Bethanie's Brain

Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. ~Sir Edmund Hillary One of the first heros I ever had is gone . I shall miss him.

Because of NaNo I can't have a regular, ol', run-of-the-mill list of New Year's Resolutions. No, no, I have to have a totally dorky list of Big, Fun, Scary, Adventure-y things I'm going to accomplish this year. Whatever. I don't recall ever claiming that I'm not dorky, so what the hell. Let's have at it! Complete and submit one short story. Learn to speak rudimentary but passable Chinese (Mandarin, I guess, even though everyone I work with is from Shanghai). Learn to read/write/vaguely recognize 50 Chinese characters, plus the numbers 1-100. Complete a first revision of either NaNo 2005 (the vampire thing) or NaNo 2006 (the fantasy thing). Teach myself some basic biostatistics (since I can't afford to take a class). At least complete one read-through of the $60 biostats book I bought myself for Christmas (I did mention being dorky, didn't I?). Teach myself some basics about protein structure (since I can't afford to take a class) by reading ...

My alarm clock is set for 5:30 am on January 2, 2008. It did not go off this morning. Nevertheless, I woke up promptly at 5:25. And I'm still up. And I see no hope for going back to sleep until bedtime tonight. It is too early to make coffee, since the sound of the espresso machine will wake everybody up. It is too early to go last-minute Christmas shopping, since none of the stores I need to go to will open until 7:00. It is still dark out. Not fair, I say, not fair at all.

Why is it that some abandoned project suddenly looks all sweet and interesting just when the going gets tough on some other project? Why is that, huh?

I am a rabid perfectionist. I either do something well or I don't do it at all. Sometimes, this a good thing. For example, the medical editing part of my job requires unflagging, single-minded, obsessive attention to detail. Being a rabid perfectionist and doing things well or not at all is practically a pre-requisite for the job. However, this quest for perfection can also get WAY out of hand and make me crazy about things that just aren't that important. For example: Yesterday afternoon. In the midst of submitting a paper to a journal, I discovered that we would have to suggest reviewers - that is, give the names and contact information of people we think are knowledgable enough to judge the science of our paper. After I got over being annoyed that the stupid journal didn't put anything about that in their Instructions to Authors (where it bloody well should have been), I dutifully emailed the Boss Lady to ask who she wanted to suggest. And as usual, I told her just to ...

I wrote 17 words yesterday. Seventeen . Pathetic. I got distracted playing with yWriter - free and fabulous software for organizing your novel. Yes, FREE! And, really, I think I like it better than the stuff I paid for... Unfortunately, 'playing' does not produce words. Hence, the ungodly early hour of this post. Must make words, if I want to move my little ladybug along. Go, ladybug, go! OK, this isn't producing novel words either. I'm off.

New category: Things I Wish Someone Would Invent Not me, 'cuz I haven't got time to invent, patent, etc anything , but I've created this lovely label under which I shall post my ideas for anyone who DOES have the time. Feel free to steal the idea and run with it. Idea No. 1 - Shopping Cart Cupholders It would be great if shopping carts just CAME with cupholders, but I'll bet that's expensive and would totally screw up how the carts nest into each other in the cart corrals. So the next best thing would be some sort of attachment that I could purchase (or rent) that would hook on to an existing shopping cart. Why? Because I haven't got enough arms to juggle the cell phone, the baby's snacks, the baby's drink, my coffee, my purse, the baby's toys, and/or Ms. Five's various items all at the same time without losing my mind and my patience - not to mention somehow getting fruit roll-ups, lunchables and string cheese into the damn cart before every...

Look! Up there! At the top of the posts! It's a ticker! Cute, eh? I'm finding is that it's not just the having a goal and a deadline that's keeps me hitting the keyboard, but it's also a lot about the moving of little widget thingys. Hey, whatever keeps you motivated, right?

Well, this was an interesting NaNo. I finished later in November than ever. I finished with fewer words than ever. If this trend continues, I won't finish next year at all... But, this year , I finished. And, as usual, I learned a whole lot. 1) Deciding to sit down and write is like deciding to have a baby . No really. As in: there's always a reason not to. With babies, it's: "I have to finish my degree first" or "We have to buy a house first" or "Let's get a dog first". With writing it's: "I'm too tired" or "I should really clean the kitchen first" or "Hey! Let's go scrub bathroom grout!". There's always, always an excuse not to do it. 2) "When" doesn't matter, but "where" does . My vastly prefered writing time is in the early-early before anybody else wakes up. It's quiet. I can focus. There are no distractions, but there is lots of coffee. It's a good...

You know that 8,000 words I wanted to crank out between Friday and Sunday - I actually did it! How? I have no idea - other than sheer bloody mindedness. I mean, there were distractions galore. Everyone is still sick. The Husband was gone part of Saturday and Sunday. The Mt. Everest of Laundry took over most of the house. Our TV died and we had to buy a new one (according to the TV watchers, anyway - I'd have been fine without it). So I had every excuse to give up on my lofty goal and settle for the minimum 1,667 each day. But I didn't, and now I'm back where I'm more used to being during NaNo - a couple days ahead. Not that I won't squander that over Thanksgiving, but hey, that's what a cushion is for, right?

I have yet to write a single word today, which bodes un-well for my previously advertised word count goal for the weekend. However, I have large piles of laundry and live with a bunch of people who think they need clean underwear every day (I know, I know, WTF??!?). But laundry is underway and I'm about to be myself --- armed with this: Yeah. That's, like, an inch of froth standing up over the edge of the cup. Clever, aren't I? Er, yeah, whatever. The trick is to let the froth set for a good five minutes before you dump the espresso in. Yum, yum!

My word count goal between now and Sunday night: 8,000 words. Chances of me actually achieving said goal: slim to none-ish. I mean, I have work-work to do. I have house-work to do. I have two sick kids. I have a sick husband. I have a sick self. I have email to catch up on. I have phone calls to make to family and friends. In other words, I am almost certainly setting myself up for failure. But what the hell. It's NaNo. Anything can happen. So, here we go. Word count as of this morning: 25,677. Ready? Set? GO.

Save the Earth! It's the only planet with chocolate! I didn't. Somebody at NaNo has it as their sig line. And even though I've labeled it as such, it's not technically a Bumpah Stickah either. But it should be.

I love widgets. Can you tell? -----------> EDIT: Curses! They don't update! @%*&#!! EDIT #2: OK, OK, they do update. Just not very consistently. Whatever. They are cute and I love them.

So the dude who started this whole NaNoWriMo thing asked his characters this question. And told everyone else. So now EVERYONE is doing it. Including me. And since I can't seem to post my stupid comment on the NaNo forums, I decided to post it here instead (or, eventually, in addition to). So. Here's how my characters answered the question: Luci: I want to find out who murdered my best friend 11 years ago. Wen-Shu: I want to go back in time and undo the mistakes that cost my father his throne; that way I get to be Empress of the World. Woo-hoo! Kesera: I want to get the hell out of this stinkin' Keep. Then I want everybody to shut the hell up and stop telling me what to do. Fenn: I want my dead wife and son back. Barring that, I'll stay high all the time, so I can forget about them. Lars: I want Fenn to stop getting high all the time, take his responsibilites seriously and go back to good ol' days before he met that crazy bitch. And Luci, I want Luci. Ma...

Yes, that rag. Why the public service announcement about it? Well, only because it's been almost exactly TWO YEARS since the last time. Yeah. Breastfeeding rocks.

Up to 8,375 words on the NaNo, which means I'm still keeping up with the daily word count goals. Still amazed by this very fact. It shouldn't be happening. Not with the way Ms. Baby sleeps. Not with the way everyone's been sick. Not with work being, well, there. Wish they had the widgets available, so I could stick my running word count on the side bar. Which reminds me -- that side bar is a friggin' MESS. Needs cleaning. Like my kitchen. And like my kitchen, it will likely have to wait until December... Except for the widgets.

So it's started. And - in spite of both kids being sick and work going bonkers - I've managed to get through the first day and make word count. Amazing. And it's actually going well. If you don't count Luci hijacking the plot. On page 5. Honestly, I'm amazed and happy-fied to have got this far. Especially considering that if you'd told me a month ago that I was going to do NaNo again, I would have said you were crazy. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

So here I am -- out of town at a professional training conference and I HAVE THE HOTEL ROOM TO MYSELF. No requests for snacks every 5 minutes from Ms. Five. No constant demands for attention from Ms. Baby. No grousing from The Husband about how much everything costs here in the middle of the Big City. In other words, it's QUIET . Like I said: REALLY weird.

Still debating doing NaNo. I think doing random chapters related to other novels would be a bad idea, though. Well, not bad in and of itself, but certainly doomed to failure as a NaNo project. The key to succeeding at NaNo is momentum and casually drifting from one project to another ain't gonna cut it. So to hell with that idea. And maybe to hell with NaNo. Right. And this would be the '...well, maybe...' part. See, I have this couple of characters from Novel #1. And I'd really like to know what they think they're doing there. They're interesting characters ('cuz they're women and they kick ass) - all the more so because one of them won't let me in her head, but she keeps doing these random things that I KNOW are important but I haven't had the time to figure out what her story is, what exactly she's really after or whose side she's actually on. And isn't NaNo the perfect vehicle for finding out shit like that? Of course it i...