November 29, 2004

This Day in My History

George Washington's
Rules of Civility
and Decent Behaviour

96th: It is unbecoming to stoop too much to one's meat. Keep your fingers clean and when foul, wipe them on a corner of your table napkin.

Yesterday's Entries

2000: The Creative Touch
2001: To All My Estonian Readers
2002: An Elegant Sufficiency
2003: Self-Esteem Saturday

CURRENTLY READING

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
F is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton

Yahoo IM: basykes
AOL IM: BevSykes

My Amazon
Wish List


Marriage is love.

SHEILA's BLOG

Inkitchen.jpg (28709 bytes)

If I watch the floor long enough, maybe somebody will drop some food on it.

Sheila Videos
"See Sheila Run", "Meet Barkley"
"The Green Monster", "Sheila's Tongue"

Today's Search Engine queries:
(how people find this journal)...

trip to Australia
gif cluttered office
dragon dictate demonstration
God gave us memories so that we might always have roses in December
dexa machine tech
marcio david+brazil+surf
stereotypes
deep fried twinkies, milky way
labia reshaping
"died thanksgiving"

2004q3-finalist.jpg (20881 bytes) Thank you for the nomination of Funny the World for a Diarist Net Legacy (Hall of Fame) award! If you have a journal yourself, you can vote here. (Unfortunately, you have to have a journal of your own in order to vote).

A-HEM!

29 November 2004

You've Won!

Dear Novelist,

It is our supreme pleasure to inform you that our internationally renowned team of word-counting robots have completed their judicious assessment of your manuscript, and have passed on this final, binding decision:

Winner.

Wow. You've really done it this time, writer. Where the vast majority of National Novel Writing Month participants abandoned ship at some point in the journey, you bravely persevered, continuing your literary quest in the face of ridiculously long odds.

In one month, you have written more fiction than most people create in a lifetime. You have dared to dream big, to throw long, to say: 'Enough of the self-critical crap, and the hemming and hawing. This time I'm going for it.'

And you pulled it off with aplomb. In just four weeks, you built vast worlds and set them in motion. You created characters; quirky, interesting, passionate souls with lives and loves and ambitions as great as yours.

And most admirably, you managed to find time to do it all while juggling the demands of work, school, friends and family. Most people barely have the strength to make it through dinner at the end of a tough day. You dug deep, and found the energy and resolve to make wild, deliciously imperfect art in the midst of a horribly hectic life.

It's an amazing accomplishment, and we're proud of you for seeing it through.

.... [stuff about the logo at the left]...

And that's about it. It's been an unforgettable month, and we've been very glad to have you with us.

With warm regards (and much applause and whistling),

Chris Baty
Director, NaNoWriMo

Yes, I did it. With a whole 2 days to spare (because tomorrow I am spending the day at a PhotoShop seminar and won't be able to think about this), I have completed the requisite 50,000+ words of this piece of crap that I set out to write.

Gone With the Wind it ain't, and don't anybody go begging and pleading to read it because even if I do ever decide to do anything with it (not likely), it would need a LOT of work before I'd even consider it. But it has a beginning, a middle, and an ending of sorts. It has sections that aren't too shabby and sections that I'd rather go to a firing squad before I'd admit I'd written them.

But good, bad or indifferent--and parts of it are all of these things--it is finished.

Yesterday, I knew I had a little less than 10,000 words to write. I got about 4,000 written yesterday and was determined I was going to sit here and just WRITE all day today.

As I write this journal entry, it is 2 p.m. and I am still in my night clothes, Sheila has not been to the dog park and is sighing a lot, I've barely spoken to Walt (who has--I think I heard him say--gone to his brother's house to spend the afternoon visiting with his mother before she returns to Santa Barbara). I think I've eaten. Of course I've eaten. What in the world would make me forget to eat?

But mostly I've just written and rewritten and added and subtracted and added some more. It seems to hang together.

And...hot damn...I actually DID IT!!

I didn't think I had a snowball's chance in hell of finishing this book when November started and I still didn't have a solid plot idea. The plot isn't entirely fiction, but then all writers start out writing about things they know, right?

Now all I have to do for the rest of the day is...write a review of A Christmas Carol, which we saw last night and then try to get some transcription done.

My brain is on keyboard overload at the moment.

It's too bad I don't have a bottle of champagne here, or I'd consider popping a cork and pouring myself a glass. But it would probably just give me heartburn anyway, so instead I'll have a glass of water and shake it up so it looks like it has bubbles in it.

I am now a kinda/sorta/almost writer.

I too can produce pulp fiction.

I too can produce crap.

I'm ready to look for a job with the National Inquirer. I am sure they need someone with my obvious talents.

Holy shit...I actually did it!

PHOTO OF THE DAY

certificate.jpg (74661 bytes)