Fadedwords

I came home and this was waiting for me today…

Super, super cool.

As one of the perks of being a NaNo winner this year, there is a self-publishing company that offered every winner a free proof copy of their book.  It will be bound and look just like any book you’d buy at the bookstore.  You have the option after getting the proof to sell your book on Amazon or in a e-store that you create.

At first I wasn’t going to take advantage of this.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized how cool it would be to see something I wrote actually published.  I went through yesterday and did all the steps to get the proof.  I created a title and uploaded the finished story.  It came out pretty nice.  I’m not going to sell it on Amazon or anywhere else… I’m just going to get the one copy.  I know that nobody would buy it, and that’d be a bit depressing.  It’s better to just get this one and show it off.  It’s incredibly cool to know that there’s this tool that I could use if I ever wanted to try to self-publish on a somewhat large scale. 

Hopefully all my work will clear the formatting check and I’ll have a copy of my novel soon.  As I was editing it, I realized it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had originally thought.  So, in a few weeks I will be a self-published author.  Pretty nifty.

I’ve gotten a lot done this weekend.  I finished up some Christmas projects thanks to a lengthy crop at my friend’s house.  I’m pretty excited that I was able to finish up what I did.

I also lost 1.6 pounds this week, a week that was full of food and temptation.  This is a HUGE accomplishment, and one I’m very proud of.  I have three more weeks before Christmas, and I want to get as close to a full 40 pounds lost as I can.  I’m down a total of 33 pounds at this point.

My last big accomplishment this weekend?  I finished my NaNo piece this morning… as in, completely finished.  It’s 100% done.  This is the first year I’ve ever finished a whole piece in the month of November.   My final word count is 61,883.  It is 91 pages long.  I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out, although I’m not deluded enough to think it’s “great” or anything.  I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to post it here or not.

In other fun news, my back has gone out.  This is the first time it’s gone out like this since before I started WW.  I’m supposed to go grocery shopping today, as well as fold laundry, and I know I can’t do either.  I slept barely at all, because there was no avoiding the pain.  I hate it when it goes out like this, because there are so many things I want to be doing that this prevents me from doing.

Hopefully tomorrow it’ll be better.

I’ve never been more astonished than I am this year that I have achieved the 50,000 word count necessary to be a National Novel Writing Month winner.

I started out with an idea I came up with last year before NaNo began, and ended up not feeling inspired by it so I went with something else.  It was the only idea I had this year, so I either tried to write it or didn’t participate in NaNo.  I decided to see what happened.

I am almost completely finished with this piece, which is another huge accomplishment.  I’ve never finished a whole novella in a month, and I think I’ll get that this year.  I’m still typing away furiously in an attempt to do just that.  Having five more days seems like a lifetime.

This year’s NaNo has morphed so completely from what I thought it would be, and I’m completely OK with that.  My characters decided where they wanted to be and I let them take us there.  It’s not a “great” story, but it’s solid. 

I will look back fondly on this year’s writing, as it helped me get through some difficult times that were happening.  It gave me something to focus on other than the negativity that was spinning in my head.  It was a very welcome distraction. 

Congratulations to all my fellow NaNoers.  A special congratulations goes out to the writers’ club I co-advise at my school.  The group set out to write a total of 10,000 words and they reached that goal.  I am incredibly proud of their achievment. 

Last night I hit the 50,000 word NaNoWriMo goal.  I’m pretty impressed with myself regarding this; usually I’m writing until the last day and have no hope of actually finishing the whole piece before the end of November.  This year I have a chance.  So while I have unofficially reached word count (the NaNo counting robots are not up and working yet, so this is an unconfirmed victory), I still have a great deal more work to do.  I would like to achieve a finished story by the end of November.  We’ll see how that goes.

I’m still not feeling much like writing here.  Nothing I want to say is best said here, so I’m just not saying it.  In fact, that’s pretty status quo for life right now.  Most of what is spinning around for me is better left unsaid.  So I’m just not saying anything. 

We had our second writers’ club meeting this morning.  The kids are doing a great job.  They’re sharing and really putting their hearts into the writing.  We’re doing the youth writers’ NaNo program, and we’re halfway to our goal of 10,000 words.  I hope that we can get the full 10,000 because I know how much it would mean to the kids. 

I taught in kdg this morning and still have a headache from it.  They’re a rough group to work with this early in the year.  The time there was not helped by the fact that the teacher there saw my claddagh and asked, “Did you get a diamond?” Seriously.  Why does everyone ask me about that? 

Merlin did great at doggy daycare yesterday.  They told me that he’s really coming out of his shell and showing his true self.  I asked if he’d still be allowed to come back!  They think he’ll be ready to go in with the big group on Wednesday when he goes.

I’m incredibly ready for Thanksgiving.  In fact, if I had the time on the books I’d take the next five days off.  I’m feeling incredibly worn out and… just not great.  We’re not doing anything for Thanksgiving this year, just cooking at the house.  No guests, and no trips.  Christmas we’ll go home to be with my family.  I think it will be nice to have a holiday that requires me to just cook and clean up after the two of us. 

I’ll be doing a big crop with two of my friends the weekend following Thanksgiving.  I have a couple projects that I need to get done for Christmas, and that will be my time to do it.  I’ve finished one very large project already, which is a big load off my shoulders.

*shrug*

I’m rambling just to write at this point, which is not something I like to do.  So I’ll just zip it for now.  Hope everyone is doing well.