I’m never certain if I’m more amused or appalled at what new idiocy the über-liberal, bleeding heart, peacenik hippies are up to now. Or at least a couple of them. Donna Sheehan and Paul Reffell — the pair who brought you Baring Witness (apparently they think they can end war through nudity) and Redefining Seduction workshops (“teaching women to give themselves permission to initiate courtship and create partnership, while saving men from the damage of rejection” …uh, what?! *snicker*) — have now founded Global Orgasm.

That’s right! If every human being on the planet joins the synchronized orgasm on Dec. 22nd, the sheer energy release will melt down all the weapons and create a permanent rainbow in the sky and give every little kid a pony and instantly convert the hundreds of thousands of years of human aggression into sweetness & light & peace & love & gumdrops & daisies.

Someone has been smoking way too much dope.

Once upon a time I wanted to be a novelist. Now I can say that I am (an unpublished amateur novelist who has written exactly one novel, anyway). So here’s what I learned from winning NaNoWriMo:

• Writing an outline for at least the first half of your planned novel is a good idea — I didn’t outline for my prior NaNoWriMo attempts, and I didn’t win my prior attempts, but I did both this year.
• Caffeine really IS the ultimate writer’s friend.
• Procrastination is your worst enemy. If you can force yourself to actually buckle down and write, it comes along. Even if it’s not pretty, it’s wordcount.
• Don’t share your novel-in-progress with anyone — unless you’re entirely certain their reaction will be one that won’t bother you. Maybe not even then.
• Build up a fat cushion of wordcount in the first week (or several days), and then take an entire day off from writing (but only one day!). Repeat as needed.
• Don’t get too ambitious. “The first draft of anything is shitty.”–Ernest Hemingway
• Don’t be hard on yourself. If — ultimately! — it’s not fun, perhaps you should re-think why you’re putting yourself through it.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned was that I have no business writing fiction, at least not past the “very short story” length. After 30-some-odd years of believing that I could tell interesting stories, and if I just had enough self-discipline to write some of them down then maybe I could actually be a real writer (and maybe even get paid for it!), I finally accept that it’s a belief which is totally unfounded in reality. I know this because I forced myself to have the self-discipline to write down an interesting story, and guess what? It’s not. And it’s not the story’s fault, either.

But what surprises me is that realizing I’m actually bad at novel-writing doesn’t hurt as much as I worried that it might. It’s been much less distressing than most of the occasions when I’ve had an illusion shattered. Maybe it’s because I worked really hard to discover the truth…which is always better than illusion.

It’s been a really fun crazy-making but entertaining month. I’m very glad I did it — and possibly the best part was getting to enjoy my beloved Geoffrey’s really terrific novel!

They say the third time’s the charm, and apparently this was true for me when it came to NaNoWriMo. Shortly before midnight last (Tuesday) night, I got my final wordcount (52,004) validated — I won!!! I’m on the winners page!

I wrote a novel. Cool.

Crap, now that I no longer have to obsess over wordcount, what the hell am I gonna do?

Every now and then, I go answer questions on OKCupid. Even though it’s an idiotic site…it can be amusing, and sometimes the questions are thought-provoking. Not often, mind you, but it happens.

So this question pops up…

Imagine that you and your partner cannot agree on the choice of music. If you were driving and your partner a passenger, how should the music be chosen?

This instantly made me think of a conversation between Lyse and Angst that I was privileged to hear not too long ago, during a dispute over music in the car.

Lyse: What’s the first rule of driving?
Angst: Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.

ROFLMAOSTC!!!

If I loved this rule any more than I already do, I’d have to marry it.

My beloved Geoffrey has won NaNoWriMo!!! I am so incredibly proud of him! *happy bounces*

I’m almost there, can damned near taste it…and hopefully will finish no later than the 29th. (My wordcount is past 48K, but my best estimate is that it’ll take around 5K to wrap up the novel and type “The End.” And I don’t want to validate my wordcount until I’ve done that!!!)

Over three hours spent in the laundromat on Monday, with fourteen loads of laundry washed, dried, and folded — after I wrote 3,500 words on my novel (before 10 am, no less!) — pretty well wiped me out for the rest of the day. But I rewarded myself for all that work with a gorgeous pewter wind chime I found at the curio shop next door to the laundromat (I love wind chimes and have at least 6 of them thus far, and most of my neighbors probably hate me for it).

There was a smidgen of snow on the ground briefly around 6 pm, but happily it went away very quickly. Snow in Portland, in November, is a serious WTF?! And scientists say we’ve got global warming and we’re all gonna die of planetary heat waves and drought? (Of course, some other scientists say that the global warming is the only reason the planet hasn’t entered into the next ice age which is theoretically overdue.) Mm-kay, whatever.

Geoffrey won NaNoWriMo!!! Yay!!!

I love it when fun stuff happens in my NaNoWriMo novel — especially fun stuff I hadn’t even planned until a few minutes before I wrote it! (I am taking revenge on my characters for them not turning out exactly as I’d planned. Mwa ha ha!)

My wordcount stands just shy of 47K, I still need to wrap up the loose ends of the plot (and at least 3 sub-plots), I’ve managed to get all but 2 of the 18 planned cameo appearances written into the story (the ones I have left to write are, amusingly, me & Geoffrey), and I have just under 4 days to finish!!! Well, theoretically I can finish it anytime, as long as I hit a wordcount of 50K by 11:59pm on Nov. 30th. But I want it done by then, so I can type “The End” and not think about it anymore.

In the meanwhile, I have laundry to do — and with a broken washing machine, that means I’ll be going to the laundromat for the first time in 10 years. Scary. At least I can do all 12 or 15 loads of laundry at once. *sigh*

Yup, it’s Monday.

I was discussing NaNoWriMo with my demonspawn the other day, and saying how I was so excited because I was pretty sure I’ll win it this time — finally! The conversation went something like (if not exactly like) this…

Anxiety: So what do you win?
Me: Uh, nothing.
Anxiety: What?! You don’t get anything?
Me: Well, you get a graphic that says, “NaNoWriMo Winner.”
Anxiety: Isn’t there some kind of grand prize, like money?
Me: Nope.
Anxiety: Or some kind of contest, for like most interesting novel?
Me: Nope.
Anxiety: There’s no prize?!
Me: You got it.
Anxiety: Then why do you do it?!
Me: Why do people climb mountains?
Anxiety: I don’t know!
Me: They don’t get a prize, or a trophy, or money. All they get is a picture of themselves freezing their asses off, on top of some stupid mountain.
Anxiety: So why do you do it?!
Me: So you can say you did it.

Later, while I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that teenagers do some of the most inane & ridiculous stuff, and when they are asked why they did it, their answer is “I don’t know.” So I’m rather failing to see why this is so difficult for her to understand.

Then again, I still don’t understand why people climb mountains.

Geoffrey and I have spent the entire month of November encouraging one another a lot, and trying to both be generous with computer access so neither of us feels as though we’re hoarding precious writing time. We’re both in the mid-40K range, so this seems to have worked really well! However, there are a few differences between our NaNoWriMo adventure-in-progress…

He writes more steadily than I do! His daily word count stays pretty close to 2K, whereas mine jumps all over the place in a “feast or famine” fashion; on any given day, I’m as likely to write 4K as I am to write less than a thousand words. He’s had only 1 day this month of zero wordcount, while I’ve had 7 (so far).

He has more sex scenes (maybe this is a guy thing?). And his sex scenes are quite playful, with his characters having fun like frolicking puppies rolling around together. Mine are “Intense with a capital I,” and serious consequences hang in the balance.

His segues are much smoother than mine, and he doesn’t get caught up in the (boring) details like I do. Unless it’s germane to the plot, he doesn’t bother overly much with details — and this makes his novel read much more evenly, smoothly, and at a nicer pace than mine.

He’s writing a Scary Story that’s actually quite eerie, I’m just writing some crappy fantasy novel that doesn’t even have much of a fantasy aspect to it (yeah, there’s a curse/geas on one of the main characters, and a witch with otherworldly powers shows up at one point, but those are extremely minor plot points).

In my opinion, his novel is salable and mine just isn’t. (Hell, mine is just barely readable.) I’m really proud of him! I have such a kick-ass boyfriend. *perky grin*

Here is an excerpt from my chat with my beloved Geoffrey tonight…

Lil: well, we have the proverbial good news and bad news
Lil: the good news is, I got the washing machine taken apart and I can see a belt
Lil: the bad news is, there is no indication of where the belt goes, and I have not been able to locate it on any of the “fixing your washer” sites on the Internet
Lil: so, although I’m positive a belt is the problem, since the “fixing your washer” sites all say it is, based on the symptoms
Lil: I have no idea where the belt is supposed to go or what it connects to…
Lil: therefore, we’re looking at probably getting someone out to look at it, or trying to find a cheap replacement
Geoffrey: Wheee.
Geoffrey: I can take a peek myself.
Lil: I am filthy and tired and the washing machine is in pieces
Geoffrey: Maybe I’ll have a little luck in discerning what does what.
Lil: and I don’t feel like writing but I’ve already taken off most of 2 days
Geoffrey: Me too.
Lil: and no Battlestar Galactica on tv tonight, so that’s extra sucky
Lil: I’m going to put the door back on the bathroom, shut it, and ignore the washing machine’s existence for a while
Geoffrey: Okie dokie.

So, with the exception of a date tomorrow night with my secondary boyfriend, I am going to be anti-social for at least this weekend. Some people have one of those days, I have one of those lives…

I got nothing written on my NaNoWriMo novel yesterday, not because it was Thanksgiving, but because I was horridly unwell. Eh, I’ll just have to catch up over this weekend, although I’m still on pace because I wrote so much on Wednesday.

We got an invite to Thanksgiving at Geoffrey’s parents’ house just a few days ago, and since Jenn had to cancel her Refugee Thanksgiving dinner (that she’s done for years, for everyone she knows who has no family in the area), and Geoffrey’s mom was getting antsy about how long it had been since we visited, we headed out to Sherwood. (Yes, the town has an annual Robin Hood festival. Scary, isn’t it?)

And now for something completely TMI…