Thankfulness #30: Completion
Today I am thankful that it is the last day of November, which marks the end of both National Novel Writing Month and National Blog Posting month.
So how did I do?
I finished both, baby!
This is blog post number thirty, and two minutes ago I bypassed my 50,000 word goal.
I don’t know if there is a little winners badge for NaBloPoMo, or if I’d even get one. They had a very cool community going on over at Cheer Peppers, but I barely participated because I couldn’t blog, do NaNo, participate in real life AND read a bazillion blogs (in fact, I’m behind on my regularly subscribed blogs) and if I can’t read their blogs, I’m not going to ask them to read mine. But even if I don’t get a cool little badge, I have the satisfaction of knowing I did it, and that’s really what is supposed to matter, not cool little badges. Right?
Right?
And now I need to sleep for a day straight.
Have a winning kind of day (you can even be a rockstar from mars if you want to.)
Jo 🙂
Thankfulness #29: Words
Today I am thankful for words. To be specific, 10,853 words. That’s how many I managed to write today – wOOt! – which leaves just 7,859 to reach the 50,000 required by NaNoWriMo, and I have two days to do it in. This should be gravy.
I thought I was farther behind than I was. The last word count I remembered was 28,000, but apparently I got it up to 31,000 the other night (who knew). So I started 3,000 ahead today, which helped a lot.
As to the writing itself, sadly a lot of those 50,000 words will get deleted come December first, but I’m on chapter six, maybe chapter seven. I have a bit more of the plot, and then I have to figure out what to do. I know where they are going to go for the big climax, but I don’t have much planned to fill the middle. I think they need to run into the bad guys a couple times – I might go back and add that into one of the previous chapters in fact, so we can start “meeting” them. But I don’t know. As usual, it’s all up in the air.
I did promise Christmas decoration pics yesterday, so here they are.
First, the cute hat ornaments we made:
And now for decorations:
We’re mid scraping on the frontroom, so the tree had to go in the dining room this year. Because of the in flux nature of those rooms, we barely did anything else to them, so the bathroom is crammed with lots of Christmas stuff, as is the kitchen. Someday I am going to have this house done and really do it up.
I tried to stick to a themed tree this year, as I’ve been discussing, but I didn’t make it. We ended up having to add several ornaments that are sentimental. I mean, what is Christmas without a zombie on your tree?
And I leave you with a squishy chicken in a santa hat!
Have a three-thousand-extra-words kinda day!
Jo 🙂
Thankfulness #25: Thanksgiving
Today I was grateful for Thanksgiving with family. As I mentioned last night, ti was at my aunt and uncle’s house down the street, so not far to go (only half a block), so traveling was pretty easy. We had a nice time visiting with everyone, though I was too busy doing that to take very many photos (crazy, right??) So you only get three:
Incidentally, the orange in the first pic is the same orange we’re going to paint our living room.
We stayed there until into the evening, when we came home and hubby and I spent some quality time with the dog/wizard, who was channeling his human side today:
sitting up in the middle like a hoo-man
I say he is a wizard because we have a running gag that he is really an animagus (ala Harry Potter) who is in hiding, and that the reason he chews his paw/leg is because he is trying to chew off his dark mark, lest he get discovered. We say that when no one is home he turns into a pot bellied, gray haired, wizard and sits around the house naked (I never bought into the whole clothes transforming with the thing) and that is how food disappears, items go missing, and things gets moved around. Who knows, it might even be true.
And now, after catching up to 30,000 words on NaNoWriMo (I am only 11,600 behind now!) I must head for bed. Tomorrow we have Thanksgiving II with friends, hopefully the menfolk will go chop down the Christmas tree, and I hope to get some more words in.
Have a turkey and stuffing kind of day!
Jo 🙂
PS I leave you with Shelob, who is not an animagus, but rather an immortal being, as old as time itself, who sucks our life energy to stay alive. Yeah, we have interesting pets.
Thankfulness #22: Game Time
Today I was grateful for getting to play Final Fantasy XIII-2 with hubby for awhile. We finished Lake Bresha (the second area) and are ready to head to the third. So far this has been a lot of fun. It feels a lot more RP game than XIII did. There are more people to talk to, more side missions, more chocobos, and a moogle. That right there makes it a winner.
Past that I got the short story Road to Darkness formatted and made a cover for it:
I’d actually like to redo all the series covers to match this format BUT I think people would have a fit. They already refuse to commit to the “new” style covers over the hand drawn ones. imagine throwing a third cover out there. Hee-hee! Chaos!
Anyway, the short story is free – it goes with the new Patrick book brothers of darkness (though you can read it without reading Patrick), and was in the Blood Moon anthology. I;d call this one straight up horror.
While I am on Amaranthine news, I got some more entries today, including one who bought the brothers of darkness and so earned the six points. Boom! Happy dance time.
The brother and dad are gone overnight, so I had planned to really catch up on NaNoWriMo. Instead, because game time ran long, I finished formatting and doing the cover, and then Mom was in a chatty mood, so she caught me and… well, I did something like 2,000 words. Yeouch.
I did take a moment while things were slowly saving (the laptop needs restarted as everything is lagging badly) and took a look at my stats from other years of participating. there’s no data saved for the first time (2005), but the others…
2011
2013
2015
I think the plateaus show that i am pretty NOT constant about writing every day. Is it any wonder that this year’s looks like this:
I know it looks bleak, but I WILL catch up. i am not going to have a year that does not have that little winner badge on it, even if I have to skip sleep for the last week of the month. That’s the kind of competitive b**** I am.
In the meantime, I need to go to bed so i can get up and crack at this again tomorrow. I am going to dig my headphones up so I can write, even if dad is watching TV. That should help.
Have a moogle kinda day, Kupo!
Jo 🙂
A moogle, for the uninitiated.
Thankfulness #16: Wikipedia
Today I am grateful for wikipedia that allowed me to hunt down the song from the Chase commercial that has been driving me crazy, and then from there to buy it from Amazon for $.99. What song is it? This one:
I also enjoyed Jonathan’s live videos in Book Born for Turtle Tuesday – and speaking of turtle Tuesday, did I mention we’re selling hoodies? I didn’t think so, but we are. We won;t be making any profit off of them – they’re 25$ each and all the money goes to buying the hoodie and then to S&H, but that’s okay because we just want to spread Terrible Turtle love.
As I mentioned, they are 25$ a piece, sizes S-3XL, and they are HIGHLY collectible as this will be the only run of them – ever. They will never exist again. That has to make you anxious for one. And of you have no idea what it’s “adveritising”, check out the webcomic at http://terribleturtles.com
So how do you get a hoodie? Send 25$ via paypal to Jissilly@yahoo.com along with a note telling us the size(s) and a mailing address to ship the hoodie(s) to. Or you can message me or Jonathan on facebook. Simple, huh?
I am also grateful today that Mom and Chris’ collector versions of Patrick came in.
Though I dislike the hand drawn covers, this one is not too bad. The dislike I mentioned is why *I* don’t have copies of the collector’s versions, even though they are my books. I suppose someday I may break down and get them…
And now, what I am NOT grateful for. Yesterday I was grateful for those crunchy leaf stacks? Well, today they turned those trails of leaves into huge piles on the corners:
And then they brought in front loaders and a dump truck and STOLE THEM!!
Yes! They stole all the leaves that I crunch through when I walk the dog, or when I go pokemoning or… you get the idea. Now when I walk through the street there is no pleasing happy crunch. There is nothing because they stole my leaves to “burn” – I overheard them talking. Boo, I say! Boo!
And so I end this on a positive note, I did get some writing done today. I am up to over 18,000 words now. Still behind, but that went a long way towards catching up. Oh, and remember those covers I shared yesterday? The two on the end with the blue glowy letters got approved. The jury is out on the first, and dude did not like the one with the purple letters – at all. *sigh* So back to the drawing board on it – and it was the one that took the longest because there is all that space to fill up! I’ll give it another go tomorrow.
And now I am outta here to go to bed. I already stayed up too late searching through free video stock sites for clips to make an Amaranthine series trailer from…
Have a “they didn’t steal MY leaves” kinda day!
Jo 🙂
Thankfulness #15: Crunchy Leaves
Today I am grateful for crunchy fall leaves!
The city cleaned out the storm drains or something today (I forget – we got a notice about it) and so they went around town and scooped all the leaves out of the gutters and left them in fantastic crispy piles all along the edge of the street:
As a leaf crunching addict, I was quite delighted to stomp through their lovely piles and crunch my way all around the block while walking the dog. It was not only fun, but also therapeutic as well.
Crunch. Crunch.
Other than that I worked on book covers today. Here’s the lineup of rough drafts:
No doubt they will change greatly before you see them again. Or maybe not. Who can say?
I didn’t do much writing today because instead I concentrated on reworking the plot – I think it will be better to have them there sooner after the action happens rather than coming in cold the next day, but it means moving some things around and I had to refigure times, and do travel calculations and… anyway, tomorrow I should get to work on the rewriting. I’m not deleting words from my NaNo count, though. I’ll cut and paste them at the end of the document, and then write the new ones in their place. I wrote them during NaNo, FOR NaNo, and I’m not dismissing that work.
Dad and I also finished Season 2 of Dark Matter and – AHHHHH! What a horrible place ot end it. I have to say, in the first few episodes of season one I hated Three, but he has really grown on me and is now maybe my favorite character. I still don;t like Five – she waggles her forehead around too much when she talks and everything she says is ultra dramatic – amusing since I think I do the same thing, but hey, that’s the way it goes. I did really like Four, but after… the throne room (no spoilers) I don’t know anymore.
And now it is beddy bye time for me.
Have a crunchy autumn kind of day!
Jo 🙂
Thankfulness #13: Writing Direction
Today I am grateful for finding a direction. I got a 1,000 or so words in on NaNoWriMo , which leaves me waaaay behind, but I finally figured out where the characters are headed short term, which should get me another 5,000 words or so before I’m stuck again.
I also, while coming back from Clarinda on a run for potatoes , had some ideas for the future trilogy. Though it will be a couple years before I write it, I need to set some of it up in this book.
Didn’t do much else. Hit the Stanton pokemon gym, took it:
Caught a Lickitongue :
Ran around a little on hubby’s Fallout Four game:
(I’m standing on the roof and the dog is floating in the air)
And did normal boring crap like cook. All in all not exciting .
Have a more interesting day than me!
Jo 🙂
Thankfulness #3: Writerly Stuff
Day three! whoo hoo! So what am I thankful for today? First I am grateful that I made the NaNoWriMo goal, so I’m caught up. Second, Patrick’s Story: Brothers of Darkness is now avaliable in collectors version!
And third, I got the last of the stuff put together for the expo this weekend! I put together 70 swag bags :
Half the pile
A box of swag
What is the swag?
The contents laid out – each bag has one mask, one set of fangs, one “invite” aND one Amaranthine card.
And, I also made some Book Born bookmarks to pass out.
They turned out pretty good .
So, about the expo. It’s this Saturday at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa and is FREE! There will be a bunch of awesome authors, including Maegan Provan. You can meet authors, get autographs, get cool swag, and have fun, for FREE! So, if you’re near Des Moines, come on down and see me!
And now I need sleep, so have a cool bookmark kind of day!
Jo 🙂
NaNo and Christmas Crafts
I haven’t done a real post in awhile. I don’t know why I always fall off in October. It’s when I actually start to do things worth sharing. maybe that’s why – my extra blogging time is taken up with other stuff.
I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year to try to get most of book 8 (Masque of the Vampire) written. I was already on 23,000 words when it started, and have managed a total of 16,359 as of this moment. Unfortunately, I am supposed to be at 20,000, so I’m behind. One of the problems I have with naNoWriMo is the getting behind – I was sitting at almost 16,000 earlier today and needed just 18,000 to be caught up. So I stay up late and – bam! At midnight ti rolls over and now I’m 4,000 behind instead of the 2,000 I was just an hour or two ago. It makes it feel kind of hopeless, like no matter how much you put out you can never catch up.
Really, I’m not sure NaNo is a good thing anyway. I use it as an excuse to get to write – I tell authors/friends/fellow writers wanting book covers or favors that I’m working on a book the rest of the year and they say “Okay, but can’t you do this?”. But, during November you use the words, “NaNo” and they say “Oh! No problem! See you in December!” So in that respect it’s good, but it’s encouragement to just vomit as many words as you can might not be the best. For instance I like to write a bit, then instantly re-write it, cull it down, tighten it up, then go to the next bit. NaNo discourages this because by deleting even one single word, I am taking away from that precious word count that is o, so very important, meaning that the time I spent writing that word is now irrefutably wasted in terms of the end goal. This means a LOT more editing when NaNo is over, because since I’m not doing it now I’ll have to do it later.
It’s a vicious cycle.
Anyway, not much else. My website has had a graphic redesign – though none of the content or navigation changed, just a bit of cosmetics. I haven’t had time to keep up with blogs because besides NaNo and book covers I have also stupidly signed up for a craft fair, meaning I need products to share. Sadly, I haven’t managed very many. Please enjoy a bunch of my crafting photos. (note these are ALL I have gotten done. Eek!)
And it’s late, so I am outta here. Have a good one!
Jo 😉
MIA, NANO, TAG and other letters
So, my computer took a nose dive. No, first my net went out, then came back just in time for my computer to die. It did this thing where it basically hibernated the minute I’d turn it on. Anyway, after emptying my paypal account and replacing everything except the motherboard/processor, it is working again. YAY! Of course, that means I am behind on NaNoWriMo, as well as some book cover work. I have been catching up on the former over the last couple of days, but not making much progress on Nano.
Okay, I have nothing else to say. Instead of ending this, though, I am going to engage in complete randomness. Then I am going to ask YOU to participate in the same randomness. Yes, it’s a blog tag. Don’t make me call you out by name. I will if I have to.
You’ve been warned.
Your last apparel purchase:
yes, i wear this in public.
Your last music purchase: Black Veil Brides – We Stitch These Wounds & Set the World on Fire
Your last DVD purchase: Last Starfighter (for hubby) – I think
Your last grocery purchase: microwavable jasmine rice, sticky rice, miso soup and udon soup and cherry pomegranate juice.
Your last dinner out: Um… Hy-vee super buffet. I had Chinese.
Last store/shop you went to: Wal-Mart. What a surprise.
Last movie you watched: Cars 2
Last TV show you watched: Full Metal Panic Fumoffu
Last book you read: the last one I finished was Air by Barbara G. Tarn. Need to get back to Fire
Last magazine you read: Backwoodsman May/June issue
Last website you visited: Facebook (to take care of my Sim)
Last Game you played (haha!) Sims Social
Last person you talked to: Mom or Chris
Last person you emailed: Sue
Last person you texted: Jonathan
Last person you called: My Dad
Last Facebook wall you posted on: Carolyn
and I’m adding – Last Photo you took: Siegfried the mouse
If you’re reading this you’re TAGGED! DO IT!!
Fav song of the moment – Savior – Black Veil Brides
Most of the photos and art on this site, by Joleene Naylor are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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