Year in Review

Holy crap you guys, the world might end tomorrow and I haven't blogged since the end of November!  Zoiks!

This time of the year is always crazy, and I have four days in a row of holiday fun coming up after tomorrow.  So, these past few weeks have been spent shopping, wrapping, baking, and shopping and wrapping some more.  As of last night I am officially DONE though.  With 5 days to spare til Christmas.  Not bad, not bad.

Since I'm all caught up on everything else, I thought I'd take a minute to sit back and reflect on the past year.  2012 was a whirlwind that completely flew by, so here are a few of my favorite things:

1) Concerts:  As usual, I went to a lot of shows.  The biggest show I saw was probably The Black Keys- I don't go to too many arena shows, and they totally rocked the house.  I also got to see my favorite, the Airborne Toxic Event, in Columbus again. I will go see them every time they are within a tri-state radius, that's how amazing they are.  For a "small" show, Unwritten Law at the Grog Shop was my other favorite of the year. 

2) Books: You guys do know I'm a huge book nerd, right?  My Goodreads goal for the year was 75 books, and by the end of next week I'll have topped out around 65. A few books shy of my goal, yes, but I also do have a full time job and a bit of a social life, so I think 65 is pretty respectable. Anyway, so picking a favorite book of 2012 is not so easy, but if I HAD to choose, the Fault in our Stars by John Green is probably number one (duh. I've probably raved about it on this blog at least ten times over the year).  However, I read a TON of good books- but not all of them were published in 2012, so do they count?  I'm gonna say yes.  So, my other favorites from this year are:

• The Graceling series by Kristin Cashore
• The Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness
• Insurgent by Veronica Roth
• Delirium and Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver
• The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
• The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta
• The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 
• Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Yea, I could probably name about five more, but I'll just stop there...

3) Movies: Favorite movie of 2012 had to be The Hunger Games- no big surprise that my favorite movie of the year is based on a book, right?  It was the best book-to-movie adaptation I've ever seen.  Even though I'd read the books and knew what was going to happen I was still on the edge of my seat the entire movie. 

4) Travel: Good god, I traveled a lot this year.  Almost all of it was for work, but it still sort of counts, right?  Let's see, starting from the beginning of the year I went to Chicago, Toronto, Charlotte, and Spokane- those were all work-related.  And I've learned I'm still not a very good traveler.  I'm too nervous, too afraid of being late, too scared of getting trapped by security and I hate the takeoffs and landings.

Dan and I also got to head back down to the Outer Banks with my family this year after skipping it last year due to Dan's new job.  The ride down overnight was one of the worst drives I think we've ever experienced.  It just took for-ev-er due to a lot of crappy rain.  But the vacation itself was wonderful.  I came home happy, tan and relaxed.  And about five pounds heavier.

5) Memorable moments: Probably one of the saddest moments of the year came when I had to make the decision to put my sweet little ginger cat, Ollie, to sleep.  Even though he'd been sick on and off for several months, nothing really prepares you for a loss of that nature.  And I personally never had been through anything like that before.  He was my first "real" pet.  I still miss that little stinker- I probably always will.

But out of that sadness came the new love of my life, my crazy kitten Gus.  He hasn't replaced Ollie, just filled the hole he left behind.  And I thank my lucky stars every day that I found him.  He's the funniest, silliest, sweetest, and SMARTEST cat I have ever known.  He's also strong and healthy, with none of the issues Ollie suffered from.  I look forward to him being around for a long, long time, playing fetch and giving me paw and busting in on me in the bathroom for many days to come.

I think I'll end this here, on a good note. All that said, I'm looking forward to 2013 and all that it will bring.  More music, books, movies, trips, and memorable moments loom ahead.  Such is life.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

The Tally

I realize November still has two more days til it's over, but as far as my little NaNo deadline of hitting 40,000 words by the end of the month goes, it was pretty much over last night.  Too much running around to do tonight (it IS Thursday afer all, and we all know that means TVD night) and tomorrow I'll be Christmas shopping all day long with my mom and then heading to dinner with my eastside girls in the evening, which means I won't get home til late and I will be physically and mentally exhausted.  Which means the next time I'll get to write will be Saturday or Sunday, and then it's already December.  Agh.

Anyway, yes, I know my original goal was 41,000 words, which meant I had to write 25,000 words, but somewhere along the way I changed it to an even 40k.  Just had a better ring to it.  Nevermind that I was cutting 1000 words.  Nevermind that at all.  Ahem.

Did I hit that goal?  Welllllll...ok, no.  No I did not. 

But I'm okay with that.  The reason being is my total is now just under 37,000 words, so in just a little over three weeks I wrote a good 20,000 words!  I mean, that's actually pretty amazing when you take into consideration that I was only writing about 3-4 days a week, for about an hour or two each time I sat down with my laptop.  And at 37,000 words, my story is now officially at least half over.  I'll be very happy if I end up with 70,000 words with this one.

Clearly, I work better under deadlines.  Even self-imposed ones.

So let's see, if I managed 20,000 words in about 3 weeks, I should be about to write 25,000 in 4 weeks.  That means if I stick with this pace, I should be done with the first draft by mid-January.  Since things are going to get a little crazy with the holidays coming up, my goal to finish the book for real will be February. 

For now, off to my readers it goes.  I'm dying for some feedback!!

Progress!

Oh hey, how are you?  I know, it's been a couple weeks since I've been here.  Sorry.  I've been busy, you know, kicking some major ass on the WIP instead.

No, really! After I realized I'd need to write at least 1000 words every day in order to reach 40k by the end of November, it sort of kicked me in the head and got me going.  While I'm still not certain I'll be able to truly reach my goal, I can proudly say I'm giving it pretty much everything I've got.   I'm happy to report that I'm already close to 27,000 words, which means I've only got about 13,000 more to go in 12 days.  I'm pretty sure that means I've cranked out at least 10,000 words since I set this goal for myself. Yay, me.

Writing 1000 words takes me about an hour, give or take.  Now, some days I don't have an hour to crack open the laptop and write, and therein lies the dilemma.  So, I'm trying to write even more than 1000 words when I do have time to sit down and write.  It's actually been somewhat easy to do that.  I'm not sure if the way I'm writing this one is making it easier; I mentioned before that I'm not following a strict timeline, just writing snippets of certain times in the characters' lives and then going back to the present.  I think I might end up putting the snippets all together so it's a consecutive story, instead of all the back and forth stuff, but I'll first throw it out to my readers as is and see what they think.

So that's helping, but what's also helping is the fact that I just sort of love this story.  It's spooky, it's sappy, it's fun, and it's also sorta heartwarming.  What would you do to bring the love of your life back to you? 

I've also been considering looking into some freelance writing jobs.  I could use the extra cash, and I might as well get it by doing something I love.  I just have no idea where to begin looking or how to get started, so research will be involved.  Sigh.

Anyway, Black Friday for me will be spent not getting trampled in stores, but holed up in my house with my laptop on my couch.  I declare it Writing Day and I hope to bust out like 5000 words that day.  We shall see!

Up All Night

Cuz we're all right
We're up all night
To see the sun come up again now...

Dan and I went to see one of our favorite bands at the Grog Shop last night- Unwritten Law, and my ears are still ringing, eight hours later.  We actually danced our first dance at our wedding to one of their songs- a pretty, slowed-down piano version of "The Rest of My Life".  They did not play that song last night, but then, I wasn't really expecting them to.

The show reminded me of my old days of going to see bands play, sometimes a couple times a month.  I used to LOVE going to the old Grog Shop back in the days before it moved- even though the bathrooms there were thoroughly disgusting and the doll heads hanging from the ceiling always freaked me out.  There's just nothing like seeing a band you admire up close and personal in a small club.  And UL totally rocked it last night, regardless of the fact that I'm pretty certain they were all wa-hay-sted by the time they took the stage (which was around 9:30). 

Is it totally sad that I was almost weeping with joy when we found out they were playing 3rd and not 4th out of 4 bands?  The fact that I was SO HAPPY that I'd be home before one am on a school night might be just a little depressing.  But hey, I'm not 21 anymore.  I cannot stay up all night when I have to be at work at 7:30.  Just the way it is.  Meh.

I'll leave you with a few pretty lyrics from our wedding song, even though they did not play it last night.  It was still a great show.

I know, I'm so slow
But I'm tryin'
And I'm still dyin' to know
Say you won't leave for the rest of my life

(photo by Dan)

NaNoWriMo...uh oh

Ok, wait a minute...it's November already?  I blinked and October was over!  I think I say this every year, but 2012 seriously has been the fastest year EVER.  Geez.

Anyway, so it's November, and November means it's NaNoWriMo time!  NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, kids.  The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and November 30th, and you can't cheat by using any of your previous work- it has to be a fresh, new novel.  Which means I can't enter using my current WIP, which is over 16,000 words now.  And it'd really be cheating, considering I've been working on it for several months now. 

Several months, and I'm only at 16k.  Ugh.  The progress I feel I've been making lately suddenly seems much, much less impressive.  Sad face.

Part of me wants to try NaNo one of these days.  50,000 words in 30 days?  Pssshh.  No big deal.

Right.

The main problem is every time November rolls around (ok, well, these past three years when I've been really trying to write something worthwhile) I'm engrossed in something I already started.  I don't think it would make much sense for me to stop working on the WIP, just to try to create some super crappy first draft of another book. 

That said, I WILL use November as a month to be super motivated about writing.  Maybe I can get 50,000 words down in the WIP- which would make it almost finished.  My goal is usually around 70k for a completed story. 

Ok though, let's be honest here.  50k ain't happening.  I just don't have it in me to write so quickly.  I will be a bit more realistic and set my goal at 25k.  That sounds much more reasonable.  So, by November 30th, I need to have a total of around 41,000 words written in the WIP.

I can totally do it.

To anyone out there participating in NaNoWriMo this month, good luck, and happy writing!! 

read it yourself

As everyone knows, I love to read.  I tend to read at least one book a week, and I wish I had time to fit in more than that.  But you know, I have to eat.  And drink wine with friends.

And as everyone also knows, I love to write.  Whether I'm actually any good at it or not, well, that's neither here nor there, really.  All I know is I have words in my head that have to get out, so I let them out. 

But you know what I don't love?  Trying to tell someone WHY I loved a particular book.  Like, writing a book review.  I've often thought that maybe I should start reviewing some of my favorite books on this here blog, but then I start trying to form words to describe why I loved Jellicoe Road or The Fault in our Stars or The Scorpio Races, and I come up with nada.  I stutter like a fool and end up babbling something like, "OMG it's just soooo good, you have to read it."

For instance, right now I'm reading an awesome book called Graceling by Kristin Cashore.  Last night, I was trying to explain to my husband what it was about as I downloaded the second book in the series from the library. I'm like 250 pages in (out of 300, so almost done) and here's what I came up with:

"It's about this girl, who has two different colored eyes and has a special talent or 'grace' of killing people, cuz all people with two different colored eyes have different talents like that, and there are seven kingdoms, and it's sorta Lords of the Rings-ish, and there's a bad king who controls people just by speaking, he can like, change their thoughts, and the girl and this boy, who is also graced with fighting and the king's power doesn't work on him, rescue the little princess and have to take her away from the bad king guy..."

And it just sort of pilfered out after that. 

See what I mean?  Now, I'm sure if I actually sat down and gathered my thoughts I could write something that made a bit more sense than that.  I just don't have the desire to.  Is it because I've taken in so much of the story that I hate letting it back out?  Hmm.  Possible.

Seriously, though, go read all those books I mentioned here.

Feeling lucky

I know, I've been completely slacking on this whole blogging thing...and writing in general.  Still.  It's gotta turn around soon.  I gotta get my groove back at some point, right?  And now with the chill creeping into the air and the days getting shorter and shorter, I think there's no time like the present.  Last year at this time I was writing like a fiend, setting aside time at least two or three days a week to write.  I need to get back to that.  I will.

Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment here to discuss how lovely the weekend was.  Me and about 15 of my closest friends- Ok, so really that's like ALL my friends- got together at the wineries out on the east side.  It was technically an early birthday celebration for me, but if any of you really know me, you know I basically use my birthday every year as an excuse to get all my peeps together in one place.  I could care less about celebrating the actual day of my birth.  I just want all my friends together.

And so, I'm feeling really happy, even three days later, that everyone made the effort to come out even if it was only for a couple hours.  Some of us moved on to another winery and stayed the night at a hotel, but not everyone was able to do that.  Which I completely understand.  But still, some of my peeps drove at least an hour to get there just to hang out.  That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and loved and stuff.

Of course, a lot of my friends also really, really enjoy wine.  ;o)

So a big shoutout to Karyn, who planned the whole event, which required a lot of phone calls and making of reservations and putting money on her credit card.  And then a shoutout to everyone who came: Kerri, Gail, Patti, Debbie, Barra, Kelly, Holly, Michele, Michelle, Nikki, Kristen, Colleen, Shea, Seester and Jenny.  I love you guys!!!