2 Song Trance

These two songs feel like opposite ends of an hourglass to me. One trickles down, its riffs unzipping and unwinding to create the other.

I haven't been able to listen to anything else all day.

If a Tree Falls in an Empty Forest...

I looked through my Kindle's backlog this afternoon and realized that I read way too much to not post reviews for any of them. I've only posted two Amazon reviews ever. One for a book I loved so much I had about 2/3 of it highlighted and the other that was so bad I edited it as I went. Not just in-my-head editing punctuated by mournful sighs, I edited this sucker like it was my own crappy first-draft and I was attempting to get it published. I digress. The point is, that's not fair to the books or the author. Clear, honest, to-the-point feedback, never vicious or catty. So that's my goal: one review a day on Amazon/Goodreads till I'm caught up on all of the books.

Ahhhh I'm Finally at the Word War Party!!

So I had to wait till my class obligations were fulfilled for the day, but I'm finally here to kick word count ass!!

2:00 pm - Yayyyyyyy time to writeeeeeeee, let's see what's going on with the other word warmongers.

2:15 pm - Jaw has detached itself and is now living very happily on my floor. SAVANNAH HAS ALREADY WRITTEN 10,000 WORDS?!?! 10. THOUSAND. That's like...1/8 of a regular sized book. In a day.

2:30 pm - OK I'M DONE WALLOWING I SWEAR. Time to start the thing other than whining that writers are supposed to do. No. Not drinking coffee. I meant writing.

2:40 pm - But first coffee. I'm sorry, I'm weak.

3:30 pm - I took some awesome NaNo advice from Scott Westerfeld (shared by the always helpful Susan Dennard on her blog) and did this thing known as writing a Dialogue Spine. Basically it's where you write out the scene only in dialogue form. No she whimpered or he said, looking off into the sunset while stroking his magnificent four foot long beard. NOTHING. Just quick and dirty dialogue. And honestly? It's gotten me entirely unstuck from this particularly messy part in my story. Believe me, until now, I thought I had tried EVERYTHING. Give it a shot if you get stuck on your way to conquering your word count goal =)

WORD COUNT - 346

8:00 pm - Ok I had to take a very long break in order to get my head in the game/food in my belly, but I'm back on my grind now.

11:00 - I'm at about 2000 but it's not all in consecutive story order, which feels like it might be cheating. Maybe that's just my obsessive compulsive side talking. Stop talking OCD! I HAVE A WORD COUNT TO BEAT UP!!!

11:50 - ANOTHER 400something WORDS ADDED!!! 10 MINUTES LEFT AHHHHHH SOOO CLOSEEEEE!!!

11:58 - Time is pretty much up, which means I lose by 400ish words, but this was a great experience nonetheless. Forcing myself to sit and write (even when the hard-to-write scenes in the book were laughing at me) was gratifying and I got a taste of what the author life is like. In case you were wondering: the author life? Freakin' hard. Even though my 24 hours are technically up, I'm going to finish my 3000 before I fall asleep. Hopefully these words sound as good in the harsh light of morning as they did during crunch time.

Good night everyone! I hope we get to do this one more time before NaNo is over for the year!

FINAL WORD COUNT AT 12 AM - 2518

Blog Christening with a Bang!

Sooooo I've got a 3,000 word goal for the very very cool live blogging write-athon happening with the ladies of LTWF (who were inspired by Beth Revis and Stephanie Perkins). I feel like it's a pretty manageable goal, despite my considerable procrastination skills. I guess we will see how it works out...in the morning lol. Yesterday was my writing all-nighter; I think I deserve to sleep while it's still dark out tonight (though for the sake of my pride, we can call it "brainstorming with my eyes closed").