NaNo midnight write in...party of one...

On the eve of Nano, there are many midnight launch party/write ins around town, the invitations to which, I look at longingly . I will not be going to any of these events.

No, I will be elsewhere...

...brandishing candy...

...and a sour disposition...

It's halloween and being the mother of three kids, I will be up to my neck (the neck I wish to slit), in halloween festivities. The light at the end of the tunnel is the grown up party with many of my friends, a glass of wine and the finger-crossed hope that 2 year old Gavin will come to the party dressed as Jedi Chicken, cause that would pretty much make my night.

So have fun, Nano writers who will be otherwise occupied, getting a jump start on your word count and basking in the delight that is 'adult conversation'. There is a bird with a light saber, calling my name...

Online Critique Groups - My Arch Nemesis....

...Writer's need good, honest and constructive feedback in order to grow. We don't trust our friends. We have convinced ourselves that our friends are either a.) biased or b.) sparing our feelings. We love our friends for this...

We just don't trust their feedback...

So, living in a small town with a university complete with a flourishing MFA program and shockingly NO public writing groups, I naturally turned to the internet.

The internet is great, you can be pretty anonymous and post chapters for critique. I did this for months with my first manuscript and it worked great. Until it did not work great. The quality of critiques waned and then one was down right flippant, which I took really personally until I found out the critter was 13. At that point I stopped completely.

But here I am with a new nearly completed new manuscript, in need of critique. I feel like I'm going back to a bad relationship.

Comment if you know of any writers in the Forest Grove area looking for a writing group (especially if they like urban fantasy)!

To blog or not to blog....

It's mid October...more specifically, its 13 days 'til NaNo 09. I'm in the middle of a novel, about 65K words in, a quarter left to write/edit before Nov 1. Plus, I still have all my outlining to do for my NaNo novel. For those of you who know me, it has been an enormous amount of effort to get this far...kids, husbands, 30 Rock, dishes...but I digress...

Which brings me to the reason for this post.

How the hell do writers find so much time to blog!?!?

For me, every spare second I have is spent writing. I don't have a ton of spare time so I have to be really diligent about what I work on and blogging is never a priority. I never feel like I have anything clever enough anyone would want to read. In truth, what I think I am missing is the fact that people who blog regularly don't have anything clever to say either, they are just blogging about the journey...but still, do you know how long I have been sitting here at this computer thinking of a blog topic? And the most clever thing I could come up with was a blog post complaining about my inability to blog...?

...And reader clicks backspace >here<

SO, because I am under a tight deadline, AND am lamenting about how difficult this is for me, it is, of course, the perfect time to dig myself further into a hole by committing to blogging every day for a month during Nano.

...well, at least every business day...
...unless I'm sick
...but not starting until the first day of the month...

I imagine you all are sick in delighted anticipation of all the witty insights you are about to experience...So am I, so I'm off to read someone else's blog...!!!

*During the course of writing this post, it took me 35 minutes total time, over the course of 36 hours in which time I was interrupted 43 times...I'm exhausted already.