Viking Pride

I WON! When I uploaded the 50,000+ words of my yet-unfinished novel onto the Nanowrimo website just after midnight on November 24th (meaning it was actually November 25th) I was greeted with a lovely barrage of images telling me that yes, I had officially won the amazing challenge of National Novel Writing Month 2008. I could download all the little winners badges to brag on my Facebook and blog pages, I could fill out and print a paper certificate saying that I had completed the challenge and am now entitled to crazy sick bragging rights, and my progress bar, once blue with incomplete word count and then green with 50,000 words or more, turned purple and sparkly with victory.
There's going to be a party at Victory Cafe on Markham street on December 1st, aptly titled the TGIO (thank god it's over!) party, for all the Nanoers in Toronto. I can't wait to go, dressed in something festive and sparkling, to celebrate with all my new, kooky, crazy Nanowrimo buddies.
My novel isn't done yet, but it will be soon. I'm going to do my best to wrap it up in the next few days so I can get started on some long-ignored school work before the strike ends. I know how the story is going to end, but now that I've reached that 50K goal I feel like I might rush to finish the rest, or not do it at all. I've only ever finished one story that I've started, and that was because I entered it in a contest and the ending still was more ambiguous than anything else. This story needs a finite ending, or at least a beginning of a new world.
I'm off to York to do some professional development stuff. I'll do another blog entry on the All-Night Writing session I attended over the weekend and put some pictures up as well.

-Laur

Writer's Block

Hey, so...my mom yelled at me to post something new on my blog. Here it is.

My university has suspended all academic activity due to a strike put on by CUPE 3903, the union that the TAs, GAs and contract faculty belong to. I'm also banned from my teaching placement because the Ontartio Federation of Teachers considers our attendance to be a form of crossing the picket lines and will not allow it. A lot of my friends are really upset about this strike and the lack of classes, but I think it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I won't go into the details about why it's so excellent, but I will tell you what I've accomplished since it started 2 weeks ago:

Remember Nanowrimo? Well, I've written more than 35,000 words of my novel so far. I have a lovely protagonist named Poppy Thomson, and delicious love interest named Coll Finlay, and a host of friends, co-workers and acquaintances to shake things up. If I submit what I've written for counting between November 25th and 30th, one of Nanowrimo's corporate sponsers, a self-publishing website called Createspace, will publish my manuscript in paperback form and I will have my very own book to carry around in my backpack and whip out to brag about to perfect strangers. That also means that my friends and cheerleaders will be able to read the finished product.

Shit.

I've also cleaned my room (slightly), baked a batch of cookies or two, and caught up on my sleep. Those are pretty big accomplishments considering I was absolutely unable to do any of it while school was still happening. Weird.

Now I'm faced with a bit of a problem, though; I was writing like gangbusters up until yesterday, and then I got distracted by some FESA stuff and a meeting and forgetting my laptop charging cords in the Senate Chambers overnight (never fear, I retrieved them this morning), and now I'm suffering from... dun dun duuuuuuun...

WRITER'S BLOCK! Oh those dreaded words!!!! Nanowrimo sends out pep talks by famous authors throughout the month and today's pep talk was from the lady who wrote the book White Oleander. She said that whenever she is really stuck, she gets her protagonist into trouble. So that`s what I`m doing. I don`t know what I`m going to do yet, other than try to figure out why my apostrophe key isn`t working properly, but she`s going to get in some sort of crazy trouble very soon.

Wish her luck!!

-Laur

Faith Restored

Thank goodness. Thank goodness the Americans woke up and made the right choice. Obama-Biden 2008 was successful, and even though that wonderful man has many, many challenges to overcome in his first term, I think he'll be okay.
Thank goodness.

-Laur