Mediocrity Strikes Again...

Well, at this point in time, I should have written 43,000+ words on my novel. I have not. Currently I am at 16,178 or 16,104, depending on which word counter you choose to believe. Either way, I would have to write about 8,500 words per day to get caught up.

Ain't gonna happen.

I'm a very busy and distracted person. I am SO not a focused, drive-'til-it's-done personality. I'm the same with almost everything from dieting to writing to guitar playing to remembering to drill my girls on spelling.

I'm pretty good at flossing and brushing though. And I work very hard to keep myself reading the Bible and spending concentrated time in prayer. Unfortunately, everything else is pretty much a crap shoot...

I'm a little disappointed, but not overly discouraged. I will write some more today and I AM making real progress on my story. Not only that, but I just received a challenge to write 250-500 words per day. 250 words is nothing. It takes 10 minutes on a tough day. I can DO that! And on a good day I can keep on writing. One thing I have learned from NaNoWriMo is that I can write for extended periods of time when the conditions are right. So I am not quitting. I'm going to keep plugging away at Molasses Swamp until it is FINISHED. Then I'm going to edit it and submit it for publication - even if it takes me two years.

So there.

In other news, we postponed our family Thanksgiving celebration until tomorrow because the BestHubbyEver had to work yesterday and today. If you see a fireman, policeman, medical worker, EMT, paramedic, or convenience store employee, be sure to thank them for working through the holidays!

Because of these plan changes, the girls ended up spending all day and last night with GrammaJ. They're making memories by decorating her tree, making gingerbread houses, watching Christmas movies and probably eating way more sweets than I want to know about. ;-)

I'm supposed to pick them up this morning, but the weather is quite slickery. I may have to wait until this afternoon to go get them.

Since the BHE worked all day and the girls were gone, I had the whooooooooole day yesterday to myself. My original plan was to use that time to write. I cleaned instead. My house is all sparkly now! That way, it'll be all ready when the girls and I put up the Christmas decorations on Sunday/Monday.

I have also learned that I talk to myself when I am alone. I talk to myself ALOT!

In still other news, Scout is engaged and plans to be married on January 6. In Texas. And we're supposed to go.

No, we don't have a plan yet.

The original wedding date was going to be the end of January. The BHE got the dates off work and I was researching ticket prices when Little Miss (soon to be Little Mrs!) messaged me to say Scout's deployment date for Iraq had been bumped up, sothe wedding date was accordingly being changed. Right now the new date falls during an already scheduled busy work week for the BHE. He's trying to get the time off, but the hospital where he works is going through a BigUgly with nurses striking and Admin hunkering down and everyone snarling and baring teeth - Not a good time to ask for favors!

At any rate, I have to hold off getting plane tickets, etc. until we see if he can actually get off work or not. Either way Scout and Little Miss will be coming here before Christmas to see Scout's kids and visit the rest of the family. Hopefully, Funsocksgirl and the J-Man can come too, if finances allow. They're also wanting to attend the wedding in January...

So, December and January are looking quite fun and adventurous right now!

Alrighty, enough rambling from this mediocre blogger. I need to fix my pretty blog decor *cough* and actually do some writing on my novel. Hopefully I'm not going to have to shovel snow...

By the way, Many Thanks to Tara for my pretty blog header!

Grab an Analgesic and Come See How my Groovy Brain Works (Or Doesn't, as The Case May Be!)

And now I have no clear direction on where I want to go with my novel so I am going to ramble, amble, ramble. Hopefully some more cohesive ideas and plans will formulate as I do so.

Somehow, someway I need to get Jason inside the Timmons' house to realize they have a menagerie (Sarah copes with goth, her dad copes with pets), have him interact more with Gabe and Lydia leading to an invitation to youth group and church and finally a Gospel presentation, Have Mrs. Collier met with Mrs. Pierce and come back "changed" because she's accepted Christ. Have Sarah start hanging with Lydia and slowly start to morph into colors of hope, especially pink. Insert the sleeping bag scene, have Jason land a date with Dina and find he doesn't like her after comparing her worldly attitude with Lydia's, have Jana recover from anorexia? Or should she tragically die? That might destroy Sarah - or Sarah could turn to her new friend Lydia and Mrs. P for help. Hmmmm. I also need to add in a murder by the traveling-shovel-of-death, the weilder of which shall, for a time, be falsely believed to be one and the same with the Pink Panther - the mysterious person who vandalizes farm machinery by coating it with pink spray paint. And how does this story end? Will Carl and Celia get married and move into the menagerie house? How weird would it be for Jason and Srah to live in the same house as siblings? Would all the pets get on Celia's nerves, or will she love them?

Oh my word. Horror of horrors: Will Mr. T's python eat Mr. Jelly Belly?

Oy!

Must. Move. On.

But wait! Jason needs his next writing assignment for the magazine and needs to come up with a noble use for his money. Or should he waste it? Or should he secretly use it to help Jana's family cope with her illness/death? Who should be the victim of the traveling-shovel-of-death? One of my characters? Mr. Pierce, the father of the eight children next door (or is it nine - I still need to go back and deal with the wailing baby that doesn't exist)? One of Jason's teachers? Or...oh...............HER. Oh, how per.fect.ly. awful! Yes, definitely her. They will kill her to steal her ______, though it will make me so sad I'll probably cry. And now that I'm going to knock her off, I think Dina needs to live or do I mean Jana? Oh yeah, Jana. Whatever.

And what else do I need to work in here? Ann P.? Oh..no, sorry. That's a new friend on FaceBook that I'm supposed to ask about rats. Let's see, Istill need to find someone who loves/prefers homemade oatmeal. I think Mrs. Pierce is the obvious choice, much to her children's chagrin. Bad poetry. That should be Jason responding in a "fun" way to Sarah's goth diatribes. (I was not excited about writing tonight, but this is really fun! AND it's giving me fodder for the class I'm teaching for the writer's group in January. I shall entitle it "Overcoming Writer's Block the NaNoWriMo Way".

As Jason would say, "SCORE!")

I think Jason's friend, Rose, shall be a chocolate fanatic who pays no attention to fashion and doesn't wear any make-up or spend hours doing her hair each day. Nonetheless, she is pretty and winsome. Oooo, maybe she can develop a crush on Gabe. Of course, first I'll have to figure out how to get her into Jason neighborhood. Maaaaaaaaybe Jason needs to have a party. Yes...OR he could invite his friends to his Mom's wedding. OR people can meet at one and develop crushes at the other.

And why is my stupid (STUPID) word processor typing everything in italics? Need to fix that. There. Done.

And I had planned a Search & Rescue component that hasn't even begun to materialize yet. It is essential to Sarah's healing…

Woodpecker wars seem likely at the landlady's house. She'll have wood siding and will burst in at obnoxiously serious moments demanding that Jason come help her beat the beasts away before they ruin everything. EVERYTHING!

More children. Who wishes they had more children? Jason's mom? Wouldn't it be funny if…

If I'm going to assign someone to be a non-germaphobe, it should be someone who has ample opportunity to exasperate a true germaphobe. Kind of a GrammaJ meets Funsocksgirl echo. There can be some rewashing of dishes and spraying of air freshener and…….I've……...GOT IT! With 8 children (nine?) the Pierces are reasonably tidy and organized, but Mr. and Mrs. P do NOT believe in anti-bacterial soap. They firmly sunscribe to the "dirt builds immunity" philosophy. Enter Gramma Pierce. Heh-heh-heh.

I like it!

I also need to firmly establish whether it is Fall or Spring (I'm leaning toward spring), how many children the Pierces actually have, and straighten out Celia's school and work schedule. Is she in nursing clinicals or not because that will really make a big diff in her schedule…

I think I need a snack - maybe some ice cream because my throat is sore. That's not good because Ken and I are 'sposed to do music in church tomorrow. Of well, if the Lord wants me to sing, I'm sure I'll feel well enough to go and to sing. None of this has anything to do with my novel except that...maybe school is about to be shutdown for ove r wekk because...everyone's been hit by a flu epidemic! Except the Pierces! Because they homeschool! They can bring soup and cookies 'round to the sick neighbors. Then maybe one of them will get the flu - *gasp* - it will be little Michael - *double gasp*

Sheesh, all this drama is killing me.

Worse yet, I STILL don't know what the end will be. I detest stories with weak endings. But I so seldom finish a fictional story, I have no idea if I CAN write a good ending. Do I want to leave it a little open ended for a sequel? Maybe I could meld some of this story into Linear Equation and use that as a semi-related sequel.

Groovy, I like the way you think, girl!

All the rambling thus far has added over a thousand words to my total (and this sentence bought me even more). I will not make 50,000 words by the end of November unless a miracle happens, but I WILL finish Through the Molasses Swamp and then I WILL finish Linear Equation and I will start Hold the Mustard.

Suddenly it occurs to me that - hey, why did my stupid (STUPID) word processor switch colors on me? Gotta fix that…

And now it's back to italics for no good reason. Stupid, Stupid! Gotta fix that too. I think the word processor is jealous because the photo program is currently holding almost 6,000 photos, but my document file is soooooooooooooo much smaller.

Dang. Now what occured to me? Oh yeah. I've called my novel Through the Molasses Swamp, but the Candyland game has not yet………………...oh my word! I see it plain as day. Never mind. I see where the game will be played and who will play it and, even better, I THINK I JUST GOT A GLIMPSE OF THE...well, you'll have to wait and see.

1241 words. SCORE!

My FaceBook Friends Made Me Do It

Recenty, I put out a plea to my FaceBook Buddies for some input into my novel. I wrote a "note" on my page there listing 25 random things about myself. My readers were to the choose 10 of those characteristics or incidents for me to work into my novel. It really shouldn't be much of a stretch. Even though my novel is not even remotely autobiographical, it already contains so many elements from my own life that I wonder if I'll have anything left to write about when I'm done!

Jason highlighted a few in my/his last post on this blog. He forgot to mention that I have him positioned near the trashcan as a scavanger each day in the school lunch room, salvaging the food the other kids are throwing away because he never remembers to bring money or his own lunch.

Not that anyone would actually do anything like that. Ever.

Especially not in Jr. High.

Ahem.

Anyhoo, here are the ten new ideas to incorporate into my novel:

1. a character who is NOT a germaphobe, who loathes antibacterial soap and hnd santizer and who (though I did not mention it in my "notes" - heh-heh-heh - sometimes runs the water so other people will THINK he/she is washing his/her hands, when in fact...

2. and 3. A character (probably female) who has no interest in fashion, nail doings, hair styles, make-up or any of that typical vanity/pampering stuff, but who is still reasonably attractive (at least most of the time- or so she is told).

4. The sleeping bag incident. Zip two teens (opposite sex, naturally) up in one sleeping bag on the floor then urge them to stand up together with their arms trapped inside. There will be a fall. There will be an injury. There will be embarassment that results in no adult ever hearing about said injury. (And there will be permanent damage as I can well attest.)

5. There will be bad poetry in this novel. (I'm glad they didn't clamor for good poetry or I would have had to plagarize.)

6. Someone will lament never having had more children.

Ooo. That gives me an idea!!!!!!

7. I need a widow or widower who has turned their empty house into a menagerie - and I know just who!

8. Someone needs to really love homemade oatmeal.

9. Woodpecker wars. This will involve a persistant and fearless hairy woodpecker, wood siding, a broom, rocks, and loads of neighborhood disrupting screaming...and suddenly I am envisioning some indignation (and possibly trouble) from the menagerie owner.

10. And lastly, I'm supposed to write in someone who prefers email to the phone. This won't be my main character or his mom. They have dial-up!

And that's it for now. I need to go back and add in Jason's rat's name (Mr. Jelly-Belly aka Mr. JB) and get busy moving this story along.

I'm sure my procrastinating nature will have me back here soon!

In Which Groovy's Blog is Taken Over by a Fictional Character

Hi, Jason here.

Groovy can't come right now 'cause she's busy pounding out a novel. So she sent me here to update you on her progress.

First, she wants you to know that, as of this posting, she's only 42,931 words away from chocolate.

Secondly, she plans to write another 2,000 plus words tonight.

HA! That's a good one. To be honest with you, I have no idea how she's gotten this far. She spends way too much time doting on her family and fulfilling her responsibilities while my mom and I and all our friends are just hanging out in limbo. You'd think people would just leave her alone so she could attend to business. you know what I mean?

By the way, it's really amazing (and egotistical) how much of her own life she's managed to meld into my story. So far she's written in dairy goats, homeschooling, the hideous trailer that was her first adult home, bicycling, hiking, and search-and-rescue. She's also sneaked (snuck?) in some references to mixed families, anorexia, "goth", and a green Mini Cooper. I think she lifted those ideas from close family and friends. What's she going to come up with next?

Oh never mind. I KNOW what she's doing next. She's going to do some dumb challenge on FaceBook where she lists 25 random things about herself. Then she's gonna let people - strange folk who don't know me from Adam - pick ten of those traits/quirks/oddities for her to work in to the story.

Man, I thought this story was about ME!

Oh well, if she asks you people to help her out, do me a favor and don't pick anything dumb. It's hard to be cool when some old lady keeps throwing crazy curve balls into your life!

Oh, I know, maybe you folks could talk her into getting me a date with Dina Swanson. That'd be sWeet!

Oh, and Thirdly? She hasn't lost a single ounce because writing makes her hungry. (I say it serves her right!)