Non-Goals and 'WriMo Chatter

You know, I had goals for this week, but when I neglect to blog them on Monday, I forget all about them by Wednesday. But they really haven't changed much: stay healthy, keep gearing up for NaNo, keep my clients happy...those pretty much sum it up.

The healthy part could be going better. I admit that I'm highly suggestible and paranoid when it comes to illness, especially since we lost our health coverage; but it seems like every time I go to the store, the next day I feel run down and have a scratchy throat. So far, eating Vitamin C, Zink and Echinacea tablets like candy and drinking lots of licorice tea (it has anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties) has been keeping that scratchy-throat, icky feeling temporary, and I've been making it a point to get plenty of sleep to keep my immune system strong -- when I'm able to sleep and not wide awake with insomnia, that is. I haven't been doing so well in the exercise department -- it's so hard in the moment, when I'm feeling run down, to convince myself that exercise will make me feel better, even when I know perfectly well that it will.

I'm keeping myself in a NaNo state of mind this week by trying out new noveling software as a possible replacement for yWriter. I've been plugging all of my character profiles and my loose outline in to StoryBook, but I'm afraid it's causing me to over-plan and plot out too much detail before I ever write a single word. I really wanted to go at it with just a loose plan, not a detailed itinerary for each and every scene and character moment. So I'm backing off from that, and I'll stick with the low-tech legal pad and note cards I scribbled all over last week. I am rather impressed with another one I tried, though: q10 is a no-frills, full-screen word processor designed to reduce distraction, and I think it's perfect for the purposes of NaNoWriMo. The thing I like best is that you can turn on (or off, if it doesn't strike your fancy) typewriter sounds while you type. I love having them on - it makes me feel like I'm writing and not just tapping words on my keyboard (which is something I do all day long that often has nothing at all to do with writing). I think I'm going to use it to draft all of my stories and paid copy from now on.

Hey, remember when I said I wished I could organize a Halloween-night NaNo kick-off party and midnight write-in? Well, the fabulous municipal liaison this year went and did just that. It's not a costume or pajama party like in my fantasy, but it still sounds awesome, and it seems like we've got a fun group of people shaping up this year. So I guess I'll be going to the write-ins after all. Now I just need to convince Husband to let me take the laptop so I won't be stuck fighting with my N- and B- and space-bar-less AlphaSmart again this year. And so I can have something to play music on while I write.


On the work front, I'm going to try very hard to get at least a couple of my home lighting blog articles for November written this week, if not all of them. I've got some more web site copy that I'd also like to get out of the way, so I can focus most of my writing energy on the novel. But I've also got some more major web design changes that one client requested, and my very first professional video edit, and those are both pretty time consuming, so we'll see how that goes.

But for now, I'm going to have a snack and watch new-to-me Chuck on Hulu until I get sleepy enough to go to bed.

Tell me what you're doing to get ready for NaNoWriMo, or any other projects minor or major, in the comments. Oh! And if you'd like a NaNo buddy over there, feel free to add me.