My big problem with NaNo is time. I was talking to my mother about it today, and her reaction to the existance of NaNoWriMo was “In November? Don’t they know how much other stuff is going on in November?”
But so far blogging daily has been fun and exciting, and so far so good in terms of meeting my goal.
So maybe I just need to be looking for things with shorter turnaround times. Like flash fiction contests or the 8-Hour Book Challenge! Continue reading two solutions to (one of) my problem(s)
So, having spent the requisite half-hour noodling around with web design (I have definitely not kept up with advances in coding since the late 90s/early 2000s, y’all), I am now ready to stare blankly at a “New Post” window for a while before I knock out today’s blog post.
I happened to be putting around on Twitter earlier and saw some tweets from Cleolinda Jones, which took me waaaay back. I read her LiveJournal (remember LIVEJOURNAL??) obsessively in college and just loved her writing. In fact, that got me to thinking about how much I love recaps, because I actually… follow a lot of recappers pop-culture analysis blogs.
So, it’s that time of year again…
The time where I debate whether or not to fail at NaNoWriMo yet again.
Don’t get me wrong–I love a good tradition! And I’ve been failing NaNo for, like, fifteen years now.
Some years I’ve even failed it professionally (they have a program where teachers can do it with students… Yeah, we all failed). I have buttons.
And remember that one time that I got a huge grant to write a manuscript in three months? “It can’t be that hard,” I said to myself. “Tons of people write a novel in a month.”
(The part where I had a baby right at the beginning of the three months did throw a pretty serious monkey wrench into that plan. And I wrote more than zero words, which puts me ahead of many years’ NaNo efforts…)
According to the NaNo website, my lifetime total is 8,729 words. So, this year–despite the toddler, the full-time (plus) job, the general chaos of life when one is, like me, terrible at saying no to things…
I’m doing it.
Not for the 50,000 words, or the winner badge (because, let’s face it, I am… not optimistic it can be done during this season of my life). But for the practice.
I’m going to write something, anything, every day this month.
Please feel free to harass me via Twitter: @larkinplarkin
Here’s today’s effort. Wish me luck tomorrow…!
Well, while The Baby is napping, and C’s off feeding a friend’s cats and picking up his brother’s dog, I thought I’d try to pop up a quick entry. I’m working on finishing up my grant report for the Teacher Creativity Grant that led to the creation of this blog (fellow educators, GO APPLY!) and will post that shortly. I’ve also been doing some literary archaeology and re-reading the big, sprawling, terrifying novel draft that I was working on with a friend for several years (but no updates since… yikes, January 2015!). Continue reading Blast from the Past
I am hoping to update this thing weekly, so here’s a very short update before I leave work and go home: I wrote THREE (okay, like, two and a third) pages this month. That is two-and-one-third pages more than I have written in the previous six months!
I am also having a heck of a time with my creative writing class, as usual. They are delightful. Today we started our poetry unit and several of them were comfortable enough to admit that they HATE poetry (usually they try to pretend they like it because they think that’s what I want to hear).
I like this because I know that now I get a chance to change their minds. >:) >:) >:) >:)
Everyone has get-rich-quick schemes, but as somebody with an infant, I’ve been thinking a lot more lately about passive income (“get-rich-slowly-but-steadily,” maybe?).
I’m currently “supervising” anime club, by which I mean I’m updating my blog instead of grading papers and the anime club is watching netflix on my projector. I had lots of plans to use this chunk of time productively. Some of the better ones:
So, I guess I’ll close with a question…
What scene from literature would you like to color in first?
I’m thinking I’ll probably start with stuff to go with Romeo and Juliet, since my frish-frosh will be reading that in a few weeks. Or maybe some poetry, which they’re starting later this month…
But I’m open to requests!
Well, NaNo is going awfully (as expected… November is a TERRIBLE month for this! –at least for a teacher like myself) and I’ve been slacking on blogging, too. What’s a girl to do??
Well, I’ve been reading through my “back catalog,” if you will.
Of fanfic.
While I’ve been away from the blog, I’ve had several new starts come my way. I got back from Hawaii–which was amazing–and had to start again at work, teaching/planning/grading, trying desperately to get caught up. I’m still flailing when it comes to catching up on writing–I’ve missed the last few pages deadlines for my crit group, and jokingly-not-jokingly told them that my goal this month is to write “EVEN ONE SINGLE PAGE.”
So far nothing.
However, I am trying to get back on the horse just in time for a perennial favorite: NaNoWriMo.
We’re reading The Picture of Dorian Gray in Novels this semester, and since we’ve been reading about how well Basil captures Dorian’s essence in his portrait, our first creative project is to annotate selfies (or photos of ourselves, for the student who says he refuses to ever take a selfie on moral grounds) to show what our appearances reveal about our true natures*.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)man – click to see larger!
One of the things that was mentioned in multiple MWW workshops this year was the idea that–to the dismay of Victorians–phrenology has been disproven; that is, there are much more important things about your character than details of appearance. At her MWW one-day intensive session, The Writer’s Survival Kit, Martha Brockenbrough begged us, “Please don’t start with your protagonist waking up in bed and catching sight of herself in the mirror. Isn’t there a whole lot of stuff that’s more important to know about your character than that she has green eyes?” Continue reading She Hath a Lovely Face: Characterization & Beauty
So, I am the sort of person who works best when others are around, even if I’m not talking to them. When left unsupervised, I have a tendency to procrastinate horribly unless I’m going to have to perform shortly with a hard deadline (this is why teaching works well for me–with literal bells ringing to tell me what to do next–and writing novels is a struggle, even though I really enjoy writing!).
#the struggle is real
So, to this end, I’ve set up a weekly “writing date” with a long-distance friend. Continue reading Writing Dates