even occurred to me that that's what I was doing, when straight out of high school I decided I needed to move away from my family and its history and see what I could embroider on a clean canvas. I brought them with me, though, with the needing things just so and the snark and the hanging onto things because I'll find a use for them later, plus wherever the writing thing came from.

My grandfather's nickname in his final years was "Mr. Wonderful," because whenever anyone asked him how he was, he would say, "Wonderful." He said that to me when I saw him the last time in the hospital--I walked in when he was alone, he grinned the same smile that my mother and uncles and brother all inherited, but not me--I said, "How are you, Grandpa?" and took his hand. He said, "Wonderful," before telling me he was in too much pain for me to hold his hand like that.

My Chadwick greeted the world with arms and heart open every day. I said of my uncle's passing earlier this week, "the world just got a little less kind and open-hearted." The pieces of my family's thread that are already in me are so deeply embedded that I don't even have to think about them, I can't even see them most of the time, but this open-heartedness and embrace of the world and everyone in it--those are threads I have to fight for. They aren't in me, because I have, at least somewhat from necessity, closed off my heart. I wonder what I'm missing, what kind of tapestry I could be making, if I could access those threads that I've left in the box for now. Who knows how my embroidery will change as the years go by?

I can't use all my family's thread. And I certainly don't want to. We have some ugly colours that I've purposely avoided, because that's not the kind of legacy I want to leave behind. And I've added some that are just me, which means leaving even more of everyone else in the box. 

What threads are you using?

The Replacements

Ash Wednesday is upon us. Not ready? It's not too late. Really. I've started late a few times, and had to re-start more often than that. Tomorrow is always a new day.

So! I'm not sharing my fast, because I don't. And this year's fast was really quite an easy choice. The more difficult preparation for me was deciding what to do instead.

I will definitely fall into this hole if given half a chance.
Source: Asif Akbar on freeimages.com.

Maybe other people don't have this problem. If you don't, I salute you and hope you'll write your own blog post about how you succeed. But for me, I can't just take things away and be done with it. I have to have something to fill the space, or the same old things will fall in again when I'm not looking. If I want a change to stick, even if I decide this one is only for the next six weeks, then I need a smooth surface to build on, not one riddled with potholes.

My process was pretty simple: I looked around and thought, "What are some things I've been neglecting that I can give attention to during Lent?" I'm going so far as to create myself a pretty list to hang up on my wall for when my brain starts getting tugged in the direction of something that's off the table until Easter, because I will forget without something there to remind me. I have, it seems, learned some tricks for accommodating the gaping holes in this brain of mine. This is similar to my practice of not bringing chocolate into the house so I won't eat a ton of it in one sitting, except from the opposite direction.

Here's what I came up with:
1. Reading
Kevin Tuerff's Channel of Peace is on my shelf and ready to go. I have Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together on hold at the library. And I realized earlier this week that my skills at finding something quickly in a paper Bible are almost non-existent after many years of using an ebook version, so I have one likewise on a shelf where I will see it and remember to open it up.

2. Writing
Between this blog, the Women in the Marketplace blog I've neglected even more than this one, and a still very much unfinished school story that I would really like to find out how it ends, I have plenty to keep my keyboard busy. Incidentally, sad blog posts are coming this weekend. I know some of you only come round for those, but if that's not you, I won't be offended if you run away until the sad stuff is done.

3. Crafting
I've lost track of how many projects I have in progress, but there are three in particular that I'd like to finish soon, and one I need to start because it has a hard deadline.

I'm not certain what this hand is doing, so I'm off to a
good start. Source: John Hughes on freeimages.com.

4. And some other things...
There are some things on my list that I think it's best that I keep to myself. Things that should remain, like the fast itself, with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Maybe after Lent is over I'll share some more. We'll see how it goes.

How do you deal with changes you'd like to make in your life--temporary or permanent? Do you fill up the gap with something else right away, or are you able to leave it alone and let it heal on its own?

Stretching

Image source: Goodreads.

I'm reading The Rise of the Creative Class, and apparently the creative class has excellent eyesight that can easily read such small print. I'd like to at least get to 40 before I require bifocals, but it seems my need for large-print books has already arrived.

Anyway. Early in the book, Mr. Florida quotes, "Creativity is favored by an intellect that has been enriched with diverse experiences and perspectives." Something that comes up a lot among those of us who dream of one day being published authors is travel--the idea that unless a writer travels a lot, it's harder to come up with things to write about.

It's certainly true that travel is enriching and a fast way to engage with people unlike one's self. But it's not the only way, of course. It's possible (for most of us) to have fresh experiences and meet people with different points of view without ever straying too far from where we live. It does takes effort and courage to push past one's own edges and venture out into the unknown, even if it's just a stroll into the next block or to say hello to the person I see at the coffee shop once a week but have never spoken to. Or to read a book that I might not enjoy by a writer I would normally avoid. (I do this at least twice a year. Sometimes I hate it. Sometimes I love it. I never know until I do it.)

This came up in my Facebook memories yesterday.
I agree with the sentiment, certainly, but
I think it might add "learn something"
or "see something" or just "go outside."
They all work together when it's time to create.

To invite creativity into one's life is to invite joy and fun and wonder. But it also invites in risk--what if I fail? What if this isn't really who I am? What if I hate it? And the adrenaline rush that comes with pushing the edges of who we are always might end in an unfun crash that leaves us sprawling on the floor eating chocolates and wondering why we ever thought this was a good idea in the first place.

But the rewards of getting it right after many failures, of a kind word from a stranger at just the right moment, of having that "ah-ha" of suddenly seeing the world--or my own neighborhood--with fresh eyes... those rewards are why we push ourselves and try again. Those rewards make the curiosity and the courage required to seek out experiences and perspectives unlike our own so worth it. And they top up that courage to go out and do it again and again and again.

And that's worth getting out of bed for every morning and setting out to see what a new day will bring. What are you experiencing this week?

Word: Checking In on Creation

The last Sunday of June seems like as good a time as any to check in on my word for 2017, Creation. (Some of the ladies at church can remember each other's words and cheer for accomplishments in their word of the year. I only remember mine because it's on my ribbon board and I can see it from here. Maybe my word should have been "memory.")

These are Charles Rennie Mackintosh font & roses.
Because when in doubt, use someone else's creation, I guess?

My word was inspired in part by 2 Corinthians 5:17 and in part by Rent, which is par for the course here in Su-Land, but of course all my creating thus far this year has had very little to do with either thing. Some creation in my 2017 thus far:

• Since I'm likely to be in this apartment for at least another year after my current lease runs out, I'm making it a living space I can feel comfortable in and happy to come home to
• More writing on my perennial friend, Sybil, who may never ever be finished but at least is my constant companion
• Building a new community, as best as I can, in Cincinnati (I honestly have no idea how humans make friends. I mostly just hang around people and try out a few topics of conversation until they either talk to me or run away. Is that what everyone does?)
• Tackling a massive knitting project with a hard deadline. I should be working on that right now
• Planning, with considerable enthusiasm, my next four crafty projects. Because creation begets creation
• 131 blog posts (out of 211 days of the year thus far), which is more than I've managed in some entire years. 
• Embracing that some of my blog posts are bound to suck, and taking the duds as a learning experience to make all my writing better
• Finding ways to keep all the new information I'm learning at work in order (every time a coworker asks me for information, I pull up the spreadsheet where I keep said information, which inevitably elicits a "Wow, you are so organized!" from the coworker. To be clear: I am so very not)
• Reluctantly spending less energy on the time-sucking pits that I love (Twitter and Pinterest) and less time on the sucky pit that has become a habit (Facebook) to devote more of my time and energy to things that need that kind of attention if I'm going to get them done

I'm not sure I would count all these things as creation, any other year, but I'm counting them now as I go through my days looking for opportunities to create and attempting to see the everyday with fresh eyes.

What are you creating today? Alternatively: what's something you're trying this year, and how is it going?

Quantitative Methods

Monday is usually the day I blog about running. Here's how my running is going:

With that out of the way, let's talk writing instead. Well, creating. I default to writing because that's kind of my thing, but I'm pretty sure this applies to other types of creative processes.

Are people still debating over quantity vs quality? I kinda checked out of that one sometime in the 80s (yes, I got an early start on this) after a series of teachers telling us to focus more on the quality of our schoolwork were matched with another series telling us that we'd get the quality only if we upped our quantity, i.e., with more practice. Yes, these were the kinds of lectures that went down at Weston Elementary School.

Anyway. I don't know if that debate is still raging, or if it's settled now, but my experience has been that the second group of teachers were correct, and quantity of creative output will result in an increase in quality over time. There are almost certainly exceptions to this, but practice really does, more or less, get you closer to perfect.

Kim Liao sets a goal of 100 rejections per year, because to get that many rejections means she has to do a lot of writing, and some of that writing is eventually going to find its way to the right publication. Upworthy, the website, encourages its writers to embrace failure as part of the road to going viral.

I said this to two different coworkers last week. They both
reacted the way you'd expect highly qualified and
dedicated mental health professionals to react, which is
why I gotta stop quoting The West Wing at work.
Source.

So I was already feeling well validated in my decision to blog every day, or at least as close to every day as I possibly can, even though some of these posts are bound to be duds. And then I was listening to an episode of The West Wing Weekly podcast with Aaron Sorkin as a guest. Mr Sorkin said a couple things that I find both amazing and comforting: 1) most of the time his first drafts were what they filmed (what???), and a lot of times they sucked, and he would like to have them all back again to rewrite; and 2) after finishing nearly every episode, he would realize that his well of ideas was run dry and he had used up all his words.

And this is Aaron Sorkin. The guy who has written some of my favourite lines of all time. If an award-winning writer can feel this way... well, I choose to let it give me hope instead of despair. And given how prolific he is, he ought to know something about the byproducts of quantity, and about the words turning up when they're needed most.

What are you practicing today?

One of Many

My current MC, Sybil, has gone a bit quiet but is not forgotten. She and I still meet to talk about her life and what new thing I'm going to throw at her next. This is a school story, because it's a genre that I've loved most of my life (more like Chalet School than Harry Potter), and it will certainly never see the light in its current form, so I'm thinking about the first round of revisions even as I finish the ending. (And it's a series. Yeah, I'm doing everything I can to make sure it never finds a publisher.)

I still think this probably looks like
Sybil. Maybe not in her best moment.
Source: Martin Walls on freeimages.com.

Sybil comes from a remarkably large family, which I've gone back and forth on keeping. They don't all come into the story, apart from the occasional mention, and sometimes I've wondered if that's just one ridiculous thing too many for Sybil's life. I had almost decided to bring her sibling roster down to perhaps still being a large family by today's standards--like four or five children--instead of the current ocean of people who live in Sybil's house.

And then I changed my mind. Because big families get enough bad press and I'd like to bring a more positive look, if I can. (Not that Sybil necessarily loves it. Coping with so many people is one of her challenges.) Because I keep meeting big families in my real life that confirm that what I'm writing is not out of the realm of possibility. Because I ran across an interview with an actor who I like who described being from a family of more children than I would ever think to cram into one house, not even in a fantasy novel.

And because it's fun. My day-to-day life is mostly one of solitude, which I've come to enjoy most of the time, so being able to write about all the people and the noise and the activity is a nice escape. I think if I rewrote her with just one or two siblings, Sybil would be lonely.

What are you going back and forth on lately?

Reading Challenges Update: December

I finished all of my reading challenges for 2016!

Will you do that again? No, I don't think so. Most of them I forgot to check in on more than once or twice all year, and therefore I didn't technically fulfill the challenge requirements. It was fun, but I'm ready for different fun now.

What, no challenges at all for 2017? Well, let's not go that far. I've signed up for the Goodreads Challenge again. Of all the challenges from 2016, my favourite was probably the Woman Challenge, so my plan is to make sure at least half the books I read in 2017 are written by women.

What's your Goodreads goal? I'm glad you asked! I like reading over 100 books in a year, because it gives me things to think/tweet/talk about all the time. However, setting such a high goal makes it rough to tackle longer books, and since I have a few of those on the to-read list I'm setting my goal lower--52 books--in the hopes that I can get through some longer ones without feeling like I'm failing at an arbitrary challenge.

Any other suggestions or ideas? I'm thinking over my favourites from 2016 and will share those next week! Another thing I'm planning to do in 2017 is read a few things that I wouldn't normally pick up--I'm hoping to choose at least one book per month from Goodreads friends' lists that make me say, "But why?" to find out what the fuss is all about. Particularly people with short lists--those are much easier to peruse. (And that being the case, my apologies to all my Goodreads friends for the excessive length of my lists. By the way, are you on Goodreads? Let's be friends.)

So here's December. As always, links are to and images are from Goodreads, where all my reviews are written.

I Love Libraries Challenge CHALLENGE COMPLETED (53/50 books)
Black Man, White House: An Oral History of the Obama Years, D.L. Hughley
Make Good Art, Neil Gaiman, Chip Kidd (Designer)
This is a Book, Demetri Martin
Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously, Adrienne Martini
The Scribe: Silas, Francine Rivers
How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir, Theo Pauline Nestor
Real Artists Have Day Jobs: (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Teach You in School), Sara Benincasa
A Family on Wheels: Further Adventures of the Trapp Family, Maria Augusta von Trapp & Ruth T. Murdoch


Read It Again, Sam CHALLENGE COMPLETED (6/4 books)
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett (Read this ahead of seeing the musical!)
Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, Rachel Cohn & David Levithan


Woman Challenge CHALLENGE COMPLETED (61/20 books)
The Wednesday Sisters, Meg Waite Clayton
Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously, Adrienne Martini
The Scribe: Silas, Francine Rivers
Bronze, Kerri-Anne Weston
How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir, Theo Pauline Nestor
Real Artists Have Day Jobs: (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Teach You in School), Sara Benincasa
A Family on Wheels: Further Adventures of the Trapp Family, Maria Augusta von Trapp & Ruth T. Murdoch


Mount TBR Challenge CHALLENGE COMPLETED (51/48 books)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin
Bronze, Kerri-Anne Weston
The Buttersmiths' Gold, Adam Glendon Sidwell
For 91 Days In Idaho, Michael Powell, Jürgen Horn (Photographer)
The Canterville Ghost, Oscar Wilde
Walking, Henry David Thoreau


Goodreads Challenge CHALLENGE COMPLETED (112/100 books)
The Wednesday Sisters, Meg Waite Clayton
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin
Black Man, White House: An Oral History of the Obama Years, D.L. Hughley
Make Good Art, Neil Gaiman, Chip Kidd (Designer)
This is a Book, Demetri Martin
Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously, Adrienne Martini
The Scribe: Silas, Francine Rivers
Bronze, Kerri-Anne Weston
The Buttersmiths' Gold, Adam Glendon Sidwell
How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir, Theo Pauline Nestor
For 91 Days In Idaho, Michael Powell, Jürgen Horn (Photographer)
The Canterville Ghost, Oscar Wilde
Walking, Henry David Thoreau
Real Artists Have Day Jobs: (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Teach You in School), Sara Benincasa
A Family on Wheels: Further Adventures of the Trapp Family, Maria Augusta von Trapp & Ruth T. Murdoch


What are you reading?

NaNoWriMo 2016: Oh, Dear

So if you've been with me for a while, you'll know that my last few NaNos have gone a bit awry, with me abandoning a project halfway through the month and picking up another one to make progress on it instead after I stall out like an extra in a horror film on the railroad tracks with the train coming.

(That simile may be a bit much.)

2016 was no exception, even though I had a backup project in place from day one. I ended up pulling out a backup backup, and by the end of the month had three projects going, which is just silly. This is the most NaNo rebel I've ever been.

And I didn't make it to a single local event--no kickoff, no all-day write-in, not even the TGIO party (which happened while I was out of town, anyway). I guess I had a harder than expected time adapting to the idea of a new region. I mean, I did six NaNos in a row in Austin, five of them with Chadwick by my side, so maybe I wasn't as ready to take it on in a new place on my own as I thought. Alas.

Anyway, I did limp over the finish line with about an hour to spare, and I'm not sure that I can stand to read a single word of what I wrote on the backup projects, which at least a little bit defeats the purpose of NaNo. I do like the ideas I got down on my primary project, scant as they were, and it's something I can work with if I can get my head back into it.

So, that's where I went halfway through November. I didn't have anything I could bear to share, not even in the spirit of "Of course it's bad, it's a NaNo first draft!" Nothing. But at least I learned that making such a rash promise is a terrible idea, so I'm giving you plenty of warning that next November you'll have to get your cheek from somewhere else, because this blog will have the lights off.

At least, I say that now. We'll see what kind of nonsense comes flowing out of my fingers on October 31st.

#NaNoWriMo 2016, Day 19

My apartment desperately needs some attention, but that's what December is for, right? I did manage to clear all the junk away from my radiators today, so when my landlord finally turns on the central heating (if it's not on already. I haven't switched it on yet so I don't know) I can use it. So that's something.

Other than that, my day was all about writing and wasting time on Twitter.

First line: She couldn’t be sure, not without testing it, that she’d picked up the storng emothion from teh girl at the grocery store because she’d touched her.

Last line: “Well, being as you just tried to knock my brains out sideways, I don’t care what you want,” Claire retorted. “Start talking.”

Today's words: 2176
Total words: 13,757
Words to go: 36,243

#NaNoWriMo 2016, Day I Don't Even Know What

Apparently conjuring enthusiasm for NaNo in a new region is harder than I thought. I finally hit a good spot in my primary project this afternoon, so here's hoping. And this is picking up where we left off, since I have no idea where I started today.

First line: Since the start of her empathy project the three of them had had mood swings and energy fluxatations like none of them had ever seen, not even during puberty.

Last line: A bad mood while grading did not bode well for her students, so she tried to save it for her up days.

Words the last few days: 3223
Total words: 11,581
Words to go: 38,419

#NaNoWriMo 2016: Day 14

Guest blogger coming soon! I don't know what he's going to write about (I never do, until I get the magical email), but at least we'll have a teeny tiny bit of non-NaNo content around here. In the meantime, here we are (as-is, typos and all):

First line: Meghan made it through the front door before collapsing on the couch.

Last line: On the other hand, she enjoyed a good fantasy novel as much as anyone, and the weird in her house was beginning to get to be too munch to ignore.

Today's words: 707

Total words: 8358

Words to go: 41642

#NaNoWriMo 2016: Day 13

Yesterday I got my stuff moved in and mostly unpacked (my books are back! Yaaaaaay!!!), and then dashed off a couple sentences on my secondary project at the end of the day just so I had something to update on the NaNoWriMo site. Hence, no blog post, because there wasn't anything to bother posting. Today's a little better--between some furniture arranging and cooking, I got a few words in. 

First line: Since they didn’t even hear her come in, she headed straight to her room to see if her luck would hold out on being super-productive while in a good mood.

Last line: A course of antibiotics to make everything better was more what she was after.

Today's words: 837

Total words: 7651

Words to go: 42,349

#NaNoWriMo 2016: Day 11

First line: Claire was never sunshiny. The best they could hope for most days was partly cloudy.

Last line: Were they even saying individual words, Claire wondered, or was it just one stream of noise coming directly from their brains and out into the universe?

Today's words: 2191

Total words: 6628

Words to go: 43,372

#NaNoWriMo 2016: Days 4-10

Yes, my word count is still low, despite squeezing six days into this update. I'm hoping to do something about that this weekend, once I get other stuff done. (Movers are coming! And bringing my stuff! I'm so happy about that.)

First sentence: "Go sit down before you pass out."

Last sentence: This project was already taking a turn for the weird.

Total words: 4437
Words to go: 45,563

#NaNoWriMo 2016: Day 3

First line: "I don't know if I can handle telling Josie this."

Last line: "What are you having?" "A bowl of sugar filled cereal." "Yeah. I'll have that."

Words today: 806
Total words: 1943
Words to go: 48,057

#NaNoWriMo 2016: Day 2

I'm technically working on two projects this NaNo, but one of them is my fallback for when I'm stuck on the main project and need to give my brain a break to get back on track. After a couple of NaNos when my main project fell over and refused to go any further halfway through the month, I'm being proactive. That said, all of my first/last lines will be from my main project, currently titled Stay With Me, unless I'm so stuck I couldn't even get out two sentences that day.

First line: Josie's obsessions tended to come and go, and there was no keeping up with them.

Last line:

"What have we just let ourselves in for?" Claire asked.
"A life-enriching experience," Meghan said. "Or maybe just Josie talking less."
"I feel enriched already," Claire said with a grin.

Words today: 1030
Total words: 1137
Words to go: 48,863

#NaNoWriMo 2016, Day 1

So it's been a bit of a day, and the teeny tiny bit of writing I managed to do today all happened at the DMV, except here in Ohio it's called the BMV for reasons passing understanding, and there I was told that in order to issue me a drivers licence, the State of Ohio will need to see (among other things) documentation proving that I'm female. I am not making this up. (It's not on my birth certificate, because the State of Indiana says "Screw you.")

My passport also needs to be renewed. Perhaps it will be easier to renew that first and take it to the third circle of Hell BMV as my proof that I'm a US Citizen, instead of my gender-neutral birth certificate. (Why they can't take Texas' word for it that I'm a woman, I don't know, but it's clearly written right there on my Texas drivers licence.)

Maybe the nice woman at the BMV (she really was very nice, for all that she basically is Hell's receptionist) was puzzled by a birth certificate from Indiana, a driver licence from Texas, and two different last names with no documentation in sight. (I can bring my divorce decree, she told me very helpfully, a leap of logic that was probably assisted by my ring-free finger. In case you're new here: I'm a widow, but it's not stamped on my forehead or anything.)

So, I may not get to vote next week. I have a couple other options that I'm hoping magically come through.

Anyway! It's November 1st and NaNo is here! Yay! (Do I get up and dance around the room every time I watch that video? I totally do.) My three main characters finally have names! First names, that is, let's not rush things. We have 30 whole days, you know. Well. 29.

Today's first line: "Ben Franklin was an idiot."

Last line: "Tell you what, Jo, you let me know when you find out, okay?"

Today's word count: 107
Total word count: 107
Words to go: 49,893

NaNoWriMo: The Plan (Again)

Here we go. I won't be awake to welcome the return of NaNoWriMo in a couple hours, but at some point on November 1st I'll dive in and start writing.

My plan again this year is to post my first and last sentences of the day--maybe a couple more sentences if context is required--typos, nonsense, and all. This plan may devolve as the month goes on, but that's where we'll be starting, anyway. I hope reading along is fun for you. (At least they're guaranteed to be short posts!)

Are you a Wrimo? Let's be buddies.