End of October

Tomorrow is Halloween. For the first time in a lot of years, I don't really care. I'm not dressing up, not throwing a party for the kids, and don't have any one to bring trick-or-treating. What shall I do with myself?

Well, I'll probably work on homework, since I have a 4 page paper due next Wed that hasn't been started, a whole website that has barely been started, and 2 chapters in anatomy that need read. Blah. Oh, and then I'll be getting ready for NaNo, which starts at midnight on November 1st.

Mandy and I have a midnight NaNo date ☺ Of course, midnight for her is 1am for me. I'll still be there.

I'll also be worrying myself to a tizzy about graduate school. Just when I thought I had it all figured out (psycholinguistics at the University of Florida -- go Gators!!) it was brought to my attention that a theoretical/research degree is only really good for one thing -- research. Oh, and teaching. Which is fun, but not necessarily good for a lifetime career. Possibly, but not necessarily. So, I've been e-mailing some experts at the U of F to see if there is something better suited for me. So far, I have thought about:

cognitive psychology
speech-language pathology
psycholinguistics

None of them are 100% what I want. SLP is the closest to a practical solution as I can get, but I don't want to be JUST a speech-language pathologist. Actually, I don't really want to be one at all. I just want to know some of the stuff an SLP knows so I can use it for research. If I could get a clinical license with cognitive psych, I might go that route, but it's even more theory-based than psycholinguistics. Oh, psh. Just when I thought I was set.... plenty more to think about.

Then there's my NaNo novel. All I know so far is that my protag, Quinn, is a struggling full-time romance writer who gets dumped by her long-term boyfriend and high-tails it to the ocean for inspiration, where she somehow runs into the paranormal side of life. I think my mMC's name will be Joss. I even had a last name for Joss, but I have forgotten it.

Oh, in good news, I wrote a poem. And I won 3rd place in a poetry contest! Which entitles me to a $100 gift certificate at Barnes and Noble! Wooo!!!

Maybe I should by some books about choosing a grad program/career....

NaNo. Week 1, Day 1

It's 7:10pm and I have written... 2604 words today. I'm not letting myself look back over them, because I know I'll try to revise. They probably suck, but I'm trying to be ok with that.

So, NaNo's officially underway and I'm about 1K words ahead of the word count. Woohoo! I'm trying to pad it as much as I can because I know I'll get stuck in a few days.

I've bookmarked Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem! guide to writingn a novel in 30 days, and the accompanying Novel Writing Kit. Each are very humourous and witty, and layout challenges and issues that might befall me during any given week of this wonderful month we call November.

So far, the biggest issues I have actually come across are:

The title. Right now, everything is being saved as "Vaampyr." If you couldn't guess, my novel is a vampire fantasy. It also has some serious sci-fi elements, and I just hope I can flesh those out alright in the end.

The voices. I have two main characters (herefore refered to as the MCs, or A and G) and each has a first person POV. They toggle back and forward, and already at this point into it, they've toggled more than I thought they would. And each has a completely different voice. G is supposed to be dark and mysterious, and possibly a killer. A is a protector of her people, as well as being their princess, for lack of a better term. So you can see why they need to sound different. I'm not sure if I'm doing a good job or not, but I'll tackle that later.

Moving the plot forward. I'm not "stuck," per se, but this fight scene seems to be taking longer than I thought. And what's with the ceremonial headpiece? Already my story's got a mind of its own!!

Writing from the POV of werewolves and vampires. This might be the trickiest by far. How much "sensing" do they need to do? What kind of "senses" do they have? They each have superpowers, and some human weaknesses, so I'm pretty much free to play with them. But really. I've never written anything like this before, and I already think my werewolf is smelling things too much.

I hope to share with you some of my favorite lines and small passages as I write, but at the moment nothing exceptionally bright is sticking out to me. In due time, my friends.

So far, NaNo's a blast. My dad's supposedly doing it with me, so I'll have to check in on him soon...

In other news, Halloween was yesterday. I'm sure you knew that. Here are a couple pictures from our evening out:

That's it for now. Check back later if you think I might have something remarkably insightful or witty to say!

Thanks for stopping by. Oh, and if you see me around during November, just give me a swift kick in the pants. Chances are, I've already gotten behind on my word count.