November Flies By

Well, as many of you may know, I did NaNoWriMo this year. What you may not know, however, is that I lost. Badly.

I'm not grouching about that, though. I set into NaNoWriMo with a purpose in mind: Get my book rolling again. I fulfilled that goal. And I enjoyed it. Writing new scenes is so much more fun that rewriting scenes from previous starts. Writing a scene from the beginning has started to rival the pleasures of editing.

Sure, I didn't even introduce the main conflict of the story. But I got pretty ice close. I didn't write more than 12,000 words in the course of the month, but I reached 20,377. I never fulfilled my daily quota, but I did 1232 words in one day.

And that isn't even the best part. This is the best part:

Sarah (reading my book): I am not weeding. I am perusing an excellent book.

Though the first line only made sense to the two of us, the second line planted the seed of warm fuzzies in my heart. In the course of November, my book transformed from something so hopeless I would cry about it, to something that Sarah enjoys to read. That is what I got out of November. Characters I hadn't known existed leaped from my fingertips. Bridges were burned (figuratively), main characters were tortured by bitter enemies (really) and chunks of time I thought would bore readers turned into awesome skirmishes.

I didn't make Mom cry with sweetness. (The ultimate goal.) But I don't think a main character who allegedly cares for no one and swears incessantly at those closest to her is going to make Mom cry... yet. Neither is a twenty year old war general escaping from enemy camps. I didn't make Mom cry, but Lia's callous quips made her laugh. I'm happy with that.

My writing still isn't quite where I want it to be yet; I had to rewrite several out-of-character scenes and spent full days with my face buried in my hands, trying to figure out scene to scene inconsistencies. But I did it. And I loved it.

May I just end with saying that I am satisfied.

Actually, I'm not. I'm EXHILARATED!

Lately

I've been neglecting this blog a lot lately, haven't I? But I have been justified in this neglect. I wrote scene six of my book, which may seem to be an insignificant accomplishment, but when you've been working on a book since you were nine and you're finally on a draft that will actually stay and the whole world keeps getting in the way of writing it... then you can complain about my complaining.

I will make up my neglect now by posting a long update of everything I have been doing in the last long time.

1) Sarah's jaw surgery - True, I didn't actually do this. But I was helping her in the week or two after that when she was a total wreck. You can read about all this here. (And I really hope that link actually works because I have never tried to do something like that before.)

2) Lizzie's Birthday - (I didn't do this either so let's just pretend it said, 'everything that has been happening' instead of 'everything I have been doing'.) My Lizzie turned 12, an age of increased privileges. Not nearly as many as she would wish, she fervently wants to be allowed to wear makeup at twelve like the other girls in our ward are, but it is not to be. Some pictures (and, yeah, I know the cake dominates, but I really liked that cake):

The delicious lemon angel food cake. Unfortunately, I can't claim ownership of its exquisite delights, Mom made it.

Our family has a 'special' way of blowing out the candles. It involves snuffing the flame with our fingers. Some - Sam - find this a very exciting practice.

The last candle...

And the cake is pounced on by children eager to lick the candles.

And the present opening begins! I gave Lizzie a beautiful outfit and stayed up until midnight wrapping all her other presents the night before.

However it may appear, Lizzie is not trying to smash the Anne of Green Gables movies Mom bought her. She is, in fact, shrieking with joy. (And don't tell her I posted this, she probably wouldn't approve.)

Devoured.

3) Josh's Birthday - Josh turned 10 this Thursday. I did make this cake. Unfortunately, I didn't make it very well. We were out of icing sugar so we had to do whipped cream frosting, which is not my preferred medium. And I didn't have the tools I wanted. They mysteriously disappeared. And I was in a hurry. Anyway, here are pictures:

I made him freeze while I took pictures.


Taken just as the candles went out. Personally, I think this shot it so cool because I can still see the little dots of light. But that is just me. You are not obligated to look at this picture.

Josh is very glad that he has no girlfriends and can eat his cake now.

My hastily made cake. (And Erik's arms, removing the candles.)

So those are all the events that have been keeping me busy. Besides those, I have been doing schoolwork, cleaning, writing, talking and daydreaming. (And taking totally awesome pictures of peaches that I will post someday because they are important.)

It's A Computer Screen! It's A Web Page! It's My Blog!

You have found my blog! Congratulations! Now that I have created this, if you care what I'm doing, you can follow this blog and find out, and if you don't, you don't even have to read this! Yay!

I decided to start this blog for a few reasons. They are:

An Aspiring Photographer Needs An Audience – Have you ever tried to find out what people think of your pictures when no one has seen them? And Facebook really doesn't work as well as I'd like when it comes to pictures. And then there's the fact that I commonly go searching through my friends' blogs for pretty landscape pictures and I want repay the favor by letting others search through my blog and steal the pictures that they like.

Writers Need Blogs – Blogs satisfy our sadistic tendencies and unique eccentricity. You see, if I have a blog, I can drop random little peeks into what I'm writing. Things like, “I heard Taylor Swift's Invisible today. It fits so perfectly for one of my characters.” And then I can laugh while I imagine you trying to figure out which character it works for and if she ever gets the guy. (Not that you'd care yet, considering I haven't given you anything of my current draft.)

I Have Many Friends – Okay, so maybe that isn't exactly true. But I have friends all over the continent! I can't keep all of them up to date with everything that is going on in my life. That is another reason I don't use Facebook as often as some do. You can't tell the whole story; it's only allowed to be 420 characters. Blog postings, however, can be as long as necessary.

Blogs Are Awesome - I mean, just look at this beautiful thing! I love to read blogs! If you have time and things to say, why not have a blog of your own?

That, my friends, is why I now have a blog. I hope you enjoy it! (And if you don't, I won't even know!)