this machine will not communicate

Soooooo remember how I said to myself, "Self," I said, "do you think you can write approximately seventy pages this week?" last week?  And how I responded, "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED"?

Yeah.



I did write twelve whole pages, though!  Which means that for the dual May 1 deadlines for Nicholl and Page, I only need to write an estimated FIFTY-EIGHT PAGES.  That breaks down to a little less than five pages a day!  I can totally do that. 

CHALLENGE FOR REAL ACCEPTED.

So because it proved to be such a great motivator the last two times I did NaScreeWriMo, I'm going to post daily page count totals.  YES I KNOW THAT NONE OF YOU CARE (EXCEPT MARTINE LOLOLOL, I ALREADY HAVE A TAG FOR THAT), but I am going to do it anyway. 


( Here, have a parakeet eating some chocolate. )

The Orphan Queen: 47377 words --> Daily Total: 1323 words

Can I write 2623 words today?  Stay tuned!

Announcing a new and amazing landcomm, unlike all other landcomms.  It's called...


Anything Goes is an interactive community with games, puzzles, challenges, and more!
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Phase 1 starts January 1st, but teams are being formed now.

Created by the awesome naushika, it's going to be kah-razzy.  Fandoms of any kind are not a prerequisite.  It's just going to be a super-duper huge amount of fun.  I asked Ron Swanson what he thought about ohanythinggoes, and he said the following:

Friday
The Orphan Queen: 39898 words --> Daily Total: 765 words

Saturday
The Orphan Queen: 42078 words --> Daily Total: 2180 words

I'm giving myself the completely unrealistic goal of breaking 50k by the end of the month.  I mean, it's 2000 words a day for the next four days, so not totally undoable, but I know it's likely not to happen.  Still, goals are good in terms of motivation, regardless of whether you actually succeed.  (As long as not meeting arbitrary goals doesn't crush you, that is.)

Off to write at Starbucks!  Hopefully it won't be too busy.  Sundays are a total crapshoot.

Sunday
The Orphan Queen: 35790 words --> Daily Total: 213 words

Yeaaaaah.  I have no excuse to offer, either. 

Monday
The Orphan Queen: 36021 words --> Daily Total: 231 words
The Fall: 24 pages --> Daily Total: 1 page

LOLOL.  Okay, it's not an excuse, but I at least know what my problem is.  I'm in the middle of a real bitch of a scene.  It's one of those where four or five things are all happening simultaneously, where everything builds and builds and then comes together at the end.  It's a Turning Point scene in a lot of respects, and it's tough as shit to juggle.  And, I'm finding, especially more so in prose.  In screenwriting format, you can direct the reader's attention simply by what you choose to write and from what POV.  It's perfectly acceptable to just skip something and not show it "on-screen" to achieve a desired effect, as long as you're not continually abusing that or letting it introduce plot holes.  So anyway, I'm struggling with it.  Those less than 500 words in two days represent about five hours of writing, believe it or not. 

Sigh.  But onward and upward!

The Orphan Queen: 34433 words --> Daily Total: 804 words

Though I did manage to write 4000 words of fanfiction yesterday.  :/  It's okay, I was pleased with my progress yesterday.  I reached a section where I needed to outline the genealogy and reigns of the emperors in my alternate timeline, and that took a fair bit of research and calculating.  (Seriously, like an hour with eighteen Wikipedia articles open, the calculator, and a dozen Post-it notes.)  I plan to get a lot done today, because it's buy-one-get-one-free holiday drinks at Starbucks! 

The Orphan Queen: 32908 words --> Daily Total: 1251 words

I almost didn't write yesterday.  I was just feeling really blah at work, and I read Sherlock Holmes instead.  When I came home, my Gamps was out for dinner, and we watched like three episodes of Storage Wars.  Then I read about Penn State (why, I don't know, since it just makes me so angry that I end up just ranting to the empty room), and then I watched the first half of the KU-Kentucky game.  (KU lost, I am Not Happy at all, especially since we do the same dumb shit every year.  Why is Coach Self incapable of getting these guys to throw clean passes and get offensive rebounds?  Why do we have a point guard every year who just runs pell-mell down for the paint, into a cluster of three defenders, like a goddamn fool?  Why can we only score in brief little offensive bursts that punctuate long, long stretches of no offense at all?) 

Anyway, I was ready to call it a night.  Then I was like, ugh, I won't have anything to post tomorrow.  Do I make excuses?  Do I lie?  Do I just not post and hope no one notices?  And this is even being fully and completely aware that none of you actually give a shit.  But this is exactly why I was doing this, because it makes me accountable to myself, even if it's kinda dumb.  So I got out my laptop and sat up for another hour in bed and finished the section I was on.  And it was awesome, and I figured a character thing out that I think will be a big deal later on.

I have a lot of goals for today, since I don't go to work till 5pm.  Like most days I have grand goals, I will be happy if I complete one.  My goals are: to incorporate all the notes and edits to the Screenwriting Contest from reading it at writer's group Monday night; to write at least two more scenes on The Fall; to write at least the opening scene of my untitled zombie screenplay; to work on my Latin for the first time in two weeks.  If I'm feeling especially ambitious, I might go get my flu shot.

The Orphan Queen: 28707 words --> Technically, I only had a net gain of 286 words, but that's because I deleted and rewrote the end of Chapter One, finally (I hope) bringing to a conclusion my edits on that chapter.  I actually wrote 1015 words yesterday.  I would have managed more, but the library had been closed Thursday for in-service, and Friday the server was down because the physical thingys were being moved, so nothing could be checked in.  So yesterday I got to check in ALL THE BOOKS for the first half of the day.  It did make the day go quickly, though, being that busy, I'll give it that much.

I need to finish the screenwriting contest - which I'm actually having more fun with than my two original screenplays - so I can have it read at writer's group tomorrow and get feedback.  And maybe post it here, too? 

Took a few days off the computer.  I need to do that every so often, more so the last year in this job, when I've been on the computer for eight straight hours.  I come home, and I don't really want to be on the computer anymore.

The interesting thing is that I suddenly haven't gotten a lot done.  It's not like the computer was masking these available super-productive home hours.  I just watched a lot of Community instead.

Day Eight
Screenwriting Contest: 7 pages --> Daily Total: 7 pages

Day Nine
The Fall: 12 pages --> Daily Total: 1 pages

I'm pretty proud of that single page I wrote yesterday.  I wrote it during staff inservice.  More specifically, I wrote it during a webinar entitled "Social Media Dos and Don'ts."  This thing, OMG.  First of all, it was an hour power point with a recorded podcast thingy talking about Facebook and Twitter, specifically using them at work for promotional purposes and stuff.  Except we're not allowed to use Facebook and Twitter at work.  Secondly, it was AN HOUR ABOUT USING FACEBOOK AND TWITTER.  So I had my little notebook and I wrote.  Now, don't take this to mean that I didn't pay attention to the webinar, because I am old hat at this.  I was able to pay attention so well I caught the two most hilarious things.

The first was an admonition to not use Internet Explorer, while we watched the entire presentation on Internet Explorer.  Those are the little things that bring me so much joy.  The second was the reminder that if a site isn't working for you, make sure to have your cookies on and your pop-blockers off.  At first, we all kind of thought it was a typo on the screen.  But then the recording caught up, and she told us like ten times to "turn off [our] pop-blockers."  It immediately became the new office meme.  Back at our branch, everyone was saying dumb things like, "I can't manage to open this can of pop.  Oh I forgot to turn my pop blocker off!"  I work in a place of incredibly sophisticated humor, btw.

The inservice did have other highlights.  We had a Red Cross seminar that was actually very educational and interesting, including the proper way to do the Heimlich, which I didn't know.  And we got free lunch!  That was pretty much the most exciting part of the day.  Is free lunch ever not exciting?