20,000

Happy Dance...and then back to writing.

"Space Cowboy" (Small Joy for Firefly/Serenity Fans)

Last night after Rally in the Valley Andy Scott and I were catching up, he had been the guest speaker and did an awesome job. When I got a text from a friend saying Serenity was on SyFy (Thanks Aaron!). I love and still miss Firefly. So Andy asked if I had seen the recent Halloween episode of Castle. I hadn’t. He recommend I search for “Castle Firefly” on youtube. This is what I found:

For those of you who watched the 35 second clip and just don’t get it, Richard Castle’s (Nathan Fillion) "space cowboy" costume is suspiciously like the one that his character Mal Reynolds wore on the show “Firefly” which aired five years ago. And no it is not time “to move on”.

The Half Time Plan

I don’t watch football. I’ve seen one full game once and a few Super Bowl kick offs, and that is it. I know very little about the sport and most of what I do know comes from sports movies like Remember the Titans or Facing the Giants.

But what I have learned is that half time is key. If you’ve ever seen one of these underdog to victor sports movies (my favourite as a kid was the first Mighty Ducks not football but fun) the “loser” team makes it to the big championship and does horrible in the first half. At half time, while the school band does their thing, the coach is in the locker room giving a very inspiring speech and everything changes (plus someone is hurt and the team is "doing it for him").

Sometimes there is a brilliant new play that relies on the teams unique qualities. The second half is nail biting, edge of your seat action, waiting to see how the team will win (Spoiler: Coach Carter is the only exception I’ve seen to this model).

Today is the NaNoWriMo half time. The band is on the field playing classic video game themes and I’m in the locker room feeling defeated.

The word count goals are killing me. I should be at 25,000 and I'm not. I’m down 14,000 words. But I will not be overcome. I will fight back. NaNo Victory is still a possibility. "I've worked to hard to give up now!" It might mean hours spent at coffee shops, new crazy plot twists, having my main character break out in to song causing me to include pages of lyrics, and buckets of coffee and other caffeine enriched drinks. I don’t even like coffee –but I’ll take one for the team.

If you have any encouraging advice on how write 50,000 words before 11:59pm November 30 are possible please leave a comment. This is where I’m at right now:
Word Count: 11,892

Mark Of The Beast and Other Marks

Tonight, while in the editing function of blogger, I realized that my previous post (Dealing With Loss) was my six hundred and sixty-sixth post. That’s right; the last post was number 666 – the mark of the beast. So I have concluded that Matthew was indeed correct in his “Pin The Tail On The Anti-Christ” series (it is from “way back” in 2005, what a fun series).
The Anti-Christ is indeed suspect number 3 –Bill Gates.*

More noteworthy, yesterday was To Write Love On Her Arm Day. I participated:
From the Facebook Page:

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.
To Write Love On Her Arms Day is a day where anyone can write the words love on their arms, to support those who are fighting against depression and those who are trying to recovering. On this day, just write love on your arms,and show it off, other people will ask why you have love written on your arms,and you tell them you are supporting to write love on her arms day, and how its benefiting a nonprofit organization helping stop depression, and make love the movement ♥

Writing the word love on your arm isn’t an earth shaking world change (even when done with a permanent marker) but small acts can have surprising impact. 25,497 pictures have been uploaded to the event page. Not all of them were of arms with “love” but they are the majority are. Participating gave me the opportunity to talk with a number of people mostly parents of adolescences of the struggles many youth face in regards to self-injury, addiction, depression, and suicide.

* For those with no sense of humour or believe me to be without a sense of humour I am kidding and the fact that I feel the need to state that I am kidding may in fact prove that I have no (or little) humour in me.

Dealing With Loss

It is 3:55am...and I am currently going through the five stages of grief. I am mostly see-sawing between anger and bartering. I've had a bit of them all with the exception of acceptance; I'm expecting that will happen sometime tomorrow (if I hit 18,000 words).

Disclaimer: My deepest apologies to anyone who is dealing with the loss of a loved one, a relationship, or even a beloved goldfish. In the light of your loss mine is much smaller. I do not mean to belittle or mock your sadness. Here is my story:

I am in the middle of week two of NaNoWriMo and all that that means. Week two is the hardest week to write. The energy and exuberance of starting has worn off, so has the caffeine buzz, and the surge high. Week two is when everything crashes. You hate your plot, the main character, and everything you’ve written. All you want to do is delete everything or quit. It is a challenge to push through, ignore the inner-editor, and keep writing. This week had historically also been tough for me because I am recovering from Boos-ounter. Since the weekend I’ve been behind in word count. Today the gap between what I had written and what I should have had grown to more than 6,000 words. Today’s plan was to catch up and I was doing good and I was saving throughout the day.

Tonight I am at the church with Inn From the Cold. I thought it would be a great chance to write. I had good word growth. While I was have a short break (celebrating reaching a word mile stone) my computer randomly decided to update itself. It shut down and all progress I made today is lost. I’ve looked for the auto-saves and backed up files...gone. I was hoping that when I reopened word it would have a “this file was recovered”...nope. All brilliance (and crap) written today is lost to the digital void. 2,000+ words gone. I am in shock...I am angry...I have tried to reason with the computer...I have threatened to throw it out the window...sadly I haven’t found my words. They are just GONE!

Please do not let yourself become a victim. If you are a wrimo, if you are working on a paper or writing a sermon...save your document. Now!



Word Count: was at 13,605 now at 11,563 (look at the word drop)

P.S. In this moment, right now, this is the closest I have ever come to "throwning in the towel" and just stopping. Why bother?

Thankful Thursday

1) Words
2) Warm Beds
3) Sleep
4) Inspiration
5) Canned Nestea
6) New families at church
7) Volunteers

Word Count: 6724

I dream in 1,667 words

The wait is over, November is here, and the words have begun to fly. It is time again for NaNoWriMo but what is NaNoWriMo? I am glad you asked:

Every November, tens of thousands of people take on NaNoWriMo’s challenge of writing a 50,000-word novel in thirty days. It’s an anti-contest writing contest, where the judges are missing, the prizes are lousy, and writers and non-writers alike have the time of their lives bashing out surprisingly unhorrible books in an absurdly short amount of time. –A NaNoWriMo Poster

This is my third year participating and first time as a municipal liaisons (which means I organize the local chapter of nano writers, plan writing events, and a post contest party). Hopefully this year will also bring about my third nano win. If you're interested in joining the fun there is still time to sign-up just visit the website.

At the moment I am focusing on meeting the daily word goal of 1667 and attempting a personal daily goal of 2000 words. So far I've meet those goals two days in a row. I did a happy dance to celebrate and then remember there are still 45,998 words to put into some coherent order.

Word Count: 4002