WINNAR!

"Our word-counting robots have analyzed your November novel, and they've delivered their final, binding assessment: Winner."

!!!!

Random stats:
FINAL WORDCOUNT: 50,196
NANOBOT WORDCOUNT: 50,175

fake 50,000th word: END (prior to replacing a placeholder i forgot about)
real 50,000th word: DEAD
NaNo 50,000th word: DRIVEWAY

E's: 25,257
Q's: 119

Viddy this my droogs: mine certificate!!

It's not even 10pm yet! Oh man, i feel quite good, despite writing less than a thousand words for the past couple of days, and for not getting to reread my story once through in its entirety. I don't think I had much of a plot. Who cares! I wrote 50,000 blithering words! I only got called obssessed twice! Now for some celebratory tea.

Current album: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

"The church of manlove is such a holy place to be." I love you David Bowie!

Te Busque

Erg, 49,417 cuz I was out tonight and probably out tomorrow night and i want my bloody certificate! Barcelona match on now, gonna watch. Hope to write more later. Sad update again.

49,000something

I forgot to update last night. I am so close to 50K but quite embarassingly I don't have an ending yet. What gives? Also this character I introduced late, who i imagined as this sort of debonair (ok not really) guy ended up being this total slimeball (well not completely), and Chase decided to grow a beard and then Thomas drops this bombshell on me and that's my next scene but it still doesn't mean anything. Woe.

La Budgie Brava

Ow my frickin' fingers! Bubba bites like a piranha! That will teach me to trim my birds' talons claws nails when I am supposed to be typing for the rest of the night. Actually I lie, I don't learn a damn thing, I'll be trimming Tiny Girl's nails as soon as I log off.

Current Song: La Costa Brava by Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
Current ex-snack: Inca Kola and more Tostitos. My mouth, it BURNS.

Anyhoo! 47,033 bitches! The NY Times had an article about a cheap weekend in Seattle today so of course I snagged more research. Seattle gets cooler the more I read up on it. Ow my finger joints. i declare this update over.

Me, obsessed?

Ha! What does my sis know! There was a hit and run and a police search on my block about an hour ago but that is so not important because hello, I am writing! Duh!

Success is so close I CAN TASTE IT. OR MAYBE IT IS THE TOSTITOS!!! ^_^

I am now at 45,001 words but that is what Word tells me, I am scrambling the letters and going to put it into nanowrimo's wordcounter and hope it doesn't lessen what I've been going by so far. Okay I think it is actually crashing my Word doc. Whatever, I made a copy and then emailed it to myself as well.

The only problem I see now is coming up with a satisfying ending and somehow not rushing it because I *only* have 5,000 words to do it justice. I think the story is begging to be 60K plus, because I spent the first 40,000 words over the span of two months and the other 10K will be a few years? Hell no. WTF. I've been doing research too. And now my story is in the future, it is 2009!

Oh yeah I stepped outside to buy the aforementioned Tostitos. I am not completely mental! Off to play the delightfully creepy Alice in Wonderful videogame because nothing says relaxation like stabbing people.

Edit: Lookit, I took a screenshot of my novel! Look how little dialogue there is! Also note how the pink hi-lighted parts are sections I think are kinda dumb and should be worked on a bit more. Those are only the first 50 pages. Note how I have notepad open for random notes, research, timeline and wordcount; a folder of And One songs and that I was listening to Ricky Martin's Lola at the time.

ETA: I had to manually do word scrambling (which turned up the delightful facts that my novel had 22,496 Es and 144 Zs). Nanowrimo's countbots say I have 44,981 words. Those bastard robots robbed me of 20 words! Curse you, i say! (five times to equal 20)

Just Dropped In

To See What Condition My Condition Was In!

I have not stepped out of the house in three days. Yep, that's right folks. But I have something to show for it! I am at 41,699 words right now, one day ahead of schedule, and I know where I am going. Well pretty much except for the very very end. But I know most of the journey. I got rid of the subplot and added a mini-secret and fudged a few facts (like my story should really be taking place in 2009 but i am too lazy to do that because I got really caught up in figuring out my calendar system to work for the benefit of my story)

Anyway my eyes are buggin'. Ciao.

I Give Away No Secrets

Current song: Clampdown by the Clash
Current wordcount: 32,442
Curren reason: Colombia v Argentina match! I'll try to catch up. Or not.

This is one sad update. Tough!

Cuppa Tea

Current Wordcount: 31,683 hey slow and steady yadda yadda
Current Album: Rise and Shine by the Adicts
Current Need: Sleep. zzzz....

Players I namedropped: David Beckham, Landon Donovan, Juan Pablo Angel and Cuauhtémoc Blanco.

The internets is dangerous thing, good for research which is another word for distraction.

Football Fairy Story

Soccer games watched: South Africa vs USA, Houston Dynamo vs New England Revolution, Peru vs Brasil
Album listening to: Bratmobile's Pottymouth
Snack: Trader Joe-san's Edamame

Wow, I would probably have gotten a lot more writing done if there was not all these great matches I had to watch! :P

After 29,846 words Ultimo is in love. That's not bad considering that Chase fell in about 20,319 words in. Also coincidentally MLS has finally made an appearance. Oh, I am so evil :(

Current wordcount: 30,064
Though I am making all these goalmarks, I should really have more of a cushion because if I miss a day I am suddenly behind 2K then 4K behind and then it becomes a monstrous obstacle and damn you nanowrimo blarg! But I am getting ahead of myself. Speaking of which I think I know where my story is going so I am not writing blindly. Yay!

Neil Neil Orange Peel

Neil Gaiman wrote to me :) Me and every other Nanowrimo writer, but still! He tried to write an upside down question mark for me, so we are totally chill.

Current song: Mickey Mouse Is Dead by the Subhumans (WIN)
Current distractions: Torchwood, My Name is Earl, Heroes, Scotland v Italy (holy crap, that foul that was given to Italy by that damn spaniard ref? totally made up. LOSE) and halftime is just over between Argentina v Bolivia (which I managed to figure out how to get streamed via the interwebs live, WIN)
Current words written today: CERO!!!!!! (LOSE)
A pretty even day as a matter of fact!
Current wordcount: 27,629

My next novel is going to be what "Harry May" would be if it was made into a kickass book. Ha!

New update in however many hours.

Evil corny laugh, huh huh

Backstreet boys are here to stay!
(not that kind of backstreet boys)
WE ARE THE FIRM, WE ARE THE FIRM!!

Current wordcount: 25,020 I RULE. still writing!
Current music: Cockney Rejects
Past distractions: Torchwood, Ghosthunters, youtube, email, last.fm, bank accounts, everything really! I am getting way too cocky with this wordcount, it'll come back to bite me in the arse!

Randomness
I passed by this truck that said Perkins Furniture Moving and this whole storyline came to me about this absent dad sending a $189.20 alimony check. I was also looking through CDs the day before and saw a CD for Elvis Perkins. Holy crap. He's the son of Anthony Perkins, who was bi, no?!! Oh snap! his mom died on a 9/11 plane. Uh.. he also kinda looks like how i imagined my character, with the glasses and whatnot O_o

ANYHOO, all sorts of odd North Carolina randomness is popping up too. Now now, I know that it is just me putting these details into patterns, BUT ZOMG MY NOVEL IS FOR REAL. Hey... I think I said that another year. Bwahahaha. Oh well. Shut up. No, you shut up! Mom!!!

Edited to add OMG. Anthony Perkins starred in Orson Welles' The Trial WHICH I TOTALLY TOLD MY SIS TO DELETE LIKE TWO HOURS AGO FROM OUR DVR, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!!!!!!

Never Surrender

I am only listening to artists that start with B tonight! First off the Business, followed by Blowoff, then the Buzzcocks and finally Blitz! BAWK! I mean, RAWK!

Amazingly I am at 24,150 words right now and I still have maybe a good half hour left in me yet! I rue the day that I'll run out of steam and ideas and get writer's block and all that good stuff, eek.

Back to headbanging at my desk :D

Tres Palabras

I only cleared yesterday's goal by three words! (not counting my placemarkers) Erg. I did listen to Guns N' Roses so it was not a total loss :)

I have way too much bickering in my story. Actually it's talk about bickering. My first NaNoWriMo attempt was almost a screenplay because I had way too much fun making stupid dialogue between my 5, 6, 7 main characters, and i strugged to create a landscape for them (at most I described it as being a vast flat gray plain). Now I have amped up the environment detail (but not by much, a weakness of mine) but have really long paragraphs about how a character is thinking but will say five words max. They are in fact trying to think about some things to avoid thinking about other things, which acknowledges the problem and defeats the purpose no? They are WEIRD.

Can you believe that Word doesn't accept "overthink" as a word? Well, that's even better, extra word count!! :)

I am either writing the poor man's Amor en el Tiempo de Cholera or the poor man's Trick :P

Edith Whitehouse

Edith Whitehouse -> best one line character ever. Also listening to so much Adicts is the bound to have a good cheeky effect on writing.

Also I may be going a bit delusional, what with the constant holing up in my room listening to budgies over music, the tea and sweet snacks and the constant Word Count check and impromptu math of dividing 50,000 by 30 and then multiplying by the day of the month every single day and then calculating how much I have to go to get to today's goal or how much I've gone over, BUT man oh man, sometimes I read back on what I wrote and I find a line or a passage or a meandering paragraph that I go "wow, that's pretty darn good!"

The Adicts' Sound of Music helped me come up with this:
"Why don’t we go to the ballroom? I know you don't like to dance, but we could practice in a side room, like Fraulein Maria and Captain von Trapp."
Needless to say it is followed by the aforementioned fragment:
"Stop being ridiculous." (putting a "You" in front makes it a nonfragment but who talks like that? Ridonkulous!)

Wow, I've really wasted a lot of time today. I passed 20,000 yesterday (today's goal) and I barely managed to add a few hundred today.

Current wordcount as of 10:05pm: 20,236
Current music: Blood For Blood
Current annoyance: itchy neck and cold feet
Current guest: my sister imitating hardcore singers going YAAAAAAARRRGHH

Ain't it sad about the boys and the girls?

Wordcount: 19,753 (actually -3 because I have the following three brightly neon-green hi-lighted words: SEKRIT, more and later. These are place holders for the nonsense junk that is supposed to go there)
I am almost at tomorrow's wordcount, GO ME!

No secret conspiracy yet. I may not even need one (oh i should not talk like that, not even being halfway through), wouldn't that be a kick in the pants?

Microsoft Word thinks all my run on sentences are wack. What does it know, for I am a poet, DUH! "Stop being ridiculous" is a fragment? Feh!

Organic snackies!!! Yay for Trader Joe's!!

Music: Am now listening to albums on my computer, but first I have to label the artist, album and each track before they can get scrobbled, which is slightly annoying, but then I can show last.fm how much more punk I have in my collection than I have been previously listening to.

Here is a Mini-Dance themed mix:
* I Don't Feel Like Dancin' by the Scissor Sisters
* We Came To Dance by And One
I told you it was mini!

Okay off to waste some time playing Harry Potter. Ha! Je suis GENIUS.

I am short :(

Short by almost 200 words of yesterday's goal! This sucks! I've been so good with exceeding the goals, at a nice steady pace, but I just couldn't do it yesterday. I blame the "sekrit" and having no one tell me what it is. Maybe adding to the frustration is that the story is very "realistic", nothing out of the ordinary happening much. Where are my zombie pirates and space monkeys?

At least I'm past 13,000! Amazing, huh? I'll be short some words tonight but I hope to make it up over the weekend.

I overly-enjoyed yesterday's Dear post, so here are some more:

Dear Chase's mom,
Boy, you are a harpy. I didn't want you to be so shrill, we'll have to take it down a notch, mmkay? We are boarding on Joan Crawford.
sorta-love,
the one who made your husband leave you (oh my, that's the second one, isn't it?)

Dear Virginia,
You live in Virginia! Hee hee! Can you really live in Arlington or is that just a cemetary? Man, I am too lazy to look it up. Good luck studying!
love,
your unimaginative name and living place picker

Dear Ulster,
You may not exist as a North Carolina town, probably because I stole you from Ireland while listening to Stiff Little Fingers. At least I gave you an awesome new Chinese restaurant! First date city!
love,
Chinese buffet patron

Dearest Thomas,
Okay, so you are somewhat human. You are flawed. Please show me more of why Chase picked you? Kthnxbai!
sincerely,
the author

Dear...

Dear Chase,
You are so cute I can't handle it! You and your glasses and freckles! Anyway, why why why do you think your boyfriend almost choking you is not a cause for concern? You are kinda scary actually. I like you!
love,
the writer who wrote you a horrible boyfriend and broke your leg

Dear 'Timo,
MLS will call you, I swear! It'll be like in the 40,000s though, so you gotta wait. I'm thinking of making up a team for you, what do you think? That Chase is a cutie right? Why won't he tell you the name of his boyfriend who he is breaking up with anyway? What a weirdo.
love,
the writer who gave you an awesome name

Dear Thomas,
I'm not speaking to you,
no love,
the writer who is trying not to make you one-dimensional

Dear Ramos,
WHY THE HELL won't you tell me what the big secret/conspiracy is all about? WTF man! You are *this* close to telling your brother 'Timo but what about me?! Goddamnit!
love,
the writer who made you chubby

Dear Amy,
I would so be getting 'Timo to buy me milkshakes all the time too. By the way, what's up with your mom and her "extra shifts" at work?
love,
the writer who forgot to make someone up to babysit you and broke your wrist

Dear Marta,
I can't believe you kill chickens for a living. You have to be up to some dastardly plan! Please to be letting me know, kthanxbai!
love,
the writer who sent your husband to Afghanistan :(

Dear Doe,
What the hell is your part in all this?
love,
the confused creator

Corazon de Adventurera

Last three songs by: Lesley Gore, Edith Piaf and Thalia! Girl power! :P

Last three words by me: "acted too rashly."

Last three foods: tea with honey, mini-Snickers, cheesecake

Wordcount currently: 11,177
Today's goal: 11,667
And I'm not going to sleep yet! :)

Character names! The main two protagonists are named (these are so great, okay maybe they are not but *I* am totally in love with the names if no one else is and I am the only one who counts!!) Ultimo Diaz and Chase Perkins. Hee!!! That's Chase Michael Perkins. I know this because his mother yelled at him. Thanks!

JLo and Judas Priest

Current wordcount: 10,205 !!! I am past today's goal! WOOT!

While that all sounds good and well, I think the story needs some more pizzazz. Like that conspiracy, will it be DC intrigue or alien abductions or environmental disaster? Cuz while the love story is cute and all, it's entirely too normal and it makes me antsy! Ha!

Critiques! I am using way too many commas. Three or four in a sentence. Why don't I just make more sentences? I kind of like the running on-ness of it all. But I am making these sentences very cumbersome.

I also am very, very bad with verb tenses. Half of my story is in past tense and the other in present. But I don't care, I'm too lazy to go back and change it. They switch anyway. Where is my brain?

Favorite word-adders: First and last names. Use them. They make your story instantly classy, like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. Damn, now that I wrote that I should've had characters with three names! Ha!

Always break up contractions. Insta-word-padders!

I'm too lazy to look up the appropriate term, but the whole using verbs with conjugations of "have" is totally awesome. "He had always wanted to go..." etc.

Music: Last.fm is kinda wacky. But anyway, the madness that is my music selection had JLo and Judas Priest back to back and it was AWESOME. Singalong like whoa.

Snacks: Still leftover Halloween treats!

Omg, Freddie Mercury just said "kiss my ass goodbye!" Hee!! <3

I want to take a survey/poll on my novel so far but i couldn't find one of the Nanowrimo forums. Ah well.

Currents

Current wordcount: 7,690
Current song: Space Oddity by David Bowie
Current timewaster: Lipsyncing to David Bowie and websurfing new info on And One.
Current background noise: Chubby Bubbs being all chubby and bub-like.

"For heeeeere am i sitting in a tin can.
Faaaaaar above the world
Planet earth is bluue and there's nothing I can do"

*hand clap*

Uh...oh yeah. My novel. My bad. I want to put up an exerpt later, but I haven't decided which one yet; the one I wanted to put up was MUY DRAMATICO but I don't want this one character to turn into the one-dimensional bad character so I'll have to change that later. I'll log off now.

Romance!

I'm writing a love story! Well, so far. There's this secondary storyline that's supposed to be the primary plot line about some conspiracy but the characters who have been meeting are so secretive I'm not sure what that is all about frankly. Hmph. Imagine, the author kept out of the loop!

Meanwhile the main story is an interracial gay love story between a soccer player and a physical therapist in North Carolina. I've never even been there! (Or maybe I have? I don't remember.) I blame a failed BBQ. But I am in hearts with it so far.

I feel like I should do research on North Carolina or physical therapy but I am too lazy for that, feh! I'm also kinda surprised there's no sci-fi elements!

Wordcount right now: 6,374 (today's goal is 6,667) !!!!
Snacks: Chocolate cake with raisins and walnuts, various mini chocolate bar left-overs from Halloween.
Music: Oh man. Tons. In fact the easiest way to link up to it right now is through my last.fm page.

Steine Sind Steine

To Do: Burn all/most of And One's discography onto computer to listen to while writing.

Snacks: One mini-Milk Way bar. Passed on a gingerbread man. Tea.

TV: Watched DC United almost make a comeback against the Chicago Fire. I named a character Chase after seeing one of the ads in the stadium. Hee hee Chase.

I have an inkling of an idea. I'll need to further it out. But it has soccer players. It's going to be so rad. I have two other characters, one named Tab and one named Ramos. That amuses me so much.

Wordcount is a respectable 1,377. I'll probably have to chuck half of it though. Man, why is And One so good?