NaNo? or NoNo?

People, NaNoWriMo starts today. Wait. Cancel that. It started today. Which means I'd already be behind if I was going to even DO NaNo this year, which I have wholeheartedly decided not to do for a whole host of reasons.

But, what if....?

Couldn't I just...?

What's the worst that could happen...?

These are the questions I ask myself as I come down from a month (October) of three consecutive birthday weekends, an inSANE teaching schedule plus preparation for my upcoming holiday shows at which I'm going to hawk my little soap company's wares as I've done for the past million years. (For the record, October was actually great, but I was also pretty maxed out on most levels).

Two years ago at just this exact time I was working up to a really awesome case of shingles from the stress of it all. So, since then, I've worked pretty hard to keep the kerfluffle to a minimum as much as possible (mainly by jettisoning those things from my life that aren't necessary and/or don't bring me joy and/or peace).

It's not easy.

And while NaNoWriMo isn't necessary, exactly, writing is. Because writing brings joy AND peace.

Still, I regret to say I'm going to have to resist. Unless I change my mind after publishing this post and decide to throw all caution and mental health to the wind for the next 30 days, in which case please pray for me.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

NaNo FAIL

Just call me NaNoWreckMo Nicki. The woman whose NaNoWriMo dreams imploded at 31,000 feet words. It happened a little over a week before the end of NaNoWriMo. I just…stopped. And for some reason it’s totally okay. Normally I’d be awash in chagrin by now, pointing my finger at myself for not having finished something I set out to do. But, you know, life’s short. And it’s the holidays, and frankly, I decided I’d much rather spend time with friends and family and get my paying obligations met rather than chain myself to the keyboard to ensure my word count for the day was met. So, I let it go.


The good news? I got some solid material for the next project generated with those 30k words, material that now sits in the hopper fermenting until it’s ready to take on new life as a potential draft. I’ve had the “NaNoWriMo Winner!” badge on my blog before, a few years back. I have to say, I wish they’d come out with a “NaNoWriMo FAIL!” badge, as I would no doubt display it proudly. Or maybe it’s like the equestrian endurance racing folks say: To finish is to win. Maybe I’m a winner after all…but nah. Twenty thousand unwritten words tell a different story. Oh well!

In other news, I’m going to be redundant and link to a blog post Nathan Bransford has already linked to on his phenomenal blog. Kudos to Ms. Whipple for going where most authors don’t dare to go.

Happy Friday, Everyone!Follow @nicole_mcinnes

wri-ing the mo away

So, National Novel Writing Month. Yeah, that thing.

It's actually going pretty well, which is surprising. I'm up to just over 16K words as of last night, which is just a couple hundred words shy of where I 'd ideally like to be. Normally, by this point in the process (well into week two), the initial exuberance has worn off a bit and things have started to plateau. Also, a few weeks in I generally start finding it really tough at times to meet that daily word count.

Not so much this time around, though. It probably helps that I jumped into the writing with some fairly strong ideas and story leads I wanted to follow. Having just finished getting a YA novel ready for submission, I figured my muse would be pretty much spent, and I'd end up writing 50,000 words of drivel. And while some of what I've knocked out definitely has been drivel, I'm finding some pretty nice passages when I look back through the past ten days of content.

If you're doing NaNo this year, too, how's it going?Follow @nicole_mcinnes

"note to self:

must use the words midget, Saluki and galoshes in next novel (man, I love NaNoWriMo)."

Thus begins the first 2,000-word installment of my 2010 NaNoWriMo journey. My mom's getting in on the action this year, too, which is awesome. She's long been a prolific journaler, but her big quandary for this undertaking is deciding whether to write in English or Spanish. My advice? Do both! It's NaNo, fer cryin' out loud!

What are YOUR NaNoWriMo plans?

What?

Don't have any?

Well, shoot - come on! Jump on the bandwagon! It's a literary (I use the term loosely) free-for-all, and it's going to be fun!

Go ahead and sign up at the official NaNoWriMo site.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

crunched

October, as promised, has been...how shall I put this?....

COMPLETELY INSANE!!!!

There have been tornadoes, birthday parties galore, the loss of a beloved canine friend who was like my first baby, special events at kids' school, work, work, work and more work....

Deep, cleansing breaths are in order.

November promises to be fairly jam-packed, too, but hopefully in a slightly less frenetic way. The final (hopefully) edit of the new YA novel will be (fingers crossed) zipping across the Interwebs to my agent tomorrow, at which point I'll have approximately 2 days to catch my breath before the onset of NaNoWriMo on November 1. Of course, I must help prepare Princess Tiger and Pancho Villa for the Halloween festivities first.

Phew! Yoga, anyone?Follow @nicole_mcinnes

the NaNoWriMo folks

are starting to pester me and all the other lunati - I mean, novelists out there who have in the past or are planning to pound out a 50K-word book in one month. I partook in NaNo last year, and it wasn't pretty. Neither was I by the end of it.

This year is all about focus on the essentials, so I - sadly - won't be doing the November novel blitzkrieg. It may be a bad decision, since the book currently in the hopper really does need to be finished and sent off. But instead of the NaNo I'll be focusing on the day jobs - mommying, teaching and soaping (and, of course, working on the book as much as possible).


It seems a little pathetic to blog about t.v. shows, but the fact is I rely on a couple of them to give me some inspiration when it's time to create the season's new and not-so-new soaps. For instance, while whipping up a batch of these Waltz of the Flowers bars



I have been getting inspiration from Ace of Cakes, which is basically a day-in-the-life look at the bakers of Charm City Cakes. I'm also a huge fan of The Rachel Zoe Project. I'm not nearly as interested in the personal drama inherent in these shows so much as I love seeing examples of the creative drive in action.

So, for you creative types out there, what do you do to get those artsy juices flowing?Follow @nicole_mcinnes

the point at which my lungs felt like they were going to disintegrate

Having run A 5K RACE earlier this year, I am now able to drop that fact casually into any conversation. Want to impress the neighbors? All I have to do is say, "Sure, you can borrow a stick of butter. Which reminds me that I had a real hankerin' for butter at about K3 of THAT 5K RACE I ran in May." Bingo. Impression left.

Want to draw a parallel between running and writing? Simply open a new Create Post template in Blogger and start typing away a few sentences that go something like this:

"With four days left in NaNoWriMo (three if you don't count today) I'm feeling kind of like I felt toward the end of THAT 5K RACE I ran earlier this year. The finish line was almost in sight, but I still had a goodly-sized chunk of running to do. So, this interesting mixture of dread and elation started to set in, and I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that I almost threw up on my neighbor's shoes at the finish line when he reached over to tear off the little paper "finish receipt" on the back of my number." Bingo. Parallel drawn.

Oh, NaNo word count as of this moment: 38,639. Let's hope I don't almost throw up on someone around here after typing word 50,000 later this week.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

heh.

My NaNo word count thus far: 13, 036.

So, is my WIP any good?

Oh, heck no.

But it's fun.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

friday soap giveaway: January Garnet!

These January Garnet bars are the last of the new GemSoaps line that I'll be officially introducing this year at the big November Craft shows. In early 2008 I plan to start working on the spring and summer birthstones, which should be fun.

Since I was told that the picture I took of the November Topaz bars made them look like cheese (not what I'm looking for in a soap pic - then again, maybe I should think about starting a stinky cheese soap line...), I decided to move the garnet bars outside. Maybe I should have taken them out at the crack of dawn or dusk, though, since I still don't think the picture does justice to the yummy, sultry sparkliness. And, lawdy, things just don't get much more yummy smelling: I used a winter grapefruit scent for these, which means that whoever ends up with today's free bar will have to practice great self-restraint and not eat the soap during shower time.


Thanks to Laura for coming across my blog and posting these giveaways on her nifty site.

So, ya want one of these bars? As usual, leave a comment to this post, and the winner will be announced Monday.

Have a great weekend, y'all. Mine promises to be rich in kid birthday fun, Halloween preparations and continuing on a (hopefully near-final) novel revision. And don't even GO there by reminding me that NaNoWriMo starts in just days.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

soap of the day: Cranberry Fig!

My son walked though the door after school yesterday and went, "MMMMMMMM - it smells SO GOOD in here!" Here's why:



They smell like ripe cranberries and fresh figs, and each bar comes complete with real cranberry seeds.

Oh, and have you seen my nifty new NaNo icon to the right? I'm official! Maybe I'll even buy a t-shirt to keep me motivated on Writer's Block days. Let me know if you want to do NaNoWriMo, too, and I'll add you to my writing buddy list on their site.

Also you may have noticed that I changed the font of my blog title. I like it, but I can't figure out why it insists on showing as all-caps when I change the font in Blogger's HTML editing window. If there are any HTML gurus out there who could help me with this, I'd appreciate it.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

be afraid. be very afraid.

Sign-ups for NaNoWriMo begin tonight, and I'll be a first-time participant this year. I try to tell myself, "50,000 words in a month? Pthhh. No problem."

After all, that's only...you know...a little under 2,000 words per day. I mean, what could go wrong?


Other writers I know have done this, so I take heart in that. It will be a nice boost to my segue into writing for the Young Adult market anyway, since 50K is a respectable word count for YA/Middle Grade books.

In other news, hop on over to my friend T's blog and congratulate her on her GAZILLIONTH (or maybe it's the fourth with a deal for the fifth as well? Seems more like a gazillion from where I sit) novel to be published in Spring of '09.

This woman was my office mate in graduate school, hailing all the way from Vermont. I remember hearing about her first published book when I was pregnant with my first kid. It would have been a lasting case of professional jealously (rather than a relatively brief case) if she wasn't such a dad-gummed nice, lovely person in addition to being a kick-*ss writer. Not fair, but there you have it. (Oh, did I mention her photography? Seriously, don't hate her for being beautiful OR talented. She's way too nice for that.) If you haven't read her other books, such as Undressing the Moon and Breathing Water, I highly recommend them.

Way to go, T!!!!!Follow @nicole_mcinnes