Calendars and Challenges

At the beginning of each month, besides working on paying all the bills, I update my personal calendar and make sure the family calendar is up to date. This is generally a daunting task because two of my daughters and my husband usually have multiple doctor’s appointments each and it’s a rare week that doesn’t have something scheduled.

This month I opened my calendar and decided that my girls hadn’t told me their appointments yet, and my husband’s needed to be added too. For the whole month there was only my doctor’s appointment. 

I asked.

One daughter gave me the mere two she had while the other sent the message she miraculously didn’t have any, while I added my husband’s—one.

I looked at the completed calendar in sheer astonishment at all the blank spaces.

I can’t remember the last time my calendar was that empty at the beginning of the month.

Then of course of I dove into my week, including adding a doctor’s appointment for a sick kid. Then I’ve had to fit in trips to the vet for several pets between runs to the store for necessary things like milk and bread, which I can’t seem to keep enough of in the house. Not really surprising since I have two teenaged boys.

In between all that I’ve had to figure out where all our money has to go this month and I still have to get those bills paid, plus I’m still hard at work trying to finish my opus, and I’ve finally managed to get to the day of the momentous final event, but like Bonnie, I’ve hit a snag in reaching ‘the end’. (Neither one of us has won this challenge yet.)

As I was scrolling back, just a few pages, to check something I’d typed, I found an anomaly, a line of code that I’ve run into before.

How it gets into my documents, I have no idea. I have found there is only one way to get it out, copy and paste everything into a new document without any formatting.

Easy enough to do. And if your only formatting is line spacing and indents for paragraphs, it’s a matter of selecting all and reformatting it, and you’re done. Of course if you have chapter heading, like I do, you’d then have to do a find for the word chapter and reposition where the heading is, i.e. center it.

For most documents that’s be about all you’d need.

But I have scene breaks that would need centered. So do a find for all of those. Also not so hard.

Okay. Next step.

I have subheading that need to be flush right and italicized. Fortunately they all start the same. So do another find and change all of those.

Now it’s back to the way I had it, right?

Not quite.

Because I also had some italicized text within the body of the story, and, you guessed it, it’s all different. Now I have to do a careful hunt in the old document, with the anomaly in it, for everything that’s italicized and make sure I italicize it in the new document.  

Considering I was working on chapter 144 when this happened, and my document is well over 1700 pages, it’s a massive undertaking.

And as you can see, I’m now late making my post this morning. Plus I’m running behind on getting ready for the busy day I have.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

The Challenge

Okay, I’m declaring the race has been won by Konnie because I’ve hit a major snag in my story, it’s actually something I should have done a little more research on before I started writing. But now I’ve looked it up and learned what I thought was correct wasn’t, meaning I have to go back through the whole manuscript and make some major changes. I’m also not going to be able to move forward until I do fix it, because the needed changes affect how I can move forward.

And that means, since I’m such a slow typist and reader, that there’s little chance I’ll finish by Saturday. I haven’t even gotten close to the climax scene yet, and Konnie is almost to hers. Though in all fairness I should point that Konnie technically already has her ending written, due to the fact that this monster manuscript she’s writing started out at first as just one story.

One story she actually managed to write almost in its entirety in one month. And it is the main story in this larger manuscript, but after finishing that one, she started one about the sister and best friend of the hero in the first one. The time line was a complete overlap for first one, and before she even finished that one, she started a yet another story, about a set of twin boys and the sisters they like.

Well, at some point she decided she didn’t have enough of the two new stories to comprise a whole novel each, so she decided to combine all three, since all three do occur during the same time frame. Only problem is that she eventually came up with plenty more to fill, well I’m guessing, four to six novels. But I told her to worry about the length, size of the monster, after she actually finishes telling the whole thing.

Considering that the first two stories have a lot of the same scenes, in a different POV, and the third one has scenes that happened at the same time, just a different place, that it isn’t going to be easy to divide this into three or even four stories. And frankly, if she hadn’t decided to limit the number of POV’s she used, it could be way more than that.

I can think of three or four other POV’s she could have used, and frankly, two or three other stories, if not more, she could have told with those other POV’s. Yeah this is a huge story. It’s also a really good story. Personally, I can’t wait to see it finished.

  And now to prepare for Nano!

Happy writing everyone. :)

The Challenge

Last week, as Bonnie said, I challenged her to a race to the end, see which one of us could finish writing our current work in progress by the end of the month. Her main goal was to get it finished so she’d have a clean slate to start a new story for Nano next month.

My motivation is finally getting my mega opus finished. Today I started writing chapter 137 of these epic story, which is really several stories in one. There are so many characters in it and even the non-POV characters have a story line. But I’m oh so much closer. Since at least part of the last few scenes are already written (I do know how the opus ends) I know I’m almost there. I just need a few more scenes to wrap up some story lines and set up that final event.

As I look at what I have now, and the scenes I still need to write, I’m sure I won’t finish at 140 chapters, in fact, because that last event is so big, I’m pretty sure I’ll make at least 150.

Which means I could have 14 more chapters to write in just over a week.

I have ten days to write about 14 chapters.

Scratch that.

Due to plans I have this weekend, I doubt I’ll have any writing time on Saturday.

And then there’s the paperwork, bills and so forth I have to deal with. The grocery shopping. My husband’s car is down, at least until we can fix it, which won’t be until after the first, so guess who gets to do a lot of chauffeuring for the next ten days to two weeks?

But having a goal is a good thing.

Both of us are trying hard to complete our stories.

Most days we both spend time on our stories either adding to them or editing, tweaking, what we already had.

One word at a time we are both getting closer.

She doesn’t think she’ll make any more than I do, but we’re not giving up.

Although I don’t do Nano, I rarely have the time to do that much typing, I can see the value of such challenges. Setting goals with friends, people who will not only keep you on track, but race you to the finish line.

So for all those writers who are doing Nano, I support you. Keep fighting to ‘the end’, and when you reach it, go back and edit, edit, edit, until it’s the best you can offer.

I’d write more now, but I’ve got an alarm going off, I need breakfast, and my opus really wants me to finish that scene I left in the middle of so I could get this written. And I’m sorry this is late, but I really was trying to write that scene.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

The Race

And the race is on!

Both Konnie and I are nearing the completion of the novels we’re each currently writing. Of course, Konnie has been working on the one she’s calling her opus for like seven years, and I started my WIP last November, but at this moment, we both have about the same number of chapters left to finish them.

And it’s anyone’s guess which one of us will finish first.

Konnie is hands down the faster typist of the two of us. We’ve known that for years, but Konnie’s also the one with four of five kids at home, along with a whole menagerie of animals, including four dogs, and then there’s her husband. All of these are potential interruptions that I, clearly don’t have.

I live alone. I do have all the chores and errands she has, but not in as great a number, and unlike her, I can spend whole days writing with little or no interruptions. Well, let’s just say, in comparison to her, I don’t get interrupted that much at all. In fact, the last time I groused about interruptions, she was doing it, and it happened yesterday.

I was trying to work on my current scene and having trouble getting the order and choice of words just right. And every few seconds or so my skype would chime and it would be another message from Konnie with either a brainstorming question or a sample of what she’d just managed wanting my opinion, which of course drew my attention from my own writing. There was no way I could answer her and not have my brain focused on her work, and each and every time, that meant I had to refocus on my manuscript, which, thanks to my ADD, isn’t easy.

I’d finally start typing again, and she’d send another message!

So, yeah, I got upset. With her, interruptions are just a matter of course, and she isn’t ADD, which is probably a good thing, because her family interrupts her a lot. I don’t know how she can put up with it. When my husband was still alive, he learned pretty fast, that if I’m writing he probably should leave me alone.

I growl. Konnie doesn’t.

So, at any rate, last night Konnie challenged me to see who got to “the end” first. And this after I’d told her I’d challenged myself to finish this draft of my manuscript by October 31^st, because of course, come November 1^st, unlike her, I will be participating in National Novel Writer’s Month or Nano http://nanowrimo.org , just like I have done for the past twelve years. This year will be thirteen. And unlike any year before, which I still completed, I actually have an outline of a story ready and waiting for me to write!

But, I’m still working on the one I started during last year’s 50k challenge. Of course, that’s another story. :)

I can’t wait to see who wins this race. How about you?

Happy writing everyone!

Ramblings

The last two days I’ve mulled over what I could write about this week for my post and I actually got nowhere. As I sit down to at my computer to work on my post I still have no clue what to write about and while I should be focusing on the words to put here, my brain is tumbling over and over again on all those tasks I need to get done.

Laundry. Bills. Picking up my son’s glasses and getting my daughter’s new glasses adjusted. The cat needs shots, two dogs need their nails trimmed, and another one needs his tags renewed, the air filter needs changed, we have to get a new one. Hopefully my car will be ready today. Somebody has to do the dishes, probably me again because my girls are down for the count and my boys, well you try getting teenaged boys to wash dishes, by hand, and actually get them all clean.

And in the middle of all this my oldest has called twice in two day having a severe allergic reaction to something. So it’s looking like her sisters aren’t the only ones with severe food allergies.

Now I have a kid home sick from school, so I have to call the doctor, again.

Don’t let anybody ever tell you managing a household isn’t a job.

Half the time when I’m trying to do something, I’m “doing three things at once”, something I tell Bonnie all the time when she asks me why I haven’t done something simple yet, like answer her last question or check my mailbox.

Try talking/typing to someone through AIM while talking to someone on the phone and attempting to work on your own writing, or paying your bills, or whatever else you need to get done while four dogs are loudly announcing someone is at your door and nobody in your house seems to be making any effort to get to the door. Either that or the landline is ringing, which still means going to the front room. Oh, and you’re buried under your computer and a mound of paper work so getting up and getting to the front of the house is a production in and of itself.

(Okay, I’ve actually never had all of that happen all at once, but I’ve sure come close a few times.)

The one good thing about my strong attempt at trying to focus on writing yesterday is that I finally, after a month at least, wrote the next scene, and actually chapter, of my opus. I’m thinking I’m within six chapters of “The End”. I know I only have five events to put in and one of those is basically already written. So much closer. Maybe I’ll be able to get it finished soon.

Now to move on with another chaotic, perfectly normal around here, day.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Time

Have you ever had one of those days, when you're moving right along, everything is going smoothly then you happen to glance at the clock and realize that Time was moving too fast. Suddenly, you didn't have enough hours in the day to finish everything, because just one thing was taking longer than you thought it would?

Well I've had that sort of month!

I'm not going to tell you how many times I've looked at the clock and realized that I'd spent hours more time writing than I'd planned. Nor am I going to tell you how many things I didn't get done when I should have because I was writing.

But this week I actually thought I was doing okay, and managing to get more than just my writing done then just a few minutes ago I realized what little writing I managed yesterday should have been on my blog post not my novel.

I did think about it, but I did that while I was driving to and from doctors appointments. It didn't do me much good, and I sincerely wish there was someway to slow down the sands of time, just for a little while, so I could get more done in a single day.

Until that's possible, I'll just say: Happy writing everyone!