Our doggy companion

This little guy is pretty much our constant companion... he's either one someone's lap while they're doing schoolwork, or he's sitting on my feet. And yes, his ears are often inside-out.

His name is Yoda, and he's a Chihuahua-Dachshund mix, aka Chiweenie.

Some writing done today so far...

The kids ran away from home (lol) at the last minute to spend the night with our neighbor, a grandmotherly figure whose husband and (grown-up) stepkids are away hunting elk this week. Since she called right when we were going to start some more word-warring, no one got any writing done at all yesterday. I think every day from here on out that we possibly can, we're going to focus on the word wars... that seems to be pretty effective. Keeps them (and me) on task and actually writing for short segments of time... and we all got a lot more words on the page then we had previously.

I've decided that what I'm writing is something that I can probably make into a coherent story, but I'm having a very hard time writing in progressive order. I keep thinking of things in another place/time in the story, and that is what sounds interesting to write at that time, so I do. It's allowing me to jump around, but without jumping to a different story. I suppose it works.

I really doubt, though, that the story will be good for anything more then to amuse my kids with once it's done. It's silly, at times just plain ridiculous, and as random as can be. If I run out of ideas, I'm going to start throwing in suggestions from the dares at the YWP page... some of them have been quite silly.

Did you know green dragons are vegetarian gardeners? Neither did I til today.

So here's the deal

I'm behind in my words (majorly) and I've been neglectful in posting, but it's for a good cause. Getting the kids into Nano-mode has been significantly more work then I expected.

The kids are using a hodge-podge of computers... an older mac that I still haven't figured out how to transfer the text to elsewhere, an old brick laptop that can save to diskette, an old desktop running Win ME, and their one netbook.

It's been interesting, to say the least.

Tiny flash of inspiration - thank God!

Yesterday, I struggled through a few hundred words. I just couldn't find my groove, and then the story just fell flat - Plop!

Today at work, an idea came to me. I scribbled it down on my break, just as fast as I could - handwriting 20+ words a minute sure makes 15 minutes fly!

And tonight, as the kids were doing their writing, I copied it in to the computer, with only a few minor changes, just grammar corrections.

The kids have been bugging me to read mine to them. And so I did. Just that section I wrote today, first. There is precious little story there, just an intro so far, but I think it's a far better start for the book then where I was before.

And they liked it. Wanted me to read the other part. It's ok, they tell me, but they still like the other part better.

I think what helps, is today I nailed the voice for it. It's a voice I tend to fall into and be comfortable with - I don't know if it's my natural one, but it sure feels the most natural to me - and I think I just need to give it free rein for this project and see where it takes me. Especially since nothing else is getting my anywhere!

So. I'm at 768. And I think I can make some major progress tonight, especially once the kidlets get to bed and I can curl up in bed, turn up the heat, and actually concentrate a little bit. It's hard to get much done when I'm out there in the same room as them - totally messes with my concentration, but it's getting better. I've got to stop letting myself get distracted so easily.

I'd better make some progress - the kids are hassling the hell outta me cuz I'm behind and they're all happily on track. It never occurred to me before what a motivating force some pesky kids could be... especially when they're in the "we've ALL gotta do this" mindset, and mom isn't carrying her share of the load - when they all are! (My 8th grader had more words them me right now, to heck with percentages, he's nailing me to the wall. Now that I think about it, depending on how much my 2nd grader wrote this last hour, she might well have as many! Sigh.)

I won something!

I'm just one of those people never ever wins anything... well, at least ALMOST never ever wins anything.

Lynn Viehl, aka Paperback Writer, had a contest over at her blog for a spooky novel, Isis. I almost didn't enter - I never win anything, remember - but as it feels like forever ago since the last time I had a truly satisfying ghost story in my hands, I went ahead and entered anyway.

Imagine my surprise and pleasure. :)

Distractions and more...

Ugh... I'm trying to write, but I keep getting distracted! Thank goodness the guy has bowling tonight - I'll have time to finish playing catch up if I don't get done before then.

So far, I'm at a 224 words. Yes, I'll get right back to it momentarily. Wanted to update on the kidlets' status so far... they got up this morning and wanted to get right to writing - even the one who was not-to-thrilled last night.

Kid-stats today:
Goal: 6.67%
Chey, 390, 19.5%
Chris, 306, 7.65%
Tyler, 425, 7.08%
Mike, 634, 7.92%

They're all at least slightly ahead of the game... and even my 13-yr-old is hassling me to write. And I've been ordered to make certain it's child-friendly so that they may read it. Yikes. And they're tough judges.

Me, I'd better get back to work. I'm not even at half a percent yet.

Hmm... what do the kids like? Pirates. Ninjas. Cats. Video games. Silliness. Adventure.

I'm off to write.

Nano - Day 1

Wow. So far, so good, at least in regard to the kidlets.

Here's their Nanowrimo goals:

• Chey, 2nd grade, 2000
• Chris, 4th grade, 4000
• Tyler, 6th grade, 6000
• Mike, 8th grade, 8000

I ended up deciding to go with the minimum suggested goals on the YWP site, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm counting this for school. Mostly as a "participation" pass/fail sort of thing, but counting it none-the-less. I don't think, for that purpose, that the goal amount should be too high. Second, I'm not real sure where their ability/tolerance level is going to be. Third, based on those first two things, I want this to be a success. And for it to be a success, they have to enjoy it, not hate it.

So far, we're doing reasonably well in that regard. We had a pretty busy day today - housecleaning first, then dad came and spent most of the afternoon - and so by evening they were hungry and tired. A couple made the attempt to convince me to put it off until tomorrow, and I made it clear that was no way to start a month long project - we'd never get done if we put it off every day.

So on we trekked. Still having some (mostly minor) computer issues, that come from trying to use older systems simply to have active computers... but all in all, we're doing all right.

Chey checked in at 190 words - 9.5% of her goal. I was not expecting that! Figured she'd be the one stalling and telling me "I don't get this!" But despite an initial complaint of not knowing what to write, she quickly grabbed an idea and got to work - and wasn't ready to stop at bedtime.

Chris did pretty well - he tends to get hung up on making corrections - but got his words for today, with a couple to spare, clocking 136.

Tyler was sleeping and having a rough time getting any words at all... he managed to push through despite grumbles and get half his daily words, at 98. He's expecting to be able to put a lot more effort forth and see if he can catch up tomorrow.

Mike did well, passed his wordcount and added a few. He thought he could have done quite a bit more, but doesn't want the extra commitment of a higher word count if he doesn't have to.

As for me... well, so far, not so good. Just was too busy-crazy to get anything done earlier in the day, and now I'm here writing and stalling instead of working on my wordcount. I'm just insanely sleep, have been pretty much all day, and don't know if anything I write tonight is going to be very coherant whosoever. (How am I doing so far, lol?)

Anyways. I'll check in either later tonight or tomorrow... hopefully after the api thing is turned on, i'll get some goal charts going.