For Sweet...

I would say this guy looks a bit sweet. Yes, just like cotton candy, don't you think? I had it in my head last night that I wanted to paint a green rhino, so that's what I did. Yes, he is blue and pink too--all of the pastel colors in the cotton candy rainbow. Or am I missing yellow? I think there may be yellow cotton candy as well. He also reminds me of those pastel mints--the kind that are shaped like Hershey's Kisses and have sprinkles on top.

So, it turns out that I'm not sick. That means that I have to go to work today. I guess a fun day in my pajamas is not in the cards for me. I'm glad that I at least got quite a bit of sleep. Early this morning the cats seemed to be taking part in a litter scratching contest. Let's see who can rake the litter the longest and the loudest! Come on Phoebe--it's fun! Unfortunately, it is hard to sleep through something like that and I woke up. Fortunately, they seemed to grow tired of it after awhile and I was able to go back to sleep. Sleep is a very good thing when one has to go face the annoyances of the workplace...

Tackling Black Rhino

I just produced this small rhino drawing while watching the football game. Yes, the fair weather fan in me is back in full force. I think this guy looks like he might be good at tackling. Maybe I should send him to the Bears. Maybe not... I don't know if they have a helmet that would fit. Probably no ear holes. I should mention that I tweaked this guy with Photoshop, so he's not in his natural state.

As I said last night, I finished my 50,000 words. I had only 2600 words to go for a few days and I just couldn't get inspired to work on it until I forced myself to do it last night. Who would have thought that the last 2600 would be the most difficult? I was thinking they were going to be a breeze. Anyway, this was all just an exercise, just to get myself writing and to see if I could do it. I did do it, but I do think that this particular story will not be revisited. I feel pretty good about leaving it behind. As I said a few days ago, I thought I would just start getting silly with the story by adding goats or ninjas or something, but I just couldn't do that to the characters. I had to give them a bit of a resolution, so that's what I did. I owed them that. It's crap, but I stuck with my characters until the bitter end. I would like to try to write something else, something that is planned out a bit. Not that I would want it to be completely planned as sometimes great surprises arise when you're not being too rigid.

In other news, I feel (just within the past 10 minutes, in fact) like I might be coming down with something. I can never really tell for sure until I'm actually sick. Sometimes allergies feel like a cold. I don't want to be sick, but I certainly wouldn't mind not having to go to work.

Oh, and thanks to everyone that kept encouraging me to keep going with my writing. It really did help.

check out my sidebar

As you can see by my sidebar, I have completed my 50,000 words. Yes, all of us 50,000 word writers are winners according the nanowrimo folks. Ut feels very anticlimactic.

Name that character...

I interrupt my marathon nanowrimo writing day to discuss names and the naming process. I was only today realizing that my main character does not have a last name. Naming characters is a strange thing for me. I don't like to think about it too much. It's almost like the character has to tell me his or her name. I just write it down (or more like type it) and there it is. I know that some people agonize over names and I suppose if you're writing some type of work where names are symbolic, maybe that's important. My names, in this case are not symbolic. They are just names, but I find that the wrong name can be like nails on a chalkboard. For instance, sometimes on a t.v. show or movie, a character talks about a person from their past and the name they use sounds false and empty, like it is not a real person. And it's not, I suppose, but I feel like with good storytelling whether its in t.v., movies or books, you have to sell your characters as real people, even if they are not. Now, I am not claiming to be an expert or anything. If anything I'm very much an amateur who still has a ridiculous amount to learn, but I just was thinking about names in stories and wanted to write about them.

Hornelius Unicornis above probably has the best (or at least my favorite)name that I've ever come up with. Unfortunately, he's not really a character I've written about yet.

This morning I also decided to be nice to my antagonist. I decided to show that she is a character that is not as bad as we think she is. It's funny that after I did this to her, I was reading a book, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger and one of the characters is a writer and it talks about her "growing a soft spot for the bad guy, like every other writer since Milton." I have sympathized with many a "bad guy" character (in fact, I tend to think that they are the most interesting characters when they are fleshed out and not so black and white) throughout my reading and watching life, but I certainly did not plan on doing this to my character. I still am not overly fond of her, but I have a certain amount of sympathy and respect for her now that I know a little more about her and that she is capable of thinking of someone besides her self.

I'm sorry if this post was a bit self-indulgent, but blogging in general is self indulgent a much of the time, anyway. And my "novel" is still crap...

Oh, and I did decide to meet the 4th week challenge that was given on the nanowrimo website of writing 5000 words in a day. Unfortunately, even though I did this, I decided to remove a whole section from the document. It was too bad to even send in a scrambled state. I now have 46,047 words. I think that 4000 more will be a breeze.

Edited to add, in case I don't post tomorrow, I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

Until I'm blue in the face...

I'm going to have to spend the week writing until I'm blue in the face. As you can see, my scribe that I posted as a black and white drawing awhile back, has become blue all over. If I had to write by hand, I would be blue too. I don't think it would be possible to write 50,000 word in a month with a pen. One's hand would fall off. So, I have to say, especially since it is Thanksgiving week, I am thankful for my computer. At this point, even though I do like my characters, I have strayed so far off course, and everything is such a huge mess, I feel like not taking the story seriously anymore. I may just have aliens or giant rabbits invade the town, at this point. I don't care. I just want to finish. I do have 41,789 word now, so I'm getting there...

I haven't done any drawing in the past couple of days. I only have had time for writing and reading. I have to keep reading as I feel like it helps my writing, but it's not enough to save my story at this point. Right now I just have to think about getting ready for work. At least I can go to work today, knowing that I will then have three days off in a row. 3 whole days! That doesn't happen very often.

A post before midnight on Sunday night...

Yes, it is not quite midnight, but very close to midnight and the baby next door is still partying. It's one thing to be having a party on a Sunday night and making all kinds of noise when some people in the building are probably trying to sleep, but why is the baby still involved? Shouldn't all babies be in bed by now? This one isn't--I just heard it in the hall giggling sinisterly as babies tend to do when it's almost midnight and they're still partying.

I'm still plugging along on my "novel," but I do think at this point, I should stop calling it a novel and I think that the fruit fly that just landed on my nose agrees. He very forcefully landed when I was typing the word "novel." Or maybe he just disapproves of babies partying when its close to midnight on a Sunday night. Hey, it's not my fault, little fruit fly. I have no control over this baby. I will never totally understand fruit fly communication though. Even though I like to think they are communicating with me, they are probably just finding some small trace of the banana that I ate earlier. My "novel" now has 39,489 words. It is very arrogant about that fact, but I keep reminding it that it is full of crap, so it should not be so high and mighty about its word count.

Tonight I was on the nanowrimo website and they had one of their silly video dares and one of the dares was to include King Tut, King Kong and King Henry VIII in a dream sequence. I thought, hey, my "novel" is already crap, so why not? I do have to say this was the most fun I have had since I started this crazy thing. I like to write nonsense stuff and my "novel" has been kind of realistic, so I just ran with it. I also threw in George Washington and Benjamin Franklin for good measure.

Oh, and as you can see above, I drew more pachyderms this weekend. Do you see the extra trunk? There is an extra elephant there that you can barely see, but his trunk is visible.

Is anyone still up?

I'm having one of those nights when I don't want to go to bed. I've had these nights since I was a kid. As much as I like sleep, sometimes it seems like such a waste of time, that I'm just saying "no" for now. It helps that I'm still wide awake. If I were tired it would be another story and I don't need another story right now. The one is enough. Speaking of this story, I did not write as much as I should have today. I wrote about 1200 word this morning (it seems like an eternity ago) and am now up to 34,025. I need to make up for my lack of wordage tomorrow.

In other news, my neighbor has mice and she's in a panic about it. I went outside earlier to throw out some garbage (sorry mice) and she was sitting in her car. She asked me if I have had any mouse visitors recently and I told her "no, I have two cats." She said "well, sometimes cats bring people mouse presents." Well, I haven't had any presents at all lately. If I have mice, my cats have eaten them, bones and all. Yum-o. If I had a mouse in my apartment, I wouldn't feel the need to sit out in my car. Mice are little. I'm big. They don't scare me. Yes, I know they are a nuisance and it's good not to share an apartment with them for that reason, but if one came to visit, I might think of Stuart Little (edited to add, not Stuart Little, but the mouse from the Beverly Cleary books. I think his name may be Ralph, oops) and buy him a little motorcycle. A little leather jacket would be cute too. Mouse clothes are just darling. It seems to be mouse season. We've had some mice at the library recently. I found out that one of the tiny visitors was in one of the supervisors' office and ate half of an M&M. I wonder if half of an M&M is enough to make a mouse miserably full? I didn't tell anyone that I was the one that dropped the M&M on the floor. Hey, I looked for it, but couldn't find it. It's easier for mice to crawl under furniture. I'm sure they are going to put out those sticky mousetraps that I find to be terribly inhumane. They've done it before. At least the little mouse got to eat a half of an M&M before it dies its grisly death.


The child in hat drawing was drawn about a month or two ago. Maybe even three... I was looking for a piece of paper tonight and came across it and since I had nothing else to post, I thought why not...

The little girl with the crooked and smudged chin

The title speaks for itself. I wanted to do a bit of drawing, so I did. It is a tiny drawing of a little girl and she has a crooked and smudged chin. The smudge did not exist until I tried to fix the chin. When it did smudge, I stopped trying to fix the chin. That is all.

As for the writing, it is coming along... I wrote 2056 words this morning. In addition to that, I decided to merge my documents into one document. I had 20 documents total and they are just bits and scenes and I had to make decisions on what position they would take in the grand scheme of the document. I think I have it right, but I may not. After I completed this task, I did a total word count, and discovered that I have a couple of hundred words more than I thought I had. That was a relief as I was prepared for the worst, thinking that I would have thousands less. So, how many words then? This giant 96 1/2 page mess of a document has 32,825 words. Crap or not, I feel a strange sense of accomplishment.

While drawing today, I started another young adult audio tape. This one is called The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga. I'm enjoying it so far, but the one I just finished listening to, Speak, was so extraordinary, that I'm feeling a bit of a let down. Speak was not only a great book, but the reader, if she wasn't a young girl, had a young girl's voice and it was perfect for the book. This one is read by someone that is obviously a grown man and it's just not totally working for me. Not that I don't think that can work. I just think this one is a bad fit, that's all.

From my rhino sketchbook to the blogosphere...

I wasn't going to blog this morning, but then I ended up writing and working on a sketch when I was going to just do nothing, so I guess I might as well blog about it. I am not going to post the sketch I did this morning, but an oldie from my rhino sketchbook. My joke all through the sketchbook is that rhinos quite like to say quite," (haha, hilarious, I know), hence the "quite" in the speech bubble.

As for the writing, as I said, I was going to be lazy and not write this morning, but then I changed my mind and decided to write. I ended up with 1282 words, which brings my total to 30,495. It seems like it was fairly easy to write 20,000 words, so now I'm thinking that I will finish. No problemo. Although don't ask me to produce anything that resembles a novel when this is over. It will just be a very unorganized collection of words, some very crappy, some somewhat crappy and a few that are o.k.. What have I learned from this process? That I can churn out crappy words like a mad fool. I guess it would be worse if I came up with these crappy words very slowly. At least I can come up with crap quickly.

One more thing. In my previous post, I had posted a link to the rhino mania website. I just wanted to include the link to the gallery here. How lucky the people of Chester (in the UK) are to be bestowed with all this rhino art.

It's Rhino Mania!

Too bad I don't live in the UK.


Read about it here.

Lord Bunyan?

jb (and Julia if she pops in) will remember Lord Bunyan from the library. He is an actual library customer, but he always has remained a mystery to me as I have never been able to put a face to the name. A few years ago he left his card in the library and we had to mail it to him. I often wonder if he is one of the few self-sufficient customers that I see in the library all the time, but will never know who he is as he never returns his books late or needs help of any sort. It's all a mystery to me... But, I was so smitten with the name that I named a character in the book that I was writing at the time (and have never finished, mind you), Lord Bunyan. My Lord Bunyan is a woodchuck that does not like wood. That's all I'll say at this time. As I was painting this woodchuck this morning, I couldn't help but think of Lord Bunyan (the real one, that is). I wish he would accrue a fine on his card, so that he would have to come up to the desk and take care of it. Then the mystery would be solved. But then again, I may be disappointed, as we so often are when the mystery is solved. So maybe he had better stay an upstanding library customer who returns his books on time and never needs help of any sort.

My Woodchuck was done from a book. In the book, he was painted with realistic colors, but I found that all a bit boring and had to add some red and some violet and some blue. I had never painted a woodchuck before. In fact, I had never even thought of painting a woodchuck before. I have, however, drawn prairie dogs and I do have to say that Mr. Bunyan does look an awful lot like a prairie dog. They must be related. My dog Toots once killed a woodchuck. She killed all kinds of little fuzzy creatures in her day.

As for writing, I did not write this morning, but did write a bit more after my Sunday evening post. I am now at 29,213. I should be able to get to 30,000 tonight.

Sunday evening spawned a baby rhino...

Well, not really as this is an old painting and I don't think I will break in my new tube of Windsor Violet paint tonight. I just sat down and wrote 3134 words,(I thought of trying for 5000 tonight, but then I thought "nah, no write more!") so now I think I will just sit and watch a movie or something. I have a few library movies at home now. I want to just sit. I guess we can say that the baby rhino in the painting is tonight's writing as I did take baby rhino steps tonight on my way to 50,000 words. I was much more inspired than I have been lately. Maybe it's the power of suggestion. The fact that they say that the second week is the hardest and this is the start of the third week. Maybe...

I didn't mention earlier that I spent the morning, backing up files on my computer. It seems like everybody's computers have been crashing lately and it made me think about the fact that I have not been backing up my files. Silly me. I have an 800 GB external hard drive that I have barely used. I copied some stuff to it and I just moved some other stuff. In the process, I cleared 2 GB from my computer. How great it is to have all that space?!

So, I'm sure you're dying to know my grand total at this point? Well, even if you're not, I'm going to tell you. *drumroll* I have 28,140 words. That's creeping awfully close to 30,000.

November Spawned a Monster

Well, not really. The photo was not taken in November, but I am finally posting it in November. It is from my summer trip to the Arboretum. And the title comes from a Morrissey song. It just sounded good and I don't think November has been particularly monstrous, really. Well, maybe it has spawned a monster of laziness and writer's block in the past few days. I will say it is the mid November and mid NaNoWriMo monster. I am determined to finish despite the crappy writing and lack of enthusiasm. I didn't write again yesterday. I will write today, but I'm putting it off as long as possible. Maybe it will get better this week. The NanoWriMo people seem to think that the second week is the hardest. We'll see...

I don't have anything that I have to do today other than taking a trip to the grocery store to buy some cat food, so I have ample time to do my writing and hopefully a painting as well. I bought a new tube of violet paint last night, so I am excited about that. My violet paint tube has been almost empty for a long time, so I haven't been able to include much of it in my paintings. I like using violet. I often use it instead of black. So, I'm hoping that having ample (obviously the word for the day) violet will give me the inspiration that I need. I think I'm going to try an exercise from a book that I have. As much as I like to just jump in and do things without reading the directions, I think a little direction could help my painting.

I think November has also spawned a monster of boring blog posts. I'm sorry--I just can't help it--the monster is making me do it. I keep writing and rambling and I'm making me snooze. Blah blah blah NaNoWriMo. Violet paint blah blah. Please stop reading. Better yet, I'll stop writing...

Lazy day...zzzzzzz

Today I'm having a lazy day. Yesterday was a long day and even though the evening did not involve work, it involved being away from home until 1:30 AM(my friend and I had planned on watching 1 of the final 3 episodes of the season of Mad Men, but then ended up having to watch all three of them, just to see how it was going to end), hence the getting home late.

I did go visit Julia for about an hour this afternoon and I did go to the grocery store, but otherwise I have been at home relishing my laziness. I did do some writing and made it to the 25,000 mark (25,006, to be exact), but the words were not flowing. They were just sort of sprawling slowly on the page lazily. I am quite surprised that I did make it over the mountain though. I did have to force myself to get to work as yesterday I didn't form even one word (not even a blog entry--so much for NaBloPoMo) on a computer screen. Now that I did make it over the top of the hill, I'm looking down at the abyss and I'm thinking that there is still a lot of space to cover with words. I don't think I mentioned here that I was at work the other day and had an A-ha moment (sorry Oprah, I don't think that, despite all your money and your lawsuit and all, that you can lay claim to that phrase. It has been around much longer than you have). My A-ha moment had to do with the fact that I realized that I did not really have an antagonist in my story. I did think that one of my minor characters could easily fit that role and I was all excited about having this new aspect to my story--that it would breath new life into its pages. Unfortunately, the writing that I've done dealing with my antagonist and all of her antagonism has been really really bad. Oh well, nobody is going to read this in its current state anyway...

I was also too lazy this afternoon for drawing, but I did force myself to do the above sketch. Yes, I know it's another pachyderm, but that is all I could muster. I'm afraid the sketch does look like a sketch that one forces oneself to do on a lazy, rainy day when one doesn't feel like doing anything.

Now I have to go out and actually do something and tomorrow it is back to work. I will have to wait until tomorrow night or Sunday to engage in more laziness.

Library Punk

jb already knows this story, but I thought I would share it here as it is a fairly amusing story, as far as library stories go. Last night, I got a call from a woman who wanted me to page her son. I told her that we are not allowed to page unless it is an emergency. She said it wasn't an emergency, but she really needed to talk to him. Being at the desk with someone I would really rather not spend an entire hour with, I told her I would look for him. I asked her if she knew exactly what he was wearing. No. But the she gave me a description that made me think that I would be able to find him easily: he was sporting glasses and a mohawk. I did kind of giggle a bit inside at the unlikely combination and then went off to look for him. I searched every corner of the library and security officer Dave even helped me for awhile, until he spotted someone with his head down on the desk in the quiet study room. He abandoned me there. I guess he had to go and check to make sure that this customer wasn't dead. Anyway, after circling the library twice, I had to go back to the phone and tell the woman that I did not see her son. I did add that I saw a few kids with glasses who were wearing hats. "Of course," she said with a laugh, he must have been wearing his baseball cap (hahaha--after all that walking and searching and careening, that description was no good). Fortunately, she thought I had already done enough and I didn't have to fight with her about there being nothing else I could do for her.

Inspired by this event, this morning after writing my 1719 words (I now have 21,129), I drew this cartoon. I was thinking back to the punks of the 80's who were very pasty and gaunt and hung out at the McDonald's on Hennepin in Uptown. They were a people that could sport the mohawk and wear it proudly. Now any suburban kid that comes to the library thinks that he can wear a mohawk (even though I don't see them all that often). 80's punks would have never ever worn a baseball cap. Baseball caps and mohawks should not go together. *shudders* Unfortunately for my punk, I think he ended up looking a bit like Clay Aiken who could never ever get away with a mohawk.

I will post an old picture today as I'm not going to have time to produce anything new. As you can see there is a hill and the person is at the top of it, but there is a much bigger hill ahead.

I'm very tired this morning from the inside out. I feel like it's going to be very difficult for me to get through the work day and evening. I hope I perk up soon. I only have 1/3 of my coffee left, so I doubt that is going to do the trick. I feel like I've been coming down with something for the past two weeks, but nothing materializes. When things are like this, I just wish that whatever wants to attack my body would get to work, so I could just get sick and be done with it. I think that I have sort of a super immune system from years of working with the public, but sometimes it seems to do its work slowly. Either fight the thing off or let me get sick. None of this limbo crap.

As for NaNoWriMo news, I continue to climb up the mountain and am now at 18,631. When I see that number, I just have to think, only 7000 more and I will be halfway there. That 50,000 can seem a bit daunting and insurmountable (sorry about the very predictable mountain climbing metaphor), so I can't be thinking about that too much. I have to set small goals and go from there. As the fine people of NaNoWriMo say on their website, this second week things are a little bit tougher. The first week I was just sort of working on adrenaline. Now it's starting to feel like work. Still fun work for the most part, but my ideas are not just pouring out like they were on the first week. In fact, although I did make it to my goal of 2000 words for yesterday, I think it was my worst bit of writing yet and it was the hardest to produce. Going into this without a plan may come back to bite me in the butt. I'm thinking of sitting down on that butt working on some sort of outline. We'll see. In many ways, I do like just writing and seeing where it will take me, but that may be a bit difficult to sustain for 50,000 words.

I am a fan of Tabasco on Facebook and also follow them on Twitter. Today they have a deal on their goods for followers. Unfortunately I have no money. I found these as I was browsing through their website. I would really like try them.

Oh, and look at this. I would like a rhino statue here in Minneapolis (or St. Paul would be fine too) and not one that is stuck away in a corner at the library. One that is out there for everyone to see. Lucky Charlottesville.

baby elephant with poster edges...

I know, I know, it's another elephant. Please Anne, draw something else other than pachyderms. The truth of the matter is, I had very little time for drawing this morning and just wanted to have something to post, so I quickly drew him in my sketchbook. Then I used the poster edges filter in Photoshop which always makes quick sketches look a bit more interesting. Yes, I know I cheated... What are you going to do?

I sometimes feel like I do have a great deal of free time, but on Monday and Tuesday mornings, the time is limited. This morning I had hoped to have time for writing, drawing, blogging, laundry, reading and exercising. Unfortunately, I only had time for four of them. Exercise and reading (and commenting on blogs, which I will do either during my break at work or after work) will have to wait. As for writing, I managed 1223 words this morning. I will have to try to muster about 800 more after work.

I also hope to have time for reading, exercising and listening to this podcast after work, so they better not tire me out too much today.

I do need to share this article about Ross Perot's son and rhino hunting. It made my blood boil. I think someone should mount his head on a plaque, although I'm afraid it would probably be too ugly.

Word count before work

I hope these word count posts are not getting annoying, but I just had to say that I just wrote 757 words this morning and now have reached my goal. I have 15,455 words! My two pages this morning were about my character's trip to the public library and I have to say that I had a great time writing about this, even sticking in elements of personalities at work that feel like it's a crime for a kid to go to the library without his or her library card. Hey, it happens sometimes and my character had a good excuse... I also couldn't help but make her notice the filthy chairs. Needless to say, she used one of the stand up catalogs.

Another drawing from the past, only because I have nothing new...

My butt hurts. I've been sitting around on it all morning. First reading, then writing and now blogging. As you can imagine, in order to save my butt from permanent damage, I cannot add drawing to the mix. When I'm done here I need to stand up for awhile. Therefore, you are getting another drawing from the past today. This one was not in the sketchbook that I found the other day, but in a little cardboard portfolio that I had behind my couch. I had always meant to scan this drawing, but had never gotten around to it. This one was not drawn in my teens, but probably my mid-twenties. I find some things about it to be pretty problematic, but it's not terrible. I used to only do a couple of drawings per year at that point. This was one of them. I wish I would have worked more on my drawing when I was in my teens and twenties as I would be farther along now. I had no discipline then. I seem to have it now. It appeared one day. It's very strange.

Speaking of discipline, I'm very happy with my word count this morning. I wrote 3106 words(nine pages) in one sitting and as I already said, broke my butt in the process. But my grand total is now at 14,698, so I could get to my goal of 15,000 words by tomorrow evening quite easily. In fact, I may write the remaining words tonight and take tomorrow off completely. We'll see. Right now I have to think of something to do to give my broken butt a break. OH, and the NaNoWriMo website says that we should be at 13, 336 by the end of this weekend to be on track, so I'm already over the tracks. It also says that the second week is the hardest, and I can see that that would be true, so I'm glad I'm just a tiny bit ahead of the game.

I should get out of here actually. It is hot in here. I just looked at my thermostat and it said 78 degrees. I think, for now, I will just open the windows. There are dishes that need to be washed, as much as I hate the idea...

Edited to add one more thing. I had to add the NaNoWriMo widget, only because it matched the colors of my blog so perfectly. It looks smashing there, I think.

Word Counter Extraordinaire...

Well, that would not be me, but Microsoft Word seems to get the job done just fine. I thought you might like to know (or maybe not) that I did write after posting that list of mine earlier this morning. It just so happens that I was able to crank out 2327 words and they were not all horrible words. In fact, this chapter was the most cohesive and well-written chapter that I've written since I started the challenge. I guess sometimes when you don't feel like doing something, if you make yourself do it, something good comes out of it. My word count now is 11,592. It is seeming more doable to make it to 15,000 by Sunday.

10 things I feel like doing this morning rather than writing...

1.) Knitting a kitty hat (somthing like this but I have a better pattern in a book).

2.) Baking 10 batches of chocolate chip cookies in my toaster oven.

3.) Organizing my bathroom closet.

4.) Walking back and forth in my apartment, stubbing my toe over and over on all the clutter.

5.) Brushing my cats' teeth.

6.) Showing up at work and begging them to let me work today, on my day off.

7.) Re-reading my library science text books.

8.)Cleaning cleaning cleaning.

9.) Public speaking out in public, just for the fun of it.

10.) Just doing nothing.


I guess it's time to get cracking, isn't it?

Hurry up and post... with a drawing from the past

Yes, since it is NaNoBloMo and I said I would post every day until the end of the month and as it's 11:55 right now, I figured I had better get this posted as soon as possible.

Edited to add that I'm back now for the actual post. The drawing is from a sketchbook that I found last night. This particular drawing doesn't have a date on it, but the other dates in the book would indicate that I was 18 or 19 at the time. I actually remember drawing it. I believe I used an illustration from the classic children's book of poetry, A Child's Garden of Verses as my reference. It's fun looking through old sketch books.

I'm afraid that I only managed to write 651 words this morning before work. I don't know if I can muster more tonight as I just got home about a half an hour ago and I'm pretty tired and don't know if my brain has much juice left in it. I had a feeling that today would be a light day. I'll have to try to make up for it tomorrow. My goal is to have 15,000 words by Sunday and as I have only a little over 8000 at this point, that goal may be a bit lofty. We'll see what happens... I was kind of wondering if I do get to 50,000 words, if I would have the guts to submit what is going to be mostly awful. I was relieved to find out when I was reading through some of the instructions this morning that they want you to scramble the words (supposedly you can do that in Microsoft Word) before submitting it. As it is only about quantity, they just do a word count, and if you pass, you get a certificate and some kind of web award. So, if I finish, I will definitely submit my scrambled up mess. I want my certificate, damnit!

Edited again to add that I did do a bit of writing. In fact, I wrote 1147 words. Yahoo!

NaBloWriMo Elephant

Did you guys know that it is also NaBloWriMo this month? Yes, that stands for what you guessed it stands for: National Blog Writing Month. Just like its sister challenge (I'm not going to type that one out again), the goal is to complete a blog entry every day for the whole month. I do post almost every day, but tend to take a day off here and there. I think I took a day off already this month, in fact, but I didn't yet know about NaBloWriMo. Now that I know, I will try to post every day until the end of the month. And it may not all be in this blog. I may do a post or two in the book blog. I just finished reading a young adult novel today that I would like to write about, so there may be a post by weekend's end.

And speaking of YA novels, as I am writing one, I am making sure that I also read some of them this month. In addition to the novel I finished today, Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher, I am also listening to Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. I subscribed to E-books for awhile and that was one of my downloads. I actually started listening to the book during my class last year, and made it about halfway through and then got too busy with actual reading. Now I'm going to finish it. It's a great book and I highly recommend it. That's all I will say for now as I'm sure this one will get a blog entry when I'm done with it. I really do prefer reading books to listening to them, but audio books are great for when I'm drawing or at my cleaning job.

Oh, and I'm sure you're just waiting with bated breath to hear about the progress on my writing project. Well, here are my stats: this morning I wrote 1631 words. That brings my grand total to 6607 words. I actually have to go back and add my words from the first day for real. I did three separate documents for that day and just added the totals in my head, so I only estimated for that day. Math hurts my head. Anyway, I plan on trying to get about 1600 more in before I go to bed tonight. So, what about the quality? Well, I have written some bits that I like. There is some stuff that I'm sure is awful and some so-so. It is helping a lot that I have the book framed by the project the girl is working on as each chapter starts with a fact about the subject that she has chosen. That way I can link what is going on her life with the information she is learning about her subject. I think it makes it all a bit easier.

I just saw a trailer on t.v. for the movie The Road. As I read the book and really liked it, I am a bit uneasy about the movie. I guess I'll have to wait and see what is written about it, not that I always trust critics' opinions.

As for the little elephant, I drew him earlier as I was listening to my audio book. I have already told him that I'm sorry for messing up his eye. It looks like it might hurt.

edited to add that I could only muster 580 more words tonight, but I went back and did a real count of the writing that I did on the first night and now my grand total is 7457. I was hoping to write more tonight as I know tomorrow is going to be busy, but oh well, at least I had more than I thought I had.

A sketch of Rosa

Rosa Rhino is one of the sumatran rhinos at the rhino sanctuary. Of all the rhinos there, I think she is my favorite. I believe she was living in the wild, but was very friendly and not afraid of people at all, so she was brought to the sanctuary so she would be safe, or safer, I should say. She supposedly is a very "talkative" rhino and likes to make lots of noise when she is wallowing in the mud.

Unfortunately, as I have been busy writing, I only had time to do a quick sketch, so couldn't do her justice. I will have to do a proper drawing of her sometime. I don't want to completely neglect my drawing during my nanowrimo (I'm too lazy to capitalize the proper letters)project, so I will probably be doing more of these quick sketches with my purple pen. I heart my purple pen. Harold has a purple crayon and Anne has a purple pen.

And how is my writing going, you may be wondering? Well, on the first night I wrote about 1500 words, then before work yesterday 2075, and now this morning, 1432. I probably would have written more this morning, but I kept getting interrupted by phone calls. So, it's pretty close to 5000, which is half of 10,000 and when I'm at 10,000, I will be a fifth of the way there. Does that seem doable? We'll have to see. I won't beat myself up if I quit, but I'm going to try to finish. And remember, this is all about quantity, rather than quality. But how is the quality Anne? Well, I have come up with a few ideas and paragraphs that I like, so I guess that's something. It is really hard not to go back and edit.

Edited to add (because here I can edit), I now have gone past the 5000 word mark. I just wanted to get there before heading off to work...

The Little Elephant That Could...

There is something about this little elephant that reminds me of that. He is not my best elephant work and he looks a bit tired, but I think that he does look like the little elephant that could. Could do what? I'm' not certain, but he has to be capable of something. I painted him quite some time ago and I know I debated over whether I should post him or not (I can't remember if I ever did), and now he is getting posted tonight. So, he could, couldn't he? Yeah, he could be posted after all this time, if nothing else.

I decided today, that I am going to try to participate in this Yes, I know the idea of writing a novel in a month is a crazy one, but as it says there, it is about quantity, not quality. It's not about writing a great book, it's just about getting yourself to write 50,000 words in a month. It was just a whim. I've heard about people doing this in the past few years and always thought it seemed a bit nuts. What's the point? But I can see a point. It gets you to write and permits you to write garbage. As I said, it was a whim, so I hadn't thought of novel ideas, but I came up with something tonight and got started. I now have 1500 words. I will just say that it is about a 15 year old girl that has been given the year long assignment of becoming an expert on something (anything at all). In the process of her research and learning about her subject, she learns a lot about herself and blah di blah blah. I know I'll never write the great American novel (I'm not that kind of gifted writer), but I read young adult books and I think "I could do that." So, that is what I'm doing here and I'm quite excited about the fact that it can be crap. Bring on the crap, I say. Now I know there's a good chance that my enthusiasm will wane and I won't finish what I set out to do, but I'm going to try.

In other news, I actually watched the Vikings today for the first time in years as I tend to be a fair weather sports fan. I tend to only like to watch sports if the team that I am watching is likely to win. I will admit that. I am not someone that is going to be supportive in the off years. I'm just not going to watch. Anyway, I was intrigued about seeing Brett (is it two "T's"? I'm too lazy to look it up) Favre play on a team that I'm actually rooting for. I actually had to turn the game off when there was about 8 minutes left because I couldn't handle the stress when the Packers were catching up. Yes, I'm that kind of sports watcher;) I did find out later that the Vikings won, so that's good. I do realize now, that even though I set out to watch Brett Favre play in purple, I didn't really see him playing at all because I was drawing at the time. Did I even see him throw a pass? I think maybe I saw him throw one or two and I did see one of the touchdowns. Again, I'm that type of sports "watcher."