I should be done with my novel now. It had been my intention to finish it at the write-in on Sunday, but I then neglected to write Friday or Saturday so Sunday’s 3600 or so odd words still left me about five-thousand or so short. And I haven’t made it much farther since then.

I’m sort of stuck on something because I’ve realized in the middle of the scene that I am writing that I really detest this particular scene. Usually I only discover these sort of things when I am actually done with the scene. I should just abandon it and move on to something else with a note to myself to fix it later, but I seem to be having trouble doing that.

Besides, that isn’t actually what has been keeping me from writing. I’ve been busy with much more important matters like.. um… well. fanfic. Did I say more important matters? I meant complete waste of time matters.

I was well and truly sick of fanfic - as well I should be after how terribly I’ve overdosed on it in the past. I’d sworn that I would only read real books and worthwhile books and fine literature at that. I hadn’t read bit of fanfic (well, good fanfic.. admit there have been a few links to badfic that I couldn’t help but click because I was never one to avoid a good trainwreck) in months.

I’ve officially fallen of the wagon now. I can’t even remember what happened or how it started. I’m back on fanfic, and it’s running through my veins and taking over my mind and I just can’t stop.

But now I am summoning all my will power, and I will stop. Cold turkey at that. No more evil fanfic for me! I have the strength, I have the power, I think I can I think I can I think I can…

Really. It’s back to writing for me. No more fanfic.

Just as soon as I finish this one last story…

*thud*

Do I have anything to talk about besides writing these days? Why yes, I do. I’m just not going to.

I’ve been majorly slacking this past bit. I fell woefully and terribly behind. Except since I was so far ahead, my falling terribly behind didn’t leave me in such a bad place.

Writing 5135 words for Tuesday this week certainly helped. I’m back on track. Now I just need to write a little over three-thousand words tomorrow (which doesn’t sound so bad after today’s output) and I’ll be back to meeting my goal of 2000 wpd average.

The few of you reading my weblog will know exactly how I am doing since I have a handy section in my sidebar with all my daily accounts and some statistics from my spreadsheet, but I feel the need to bore the majority who read this in livejournal as well, so here we go:

My formerly beautiful spreadsheet has aquired a number of unsightly zeroes. There are now four days when I wrote nothing at all. My lowest count on a day that I wrote was 349 words. I have three other days when I didn’t even come close to meeting the 1667 wpd needed to finish, but every other day I’ve been well over my goal of 2000 wpd.

The 349 count day was Nov 8, and all the non-writing days were after it. On November 7 my average WPD was 2605. Now it has fallen down to 1921, and yesterday (before the addition of the 5135) it was much worse.

Still, I only need to write 1376 words for each of the remaining days to finish. Go me.

I need to stop being so obsessed with my statistics. You don’t even want to know just how often I glance at my spreadsheet.

30,735 / 50,000 (61.0%)

.

I am in a bit of a slump writing wise. I feel like I’d be ripping through the words at breakneck pace if only I tossed out most of what I’ve already written and started afresh. I’ve had a few new ideas for the book that I truly believe are a vast improvement from what I had planned, but alas they require major changes to preceding events.

I’ve been down this road before though. I have plenty of other projects where I just kept writing and rewriting the beginning and burned out on the story long before I got to the end. I’m determined not to do that this time, and I want to finish for nano as well and I couldn’t make it if I started over now even if I did keep large lumps, so I can’t let myself do that. What I’m trying to do is to make notes of what I need to change and then keep writing as if I had already done them.

Even when Nano ends – and I won’t be done with my book then as it looks to be quite a bit longer than fifty-thousand words – I don’t want to go back and rewrite until I have reached then end. It is a new way for me, and I think that it will be a great improvement over past methods, but it is really to force myself to plod on to uncharted territory while my heart is in fixing scenes already written

As part of combatting this, I open a fresh text file each day to write in, and then I close it at the end of the day. Once the file is closed, I am not allowed to re-open it until I reach the end, so I can only make changes to the current day’s writing. I keep track of names and details that I might need to refer to in a little notebook to keep myself from having to open and older file to look somethng up and thus being tempted to change something.

How does everyone else deal with the urge to look back and edit?

So I just finished Anne Rice’s Blood Canticle which I had sworn that I wouldn’t read because I have given up on Anne Rice. Alas, M brought it home from the library, and I was sick and miserable with nothing else to read, so I thought I might as well add to my suffering.

It was worse than I expected.

The idea is that it is Lestat writing this book. I got the impression that he wasn’t writing it because he felt a burning desire to write or to let his story be known, but rather because he was bored one day and needed something to do to break up the tedium. He might as well have been playing solitaire.

Upon reaching his desired wordcount, or just the point when he decided it wasn’t worth the effort of going on, he shrugged his shoulders and slapped it in an envelope and off to the publishers without bothering to read over or edit it.

The book goes like this: (  )That’s pretty much it.

I swear, half this novel is devoted to the clothing worn in it. It’s just too much.

So Sunday Munchkin was quite sick and Monday I was quite sick and Tuesday and Wednesday I just plain had stuff to do. That’s where I’ve been.

The sickness was no fun at all, but fortunately for each of us it passed within twenty-four hours. I’m thinking that it might have been minor food poisoning since M didn’t get it and Munchkin and I share a lot of food.

We bought new cutting boards today. These ones are acrylic and won’t absorb anything or scratch. The old plastic ones are stained and scratched and really hard to clean well. They were quite possibly the source of the problem.

All this – along with the arrival of a package of some lovely fabric which induced an immediate sewing frenzy which I will discuss some other time – was not exactly conducive to writing.

I haven’t updated the counts in the sidebar of my blog in several days, but there wasn’t much to record anyway. Monday I wrote only about three hundred words, and Tuesday and Wednesday resulted in a grand total of zero between the two of them. I was a bit ahead before, so I was still on track as far as the average of 1667 I needed to finish, but I was behind on my goal of 2000 a day.

I’m back on track though thanks to today’s (Thursday’s) write in. I can’t remember exactly how many words I got in, but I remember that I left off with 22,222 as my total because it was such a neat number to end on.

There were a few days there where I wrote like the wind. Alas, very little of it was for my novel.

I’m getting back on track though. I attended a writein last night which was great fun and during which I wrote 3029 words to push me over ten-thousand.

I now need an average of 1581 words a day to finish this thing, so I am a little ahead of the game. I’ve only written a few hundred words today, but the evening is still young.

10,497 / 50,000 (20.0%)

Last night, sitting on my lap at the table at the restaurant, Munchkin girl reached out and grabbed the slice of lemon from my water glass.

“You see what she has, don’t you?” said my ever observant husband.

I figured she might as well learn what it tasted like though, and so I sat ready with water and cheerios to rid her mouth of the taste as she brought the lemon to her lips.

It turns out such things weren’t needed. She spent the next ten minutes or so happily sucking on the lemon slice.

My sweet silly girl. She takes after her mommy. I love lemons too.

I don’t like leaving my daughter alone. I don’t like leaving her alone even for a second. A thirteen-month old just isn’t old enough.

But I’m here alone with her all day, and her naps can’t be relied on, and there are just things that need to be done, and so I have to admit that sometimes, I am a bad mommy and I do leave her alone just for a minute.

I try to clean the cats’ litter when M is home to watch her, but I kept forgetting the last few evenings, and the box was absolutely disgusting and the poor cat got stuff stuck in his fur - also absolutely disgusting. It just had to be done.

So I went down into the basement and dragged the litter over to the foot of the stairs so that I could talk to Munchkin as she stood by the gate at the top. Once done, I quickly stepped into the bathroom right across from the stairs to wash my hands (the basement isn’t quite finished and too dangerous for he to join me, but there is a bathroom) with Munchkin still chattering from the top of the stairs.

When I stepped out two seconds later, she had somehow popped the gate open and climbed down the one step from the kitchen to sit on the landing.

I can’t believe I didn’t die right then and there.

We’re talking about getting a second gate to put at the actual top of the stairs so that she would have to break through two to actually get to them (the current gate sits at the top of the single step that separates the kitchen from the landing), but I swear that I am never, ever going down there when M isn’t home ever again. Not even if the poor cats are out of food and starving.

I think my hands are still shaking.

One last round of reactions, and then I am done with 2004 and ready to start looking toward 2008..

I believe what Donna believes.

As a socialist at heart, I can’t believe everything that Jenn believes (though there are several issues on which I agree with the Libertarians completely), yet I absolutely respect everything she believes because it is honest and based in sense and decency and logic rather than deceit and hatred and fear. It’s nice for a change to read a viewpoint that is in opposition to my own and yet be able to nod my head to it even if it hasn’t won me over. I can’t link to her posts as she has madelah locked, but she gave me permission to quote, so (  )

In another post, she talks about how she joined the ACLU and is going to join NOW and become more active in local Libertarian politics and gives this sage advice:

Think about what is truly important to you. What are your key issues? I urge you to examine them and to seek out organizations and groups that are working to further your causes. Join them. Support them. Volunteer either your time or your money (or both). Enough excuses. Do it.

Dawn is busy apologizing for Ohio, but she did everything she could to prevent this.

LillySea is furious and talking about vengeance. Can you blame her? She also recommends a book that I’m going to have to read.

Dan says that he is not angry anymore, but he certainly seems so to me. He thinks that putting aside our bitter divisions and beginning to heal is a “fucking horrible idea.” He says so in his letter to Senator Kerry. It’s worth reading.

Anne is disgusted with all the name calling and says we need to start thinking before we speak and have more respect for our neighbors who think differently than we do. She does have a point - especially about the name calling - but I can’t find all that much respect within myself toward those who vote out of hate and cause so much harm in the name of morality. [12:20 Nov 4: just wanted to clarify, I didn’t mean that I lacked respect for each and every Bush voter because these were the reasons, for of course people have a variety of reasons for voting for Bush. And I admit that I haven’t been completely respectful in my posts the last few days because I am darn pisssed off. In this bit, however, I meant that I had trouble respecting people who did vote for these reasons. In particular I was thinking of those who only came out to support one of the eleven measures, and I was thinking of all the blatant homophobia I’ve seen from public figures who are widely respected by many and the smug sense of superiority exuded by many who promote the same agenda in more deceptively reasonable tones.]

Julie compares the Republican party to her first boyfriend. “the party i once considered my own seems to me now like my first boyfriend. everything seemed rosy, but then one day he just turned mean. and self-righteous.” She says a lot of other stuff worth reading too.

DanAlwyn does a good job of trying to calm down some of the mass hysteria on the Godawful board.

Last but not least, and looking ahead, Jerome Armstrong of mydd.com writes an interesting article about transforming the cultural war into votes. He says that the democratic party needs to set a core set of values to address the social issues the far right keeps hammering us on. He suggests that we liberate the philosophical basis of the Green Party since it addresses all of these issues. I like it so much that I’m borrowing it myself to post (  ).

And I’m done.

(I think)

White House: Debt Ceiling Must Be Raised

“The Bush administration announced Wednesday that it will run out of maneuvering room to manage the government’s massive borrowing needs in two weeks, putting more pressure on Congress to raise the debt ceiling when it convenes for a special post-election session.”

Announced Wednesday. How convenient.

Come to think of it though, I can’t remember when the last time I heard “fiscal responsibility” leave the lips of a Republican. Didn’t it used to be a major part of their platform? Now I swear they’re all college freshman with their first credit cards and not an ounce of common sense between them.

Republicans used to tout lowering taxes by spending less. I never liked this as my socialist heart worried about the hardships that cutting some of the programs they suggested would add to the lives of the poor - particularly poor children. At least they had a plan that made sense dollar-wise though. Now it’s all about taxing less and spending more, much much more.

Republicans used to be about smaller federal government. Now they want government all over the place in the middle of every transaction, reading your private correspondence and peaking in your bedroom window.

I just don’t get it.

Munchkin now says “kitty” to the pictures of lions and leopards in her Mamma Mamma book. I never even told her that they were kitties; she made the connection on her own.

Today would be so much harder to handle if I didn’t have my little darling to hug and cuddle and squeeze.

Of course, I am about to commit an act of ultimate betrayal. In just an hour, we are off to the clinic where I will hold my poor innocent darling still while a nurse shoves a nasty needle into her poor little leg. I hate doing this. We even have an appointment this time for the flu shot, so I can’t just put it off until it is too late the way I did a few weeks ago when I meant to take her in for one.

You knew it wouldn’t take long. And we do need to keep talking about it.

I had hope for a while there, but it really wasn’t that unexpected. After all, simple lies generally do have more power than complicated truths.

And you got to hand it to the right. They may be building up crushing debts to pass on to our children, cutting social programs that will help the neediest of our children to succeed, pissing off the entire world with their arrogance and bullying and so increasing the danger to our children, holding back on stem cell research and so denying many of our sick children the promise of a cure, and they may be blowing up women and children in Iraq, etc., but at least they are doing our best to protect our children from the knowledge that adults are capable of having loving and wonderful relationships with members of their own gender!

I mean, a good percentage of our children are destined to be gay themselves just as in every generation, and just think if they grew up to find that it didn’t mean a life of shame and hatred both from without and from within. Just think that if they grew up at peace with themselves and the world and ready to enter a stable and loving relationship which would bring them joy throughout life. How horrible would that be?

Yes, yes, sarcasm is the tool of the weak, and all that. It’s hard to feel strong when a good portion of the country that you love has just voted “yes” on hatred and violence.

So many others are doing a much better job at expressing their feelings than I am today…

Of course I’ll start with Ginmar. And since this is just a taste, I am quite anxious to hear what she will say when she considers herself free to speak her mind come march.

Remember, Sheepy is wise. as the wondersheep says.

has good points about just how wonderful this all is not.

David Corn has a point that I shouldn’t take this too hard because, after all, I am not one who is going to personally suffer greatly as a result of this. However, considering the burden of debt we are passing on to the next generation, I may have to reconsider my plans to apply for US Citizenship for Munchkin.

This was written before the election, but Waiting for Nat is always worth reading at any time.

Sars’s last response in the latest Vine is just plain inspirational.

And that’s all for now. I’m sure there will be more.

Last night brought more frustration. It had moments of teeth followed by the realization that we’d been betrayed and lied to. We thought we saw the light at the end of a very cold tunnel an would soon have warmth and security. Alas, it all came to naught in the end.

In simpler terms: we failed to find our daughter a snowsuit last night. We hadn’t been able to find one that met our overly particular requirements on the picked-over racks of Zellars or Sears or anywhere else we’d looked, but last week we were assured by a BabiesRUs employee that they would have their winter stuff and snowsuits out the day after Halloween. Yesterday, two days after Halloween, we went there our hearts full of hope only to find not a single snowsuit in sight.

And what the heck was going on at SaveOn last night? I’ve never waited in a line with more than two other people there in my life, I swear. Last night the lines were so long that they gave up on individual lines and just had one long one that stretched all the way across the front of the store and then around the side wall with the soda all the way to the back where they keep the milk. I swear there were at least a hundred people in line. We ended up putting all our groceries back on the shelf and going to Safeway. Did I miss out on some insanely good promotion? Would we have gotten all of our groceries for free if we’d just waited in line? I have no idea, and I don’t really care.

Of course, something else happened last night. I just don’t think that I’m ready to talk about it yet.

Earlier tonight I’d halfway planned out a long winded and wordy post about a certain issue because I’m damn pissed and disgusted about it and long winded and wordy are what I am. Then mistressindi said exactly what I wanted to say in a few concise and well choses words. So yeah, what she said.

As of midnight..

5,763 / 50,000 (11.0%)

Most of today’s 3025 words were written in the wee hours of the morning before CNN took over my brain. By this time I normally would have written quite a bit more for today’s total, but somehow my heart just isn’t in it.

So the get together last Friday was good though the service at the pizza place was bad and they charged for refills on soda (though I didn’t even finish my first iced tea, so that wasn’t bad for me personally.) They even charged for the little paper sanitary things that you put over the seat if you’re scared of germs in the restroom. I’ve never seen that before.

But the get-together was good and the people were interesting. I wasn’t able to attend the first day of writing insanity last night as M was playing hockey and so someone had to stay home with Munchkin, but still it does help keep me motivated just knowing that people are out there. And a little bit of competition with Calgary doesn’t hurt either.

I think that I just might finish this year.

4,427 / 50,000 (8.0%)

Just think: in less than twenty-four hours three months we will know who our next president will be, and then I won’t feel any more desire (for a time) to post my political rants. Since that time is not here yet, here we go:

I’m always a little disappointed when I hear about lies told by a democrat. I guess I expect it of Republicans a little more since they always seem to be up to something like their latest trick of phoning voters pretending to be from the Kerry campaign and asking them to support Kerry in order to support gay marriage. In reality, he doesn’t, unfortunately. Still, I expect better from him when it comes to honesty than I do from Bush. So it is always a bit of a letdown when he lets his inner politician out to twist things and lie. It brings only a small comfort to find that Bush is still a bigger liar though.

(Sidenote: I want gay marriage everywhere because I see it as a violation of basic rights to deny someone the right to marry the person who he or she wishes to be partnered to life for, but I can see the merit in Cheney’s belief that it should be left to the states. Some places may be ready for it before others, and so long as they are not in violation of rights granted by the federal constitution, things like that were intended to be left for the states. Isn’t it odd how Conservatives are always the ones reminding us that the federal government isn’t supposed to have so much power and the states are supposed to have more power right up until we come up against an issue like this and then they throw that belief right out the window?)

Back to the point of this post: factcheck.org has a new article up called The Whoppers of 2004 outlining the biggest lies told by both parties. Here are a few that caught my eye:

• Bush keeps saying that Kerry wants to hand health care over to the government to control. This is a flat out lie. Kerry’s plan would extend medicare coverage to many children and workers who lack benefits and have no access to healthcare as things are. It wouldn’t change health care for the vast majority of people who already have it in the least. I point this one out because while Kerry doesn’t support universal healthcare in the least, I do. Socialized medicine is one of the things I love about living in Canada. I still really really want to move back home to Portland, but socialized medicine is one of the things that would be hard to give up even if I did have the opportunity. I really get scared when I think about putting myself back in the system down there.
• Bush’s lies about Kerry’s tax plans always makes me laugh a bit just because under Bush’s argument, he and Cheney both count as small business owners who would have to pay higher taxes under Kerry’s plan. Poor Bush! I’m sure it will break him. Kerry doesn’t want to hurt small businesses and his plan will only affect a small minority of small business owners including Bush and Cheney. We are waging a very expensive war, so we need to pay for it someone. Running up the nation’s credit cards the way Bush is doing is just plain irresponsible.
• Bush keeps accusing Kerry of slashing defense spending and hurting intelligence based on Kerry’s votes from over a decade ago when the world was a very different place and we were gearing down after the cold war. All I can think of when it comes to Bush and Kerry on the subject of defense is hello pot, meet kettle. Bush is the one who chose to tie up our troops in waging war against a country that hadn’t attacked us while there was still hope of a peaceful solution instead of hunting down and bringing to justice the people who actually had attacked us. He drove Al Queda out of Afghanistan, but let them scatter to the wind to lick their wounds and prepare a retaliation. When they claimed credit for bombing that school, I wished Bush had bothered to finish what he started and wipe them out. And if (please don’t let it be when) they hit us again, you can be sure where I will be looking to place blame.
• Bush keeps claiming that cutting down on malpractice will create big savings and solve all our medical woes despite all the evidence showing that it will only have a very minimal effect. I swear the man just makes up stuff to suit what he wants to do as he pleases. He never met a bit of real science that he liked.
• Gas tax? Kerry has no plans for a gas tax. Sheesh.

Then there was Kerry placing more of the blame for businesses going overseas on Bush than he deserved and misstating Bush’s intentions toward social security. Bush still seems to be the worse liar of the two though. That’s something.

2738 words today!

2,738 / 50,000 (5.0%)

(nifty counter via agilebrit)

Should garbage day ever happen to come the day after Halloween again, by all means get up early early in the morning to put stuff out . Under no circumstances put anything out on the curb the night before.

At least the little monsters had the decency to leave the garbage itself alone and it was just the blue recycling bag that they dumped out and stole. And they left everything piled up nicely rather than strewing it about. And there wasn’t any wind last night, thank goodness. All in all, it could have been much worse.

Still, I was not pleased to find myself out in the early morning with my hair unbrushed and no socks on inside my boots as I picked bits of shredded paper out of the snow and put it into a new recycling bag.

Whatever time this posts at (must get around to fixing the date at some point) it really is just a little past midnight local time… and I am writing.

Sixty-seven words down. Forty-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-thrity-three to go.