Cat Pollock Writes

The best of intentions, right? That's what I get to plead. I've been slammed by a continually lengthening day of work, and therefore a continually shortening amount of time to get everything else done. At the risk of sounding like I am making excuses, I feel like every time I get into a routine or schedule is about the time that everything changes again. This is hardly conducive to blog-writing. I've missed this outlet dearly. I cannot begin to count how many times I have started to write another blog entry in my head on the way to work, at lunch, or on the way home, only to lose steam by the time I actually step in the front door and head for a computer to sit down and type. In theory, this is sacred space. This is the space where I spit out everything I am thinking or feeling in hopes of making sense of what is going on around me - either in the rest of the world or in mine. In terms of updating, this blog is going to be no better than the last in terms of the real update...

I mentioned last month that it would be a toss-up as to which novel I would edit during NaNoEdMo, which starts six days from now. That was while I was working a 40-hour week still, and felt like I would have time to devote to fifty hours of editing. Now, I am not so sure that this is the case. Am I saying that I am giving up on the idea of NaNoEdMo completely? No, far from it. What I am setting for myself as a goal is thirty-one hours - an hour a day every day next month. Now, to figure out which novel it's going to be!

No, I haven't finished my NaNo yet, so I guess NaNoFiMo was a real bust for me. December's a rough time to try to wrap something like that up, and I guess the fact that I'm trying to make excuses says my heart wasn't in FiMo in the first place. I do want to finish it, and I will finish it, but after a month of constant cohabitation, my characters need a break from me, and I... I need a break from them. You forget how exhausting it can be to spend so much time with the same people in such a short number of days until something like this comes up. Truthfully, I think it would have been a huge bust for me regardless of which month of the year it was, though. Mostly because these characters are as sick of me as I am of them, and space does us good, but also because other novels I have sitting around just waiting to be polished. Those characters are tired of me paying so little attention to them, they want to make sure their story isn't forgotten. And they want to make...

My apologies for abandoning you all this past month or so. I think I mentioned I was participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)? Hit it up to see how I faired through it. Other than that, it's been job hunting (again - the last job was a temp) and hanging out with the family that's out here. Nothing terribly exciting on my mind except for a few Heroes-related rants, which I am currently compiling in my head into a blog to be posted soon. In the meantime, enjoy one of the blogs I intended to post last month, but never actually got around to! CCR is for Road Trips In honor of my first ever run into the world of canned bloggerdom for the sake of NaNoWriMo, and because music plays such a huge role in my writing process, it seemed appropriate to write a blog about a few of the songs that have special significance for me – the good, the bad, and the ugly. In no particular order, here we go (with links to music videos and such as befit illustration). 1. Proud M...

Days 29-30 Combined Total: 3938 NaNoWriMo Total: 50,183 Purple status bar on my NaNo profile? Heck, yes! Success is sweet. It would be sweeter if the novel were finished, but they say that that's what NaNoFiMo is for (National Novel Finishing Month). No, NaNoFiMo is not anything official like NaNoWriMo, but it sounds appealing for the people unable to complete their novels... whether they got to 50K or not during November. And that would be me. After going back and reading a little bit, I realized I am closer than I thought I was to completing the first draft of this novel. Just a few scenes, and I am done - as long as those scenes don't decide to multiple too much. Once it's done, I will put the novel away for a few weeks, until after the holidays. Then I will be studiously separating each section of the novel so when NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editting Month) comes in March, I can set goals for the number of sections I want to complete in a day. No, NaNoEdMo is no m...

Yeah, it's about 2:45, and as we speak, I am getting the word processor file ready for the NaNo site to validate it. 50,001 on my computer, but previous experience with this validator tool is telling me I should end up with a word count slightly higher than that. Is the novel finished? Not hardly. I still have a plot to work out (remember that whole not showing up until late thing? It means I'm far, far away from being done). But I have hit the 50K mark, and it seems crazy after all the work I've put into this in the past month for me to not get the work validated and get the award and stuff. It would be easy for me to forget. Today is Sunday, and Sunday is usually full of things to do. If I don't validate what I have now, I won't remember in time, and I'll be a sad panda come tomorrow morning when I realize I didn't win because of it. Celebration time, yes? I'll come around in the next week or two and post the final word counts for the month. In the...

Days 26-28 Combined Total: 12,750 NaNoWriMo Total: 46,245 Yes, I am currently less than 4K away from making it to 50K in 30 days. I would feel a lot better about it if the plot hadn't decided to show up at about 40K, but I'll take what I can get. Especially when it comes from an all-nighter resulting from an obnoxious ear ache last night. You'd think I would be curled up in a ball of misery, but nope... I ended up hunkered down at the computer with a bottle of aspirin and my liquid refreshment of choice for the month (PowerAde, baby...). The pain has proved to be an excellent motivation to write. 10K in 7 hours. I never thought I had that kind of writing power in me... nice to know I can focus and write that much in that amount of time. I did get some sleep, when I went to bed at 8 this morning. Slept for a few hours, then pounded out another couple thousand, to get to the total above. And now I am off to bed again, because getting sleep so I can get more coherent w...