Blog

Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, Organizing, Writing

Nano Struggles

I’m really struggling with Nanowrimo this year. I have zero energy, very little in the way of time for writing, and since I spent time working on writing classwork instead of planning this years nano novel, every time I sit down to write, I instead end up spending 3/4 of the time working on background info and character sketches. So for every 2 hour block of writing time, I get maybe 30 minutes of good writing in, which gets me about 500 words a day. But I haven’t had time every day because of days like Tuesday, where I spent all morning working on PTA stuff, went to the meeting, had to stay late to work on yet more stuff, and that used up all my free time and energy for the day. Or days like Wednesday, where I spent time writing for class, went to class, and only got real words on the book done during the Write-in that I could only stay an hour for (because they scheduled them during school pick-up time.).

By Friday this week I really just gave up. There was no way to get ahead with the way things were going. I sat down to write and spent an hour doing background planning again and while I got a lot of good information out of that session (and got to use my son’s new Apple Pencil, which is how I convinced myself to do it in the first place), I just couldn’t see how I was going to finish.

But then this morning, my sweet spouse asked how it was going and if I was 1/3 of the way through my novel like I should be. I told him about my struggles and he encouraged me to spend more time writing, to put it all into the calendar and enforce those times, and that he’d get me up every morning at 4am if that’s what needed to happen so I’d get my time in.

So here I am, blogging instead of writing. I can’t get into novel-mode with as short a time period as I have until breakfast, plus two of my sons have wandered through since I started typing (and in the time it took to start and end that part of the sentence, one of them wandered back in a second time, but it’s his birthday, so I’m indulging his wandering-ins because he’s showing me photos from his friends celebrating him at midnight last night.).

Here’s my writing schedule for the next three weeks (barring disaster):

  • Sundays: 7-9am at home, 2-4pm at the library write-in
  • Mondays: 9-11am and 1-3pm at home
  • Tuesdays: 9-11am and 1-3pm at home
  • Wednesdays: 2-3:15pm at the library write-in (will also write for classwork 9-11am, but it doesn’t count towards nanowrimo)
  • Thursdays: 9-11am at home
  • Fridays: 9-11am and 1-3pm at home
  • Saturdays: 3-5pm at the Barnes & Noble write-in

Mathematically, if I get 30 good minutes writing for every two hours spent times 500 words per session times three weeks like that, I should be at 50,000 words by Christmas. *sigh* Maybe I’ll have to start writing in the early mornings and late nights, too.

My Own Personal Weirdness, Writing

Welcome new visitors, plus site updates for regulars

Howdy my peeps! It’s NANOWRIMO, so I know this time of year I usually get an upswing in visitors from new writing friends, so welcome to all of y’all! This blog is a combination of my online diary/way to kept in contact with far away family/ place to blather on about writing/ health journal. I’ve been doing this for 20 years now, so there’s quite a lot of backlog that’s kept under lock and key as my kids have gotten older and wanted to have less of their baby pictures and stories online. I’ve tried to make the writing and health posts more available because I have a lot of readers for those things. 🙂

Sometime late this summer I started posting and saving things as drafts, meaning to go back and add photos or links and then totally forgot about all of that as school got busy, PTA got busy, and I got sick once again. So this morning I went back and updated all 20 or 30 or those entries with photos or links and set them free from the WordPress jail (aka: published them). SO if you’re a regular here and have not been reading along feeling like you’ve been missing something: the posts in between are there now. Go, read, catch up on my weirdness.

As always, love to all of you. Hope everyone is doing well! 🙂

What I Love, Writing

NANOWRIMO Write-In at the Tyler Public Library

We had a great first Write-In at the Tyler Public Library today! Well, a little chaotic because we were moved to an area that had no places to plug in our computers, but I found us some help. The rest was really good! We had 7 writers total, six that stayed and chatted and one that zipped in late and out early. Met some very lovely ladies that I’m looking forward to seeing again later this week! 🙂

Around the House, Family Time, I Really Do Cook, Parenting, What I Love

Halloween 2019

Our Halloween… over at my parents house around the corner, of course. 🙂 We had a pretty good turnout, but still had one whole bag of candy leftover at the end of the night. We watched HalloweenTown, but not HocusPocus because my children have decided to rebel and say they “hate” HocusPocus. Ah well, at least we had the traditional Taco Soup.

My Own Personal Weirdness, Writing

TPL Writer’s Group Halloween

Here’s how me and my friend Elizabeth dressed up for our Tyler Public Library Writer’s Class Halloween meeting. We went to the coffee house like this first and people were amused. Only one other person at the group dressed up, but we got candy and read spooky stories that we wrote. 🙂 D6EF37DA-964D-4DB3-9DFF-36A754FB02E8

health

Nosebleeds

I started having nosebleeds Saturday morning. The first few were quick and easy and spread apart. By late evening they were heavier and closer together. On Sunday I had about 10 nosebleeds by midnight and was literally bleeding out my eyeballs, so David took me to the ER. At one point there were three nurses helping because it was just too much blood. They eventually got it to stop after several hours and several things tried. I had a CT scan that turned out normal. I had an appointment with my ENT first thing this morning and he cauterized a burst blood vessel. I promptly passed out. He told me it was all (the burst blood vessel, the passing out) probably caused by high blood pressure and I need to lower my stress levels. He gave me side eye when I laughed and laughed.

Family Time, Parenting

Chaperoning, finally

Chaperoning, finally. First rainy game in a long time.

Parenting

TJC Game Today

Ree and I spent this afternoon working the concession stand at the TJC game to raise money for the REL Band. I had a great vantage point to watch the TJC band in the stands from my nacho & hot dog station. Then I ducked out at halftime to watch our David march with the TJC band. 🙂

Around the House, health

Thank God, life can be normal again

All my people are home from their various places now. David and Nick have been to the Feast of Tabernacles at the Steamboat Springs site in Colorado and they had quite the adventure getting back home because they got caught in a blizzard without snow tires or chains. They ended up having to do a huge detour to get home. Greg was in Lake Texoma with his aunt, uncle, and girl cousins with a different FoT group than we went with a couple years ago, but they stayed on site at the same resort that our main festivities were at last time, so it was familiar for him. They all had fabulous times at the places they went and I’m sure soon I’ll see more photos of their trips.

They were gone for about 10 days, about 8 of which I was sick with a horrific sinus infection — like hallucinations, fever, two kinds of antibiotics sick. Poor Ree. He was stuck home with me, which meant that sometimes he had to make his own meals and once he seriously offered to walk to the grocery story (he doesn’t drive yet. We need to work on that.) In any case, we are glad other people are back now.

My Own Personal Weirdness, Television & Film, What I Love

British Houses

Does anyone else watch perhaps too many British shows and movies and then, seeing houses you recognize from other things, feel at once comforted by them, but then a little later disconcerted because they didn’t actually use that particular houses inside for the inside scenes? Is it just me?