Bethanie's Brain

Less than 4 hours til NaNo officially starts in my time zone!!! I'm so excited, I can't stand it!!!

I just have to say this to get it out of my system and then I'll shut up about it: I fucking hate the whole daylight savings thing!! I just wish they'd leave it one way or the other, because the "Big Switcheroo" always messes with me. It's like having fucking jet lag without having gotten to go anywhere. Bah! Humbug! OK. I feel better now.

I was going to post my NaNo plot summary, such as it is, but ended up posting this Plot Summary Metamorphosis on a NaNo forum this morning and thought it did a better job: I started out with a Nice Young (Viking) Girl, who gets transported to another world, meets a Nice Young Boy and has a bunch of Adventures in the process of trying to find her Dad. Enter My Muse (Dorothy). Now the Nice Young Girl has a Twin Brother who follows her and gets abducted by the Evil Empire, a Radical Religious Sect is bent on dismantling the Nice Young Girl's brain, a bunch of Bad Guys in Kilts are bent on dismantling the rest of her, a Random Malevolent Creature is bent on dismantling Everyone Else and a Herd of Mythological Beasts are wandering around and have not yet adequately explained their presence... Yeah. That's about how it goes for me.

OK, I'm experimenting with colors here, trying to make El Blogo easier to read. Didn't like the purple , wasn't an improvement, I don't think. This is some form of yellow whose hex code is FFFF99. Thoughts?

As stated in a previous post , time is of the essence for this November’s NaNo adventure. That is, I will have very little of it. With that in mind, I am collecting methods of conserving time by being more efficient with what I’ve got so I can have enough to pound out those 1,667 words every day. (Other suggestions would be most welcome.) And My Muse Will Have the Merlot 1. Caffeine . I drink lattes, since straight-up coffee messes too much with my stomach. Lattes take time to prepare – time I’m not willing to give up. Therefore, I plan to make a Small Vat of Espresso on a Sunday or whatever and keep it in the fridge. Then, when I wake up at 4AM and decide to get some writing done (instead of some sleeping), I can quickly and quietly (latte preparation is also rather noisy) pop a cuppa in the microwave and be on my way. 2. Supper . Ideally, I would have been preparing and freezing stuff for most of October. Unfortunately, my freezer is still stuffed with last year’s deer mea...

I didn't have a computer capable of doing this last year, so I never made a cover for that NaNo-novel. This year, however... Credit for the background pic goes to Lynnette Cook . The other images are a photo I took in Nepal in 1994 and my very poor attempt at sketching a natural land formation in my fantasy story's world. The proportions aren't really right for a cover, but I figure I'll just say it's a "wrap-around" type cover... yeah, that's it... heh.

So. I started putting together a list of what I’ll have to work around in November in order to do the Great Novel-Writing Adventure thing that is NaNoWriMo. Just so I could be prepared, ya know? I’ve succeeded in sorta freakin’ myself out. Here’s what I know about at the moment: Nov 1: The usual grant deadline. This one is less of big deal, since – because I’m still working from home – the major work I’ll do on the proposals should be prior to November 1. When I’m trying to iron out my plot wrinkles. Oh well. Nov 2: Ms. Baby's head scan. I suspect this will take up most of the morning by the time we’re done. (She has to have her head scanned because there’s a funny bump on the back on her skull. See photo.) Nov 8: Appointment with the plastic surgeon. About Ms. Baby’s funny bump. At 7:30 in the morning. In the middle of the city. This will necessitate getting up at an ungodly hour and driving through the city’s rush hour traffic. With Ms. Baby screaming her discont...

OK - so this is your typical pre-NaNo 'Oh, crap' moment: So one of the characters - Eirik - has this boat. He and the main character are supposed to escape her execution on it. It's a special ship, probably been in the family for generations, handed down from father to son, yada,yada, yada... In my mind, it's a Viking longship. Complete with dragon-headed prow. So last evening, in a bid to constructively procrastinate instead of work on the outline for the story, I decide: I might as well do some reading up on longships just so's I know what the hell I'm talking about. I mosey, ever so languidly, over to Wikipedia. Longship, I type. Here's a bit of what I find: lapstrake construction, fastened with iron rivets, oar-driven, center mast, prow carries a dragon carving. So far, so good. And then, the kicker: they were BIG. Most longships were 60 to 75 feet long or longer (bet that's why they called 'em ... oh, nevermind...). Not only that, they...

I love my job. I really, really, really love my job. I'm not being facetious. I'm not even being sarcastic. I really do love my job. But sometimes, the people I work for, they're enough to kill me. Like today, for instance. I sat down to edit this manuscript. I've edited it before. It got submitted to a journal. It got rejected by the journal. As part of being rejected by the journal, it underwent peer review. I believe there were three different reviewers and you know what? Each and every one of them said that the manuscript had - and I quote - 'many grammatical errors'. Many. Grammatical. Errors. You know what my job is? Correcting grammatical errors. You know what I did to that manuscript before it was submitted? I corrected the grammatical errors. You know what the first author on that paper did? He ignored my corrections of the grammatical errors. And submitted the paper with them. You know what I think of that? Well, to quote Hermione's...

[a NaNo rant ] Knowing it to be an exercise in futility, I wasn't going to outline this year. I mean, I learned my lesson last year . I know how hard my characters will laugh at any outline I come up with when I start referring them to it. I was going to save myself the trouble. Unfortunately, as soon as my imagination gets wind of a new project in the works, it gets all these illusions of grandeur and epic tales begin to blossom in my mind. Sort of like the mushroom cloud from an A-bomb. Next thing I know, I'm frantic to find a pencil or pen or crayon or SOMETHING to keep all these wonderful ideas from disappating into thin air and BOOM! An outline starts taking shape under my fingers. Pretty soon, I'm starting to organize it into chapters. Then I get all in a tizzy about the ending. Then I start obesessing about details large and small. I've got Character Bios started and now I'm trying to decide if I'm going to have more than one POV character. Gah! So...

OK, this one wins my prize for Bizarre Headline of the Week: Teen Faces Litter Charge for Bra Antenna The first time I read it I was envisioning the faces of teenagers leaving trash all over powered antennas attached to bras... the real story is only slightly less bizarre (thankfully no one was killed).

Yeah. I can't help myself. I'm gonna do it again. Wanna join me? C'mon. I dare ya! NaNoWriMo

Or: Sometimes life really sucks when your kids are smarter than you are So Ms. Four had a minor hissy fit over something I told her she couldn't do this morning and threw her scissors. She is not allowed to throw things. Things that she throws get taken away for the remainder of the day and put out of her reach until the following morning. So I promptly removed the scissors from her possession and placed them out of her reach. And spent the rest of the day cutting things out FOR her. DOH!

OK, the Poor Little Agnostic Brain has now seen everything . ATM for God Apparently, churches are finding this an attractive alternative to the traditional offering basket, since people don't carry cash or checkbooks around anymore. This way, even if all you have on you is your debit card (does it TAKE credit cards - that'd be interesting), you can still give your god your money if the spirit moves ya. Well. Hallelujah.

Yep. I get the Dumbass of the Day award today: It's 8AM. I'm starving. I decide I want eggs. It's a nice day. The doors and windows are open. Ms. Baby is sitting in her Bouncy Seat growing progressively irate. I butter the pan. I run over to the Bouncy Seat to rearrange the blanket, snuggle bunny and Sucky Thing. I run back to the kitchen and crack my eggs. I run back to the Bouncy Seat to rearrange the blanket, snuggle bunny and Sucky Thing. I run back to the kitchen to find my eggs rapidly overcooking. I flip them. I run back to the Bouncy Seat to rearrange the blanket, snuggle bunny and Sucky Thing. Back to the kitchen. Yeah, eggs are gonna be over hard today. I put the english muffins in the toaster and run back to the Bouncy Seat to rearrange the blanket, snuggle bunny and Sucky Thing. Too late. Ms. Baby has gone from irate to ballistically pissed without passing Go and without collecting so much as a nickel. I pick her up and throw her onto my shoulder. I ...

Right, so Ms. Baby slept FOREVER last night - like two, count 'em, TWO four-hour episodes In A Row - so I'm feelin' pretty together this morning. She's down for her morning nap. I decide to make coffee. Furthermore, having slept an Almost Normal Amount, I'm feeling all kinds of ambitious. I decide before making coffee, that I'm going to descale the espresso machine. It's been about a year since the last descaling, so it's about time. So I go out to the garage and get the gallon jug of vinegar that I keep on hand for that purpose (vinegar doesn't go bad, I'm pretty sure). I then search the house for the steam stopper-thingy, eventually find it and run a bunch of vinegar through the espresso half of my wonderful coffee machine. That finished, I prepare to de-vinegar it by running a bunch of water through the espresso half of my wonderful coffee machine. Now. If you've ever seen an espresso machine, you know it's under pressure and the...