After Dark

As you may have seen from my twittering (I refuse to admit that "tweet" is the verb for such actions), my work on my NaNoWriMo project is now seriously behind, with a deficit of five days and growing. At this point, I'm debating whether to just see exactly how far I can get, considering how good it felt when I was sticking to a strict schedule, or pull out now before I get too stressed with a project that is meant to be solely beneficial. After all, it's not as if I don't have other things on my plate; the essay on Into the Wild is due tomorrow, which I was hoping to have finished yesterday during my day off, except for the irritating fact that the more time I have, the less motivated I am to do work. And then there's the short story that I need to write and submit to the rep I met at TusCon, and there's the work on trying to get December published, and...

Busy, busy, busy.

We'll see how it goes. The essay is my first priority, since the grade matters and the thing is due tomorrow. After stalling on it all night, I was able to make some decent progress on it today, though I'm concerned that it isn't as tight as it could be due to how much I loved the subject matter, which, as you may note, is a rarity; usually, I am universally negative about the texts I have to write about, such as the whole Faulkner thing. Not sure what to make of that.

Well, off to work, and then finishing that essay, and THEN meeting up with The Brauer to prepare for Wrath of the Lich King night, which is completely inconvenient for me. Seriously, Wrath, couldn't you come out next week? I have a paper due tomorrow and you're making it impossible to concentrate.

Thank God I cannot buy it until midnight at the very earliest, grr.

I'm exhausted (though not from the convention) so my ability to be coherent, funny or even interesting is likely seriously diminished, but I felt it was necessary to record for all time the events of the past weekend. Also, I'm writing this from memory, and I'm horrible with names, so I'm sure I misspelled some names here (I'll attempt to correct this when I get back home).

In no particular order: The con was wonderful. We ended up sitting at the same table as the guest of honor, Diana Gabaldon, who you might be familiar with. Note: my requirement for a person to be considered famous is whether or not he or she has a wikipedia page. If you do, congratulations! I also had the pleasure of meeting (through the wonderful networking skills of my mom, who came with me as a guest) met a number of excellent authors, including Weston Ochse, Yvonne Navarro and Dennis McKiernan, all of whom were absolutely wonderful and awesome people. We ended up talking late into the night about fiction, about my story, about writing in general. I should have had a notebook and tape recorder out; there was so much information and advice, so freely given, that I was all but overwhelmed.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Liz Danforth as well, the wonderful person who organized the short story contest and also ended up pulling the strings that led to an unscheduled reading of my short story the next day, but more on that in a bit.

So, the short story contest: second place! It was a great honor and I was very gratified to have made the effort to come out to the convention, although I have to admit, the real prize was the way these established, published authors who reviewed my work took the time to discuss my story and ask what my plans were; everybody who'd read it urged me to look into publication. The short story I submitted, by the way, was a rewritten version of December, an early draft of which appears on this blog if you're interested.

The short story reading was a real surprise. I'd been attending the panels at the con, after the short story contest was over, and I learned a lot of great tips about the world of small press publishing and just what the sci-fi/fantasy world looks like at the moment. Reading my story aloud was an interesting experience, although I had a tiny audience of two people, I'm told that this is actually pretty common unless you happen to be, say, the guest of honor. But! It was still a great experience, especially because one of the listeners was a rep from a small horror fiction press, who said he was quite interested in my work and asked me to have a submission to him in six weeks. I've already started working on some ideas for my submission!

So, all in all, it was a wonderful, amazing experience. The people I met, the advice I was given, and the interest my work received, as well as the words of encouragement, the support and the warmth... it was unlike anything I've ever experienced. I don't know if I've ever been this pumped about the direction I want to take my life, the goals I've set for myself. Weston and Yvonne... your words really inspired me this weekend. I am exceedingly grateful for all that you guys did for me this weekend and I'm extremely eager for the day when I'll be able to show you that your advice and wisdom did not fall on deaf ears.

Also, the photos from the wine and cheese party are uploaded to my computer. And they are very, very hilarious. Nobody else will be able to understand until you've watched a man attempt to eat a candy skull made entirely of sugar, a skull equal in size and density to the man's own head.

Good times.

TusCon was... wow. My mind is still reeling. I'll need to write an entry when I'm not so tired so I can accurately capture all that has happened in the last two days.

So awesome.

If you've been following me on Twitter, you'll know that I've been doing constant updates on the status of my NaNoWriMo project. But if you haven't seen that and you were wondering how it's going, here's a little update. So far, it's been great! I've written every day since the first of November, and I'm up to about 8971 words. My goal is about 2000 words a day, which has been a little tough to do, but I'm still plugging away. Most of all, I'm just happy that I've been able to be consistent with this. Committing to a project and not getting distracted is something that's really difficult for me. I think that forcing myself to not stall and just dedicate myself to one task will really help.

I will keep you updated, maybe even post some details about the story here soon! If you're interested in more up-to-date progress, keep an eye on my twitter account; I log each session's progress when I finish.

Here's to 50,000 words in 30 days!

Author Michael Crichton has passed away. This makes me very sad. Jurassic Park was the first adult novel I'd ever read, at the tender age of seven. I consider Crichton to be one of the cornerstones of my development as a reader and then, later on, as a writer.

Very sad news.

Congratulations, President Obama.

God, I've been waiting a year to write that.

Well done, America. Well done. I'm proud of you.

So, I just did my first writing session with this NaNoWriMo idea. So far, so good!

A few details: the working title for my story is "Reapers and Riders." It's based on a poem I wrote a few years ago. For the moment, I'm going to keep most of the details to myself, especially since it's still just starting to form in my head. But, assuming all goes well, I might start posting some things about the characters and the setting as I develop them. The way I look at it, if I do that, not only will it give me something to share with you, but it will also help me kick around new ideas and hopefully make things better.

Also, one other thing I'm going to be doing is ending each post about this story with a word count, so you can keep track of my progress (probably also going to do this on Twitter, now that I think about it.)

Current Word Count: 1730

That's sort of an annoying name to type in.

But, as most people know, November is the season for lazy writers to try to become dedicated ones and finish a 50,000 word novel in exactly one month. I skipped it last year, and the year before, but.... you know, I think I'm really going to give a shot this month. I've got a pretty good idea for a story and, well, maybe this is what I need to really get myself in gear and get back to the creative writing thing that my college education has worked so hard to smother.

Not sure if I'll post story bits as I go along, or just keep updates on my progress. We'll see how it goes.

Wish me luck! Actually, screw luck... there really isn't any luck in writing. Wish me inspiration and/or an abundance of free time and focus. That'd be better.