Um, Since When is 2010 Over?

I have said many times that 2010 was probably the most personally and professionally significant year of my life, so far.

I student-taught.
I graduated from grad school.
I spent another great summer in Connecticut, where I figured out what the hell I wanted to do next.
My cousin had a baby.
I wrote a book.
I was unemployed for four and a half months.
I got a great job. (Yes, the PERFECT job I was up for in September is MINE, starting Monday.)

How do you top that?

But, the thing is, I think 2011 will be even better.

Because even though I experienced all those things, this is the year I feel like I will really settle into life in Boston.

I'm not just "going to school" here anymore. Now, I work here too.

There's a security and permanence (whoa) to my life here now.

I made a resolution last year to write more, and it's probably the only resolution I've ever kept in my whole life.

So, in the spirit of this year ending and a new, exciting year just around the corner, here are some things I resolve to do in 2011:

1. Do more yoga. (Damn, it's hard to stay consistent with exercise around the holidays. I never knew it until this year, when I took a few days off for Thanksgiving, then tried to get back in the habit, then got really sick for two weeks, then celebrated Christmas. With my workday hours of 11-7, I think I'll be able to fit in a morning routine including yoga.)

2. Revise my novel. (This terrifies me. It took me more than 3 weeks to even read the entire thing, but I was happy to discover I actually liked about 1/3 of it. I need to buckle down, print it out, and start cutting, like whoa. Maybe, it will end up being a short story.)

3. Travel more. (I like the idea of this, but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to afford it. Still, at the beginning of the fall, I was so restless, I thought about teaching English in Japan for a year. I don't really think that's something I want to do, but it would be nice to explore New England, and even more of Boston.)

4. DATE. (Seriously, feel free to have eligible bachelors get in touch with me. And make sure they know how much I like bagels. And chocolate chip cookies.)

Interestingly enough, I started this blog as a New Year's resolution. And [clever title] turns FOUR on January 10th.

Which one of you is buying it its first erector set?

*snicker* Erector.

Thanks so much for another year of support and reading!

Tell your friends about me.

And how foxy I am.

And that I'm single.

OK, I'll stop now.

NaNoWriMo 2010: Final Update

Now that I'm a NOVELIST (ha!), I want to share with you my tell-tale strategy for writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (or 29, in my case because I am so awesome, finishing last night before 10 PM):

1. Be sure you do not have a full-time job.

I believe my unemployment status helped me not only have the time to do this but that doing this WHILE unemployed kept me from going even crazier than I would have otherwise. (Honestly, I probably would have done this if I had a job too, but I would have had to SERIOUSLY sacrifice my TV time and that would have ultimately been the hardest part.) (Also, it feels good to have this finished as I look ahead tomorrow to a promising job interview. (Cross your fingers.))

2. Be harder on yourself than anyone else is.

I don't think I'm going to end up being a novelist, but I punished and scolded myself into doing this project and writing every day because I did not want to fall behind on my word count and have to struggle more than I already was.

3. When taking up writing each day, do not fret over what is already on the page.

Actually, I was impressed with my ability to do this. I am the kind of writer who writes and then reads and tweaks and continues to write and then reads and tweaks again. Not big revisions ever but rereading and small tweaks as I go. This project was too big to do that, so I was able to take up from just the previous sentence. It kept me moving.

4. Take judgment out of it.

I often wrote just stream-of-consciousness, which upped the word count and did little else. I don't think I could have done this a couple years ago because I would have been paralyzed by self-criticism. Writing crap is part of this. Who cares?

5. Ignoring its slightly obnoxious abbreviation, sign up on the NaNoWriMo site and read all the pep talks and watch all the videos.

Dave Eggers wrote to us yesterday, first of all, which made me gasp as I opened my email. But, also, I think this is a great, fun, positive and encouraging organization, and you might as well get as much support from other people who are doing it as you can. I promise it helps. Especially since I was the only one who survived the month in the Facebook group I created. My friends were no help. (Love you guys!)

6. Get out of your house to write as much as you can.

My bedroom is so distracting. I don't know what it is, but I sit on my bed, with my computer on my lap and play games and watch YouTube videos instead of what I'm supposed to be doing. This is probably why, by the end of the month, I was waiting until at least 10:30 at night to write and felt, then, that I was racing against the day to get my word quota in. Every time I met a friend at a cafe to write, I would write quicker and with more focus. On second thought, maybe that was because of the wine.

7. Tell everyone you know you're doing this.

I'm sure everyone found it obnoxious, but I kept track of my word count on Facebook. It was partly for bragging rights and partly to keep me honest. I couldn't let down my hundreds of Facebook friends by not completing the task! Plus, when I told them I was almost finished and then that I WAS finished, they gave me lots of love and support.

8. Do it your way.

Mess up. Write a bunch of words you hate. Skip ahead in the plot to the really juicy part or the part that you were inspired to write about by seeing that creepy guy on the train. Write a full day's work on just describing the hallway. Do whatever works for you. And keep going because 30 days isn't really very long, and this will forever change not only your perception of what you can do but also how much time you thought writing 1667 words would take.

The first draft of Bright and Gray is 156 pages, 50,050 words.

NaNoWriMo 2010: Week 4 Update

I had a realization this week that, while I appreciate having a time frame to write and this project has given me a structure, I'm not really sure how I feel about NaNoWriMo.

I'm writing and am pretty sure I'll reach 50,000 words tomorrow, but I don't like it. The writing is not good, and I'm not sure about my motivation level to make it better, once I've got a first draft.

On the other hand, I'm really terrible at looking at the task itself and going, HOLY ESS, I JUST WROTE A NOVEL.

At the same time, I did write twice the daily quota two days this week. Once, to get ahead so I had Thanksgiving off, and once to get ahead, so I'd be done TOMORROW instead of Tuesday, when I'm sure the NaNoWriMo site will be swamped. Plus, everyone is freaking out about the word validation program not working right, so I want to leave time for any last minute writing I may have to do.

This is a boring post. Maybe I'm just destined to write boring writing forever now.

At least I'm almost done.

150 pages, 48,421 words.

UPDATE: I have to admit, though, that it is particularly exciting to see my word count bar fill up on the NaNoWriMo site. Only 1579 words til 50,000. That's just a tiny bit of bar left.

NaNoWriMo 2010: Week 3 Update

I am procrastinating writing tonight by writing a post about my writing this week.

How meta of me.

Actually, I've gotten into a bit of a weird schedule this week, starting my writing at or around 10:30 PM and furiously writing for an hour, just staring at the increasing word count.

When November 30 comes, I hope this daily procrastination subsides, so that it is not a mad rush to midnight. I've never been a procrastinator, so this all feels kind of strange.

I almost didn't write at all Thursday night, after drinking most of a bottle of red wine between the hours of 6:30 and 9 and watching Thursday night NBC shows, but then I made myself. Wrote through the commercials of The Office, the end of Grey's Anatomy, and Private Practice.

I woke up with a hangover on Friday morning (the morning of a phone interview, oops), so I'm sure the 1667 words I wrote while inebriated aren't my finest. Haven't taken the time to revisit what they were yet.

I'm sure that will be good for a laugh.

Aside from that, this week wasn't as hard as last week, but I know for sure now that this novel isn't good.

I write and think about all the revisions I will have to do to make it more than an indulgent psychoanalytical fest. (I may as well call the book, Exorcising My Demons, but I won't.)

In fact, I have a couple titles in mind: one is A Girl, Unguarded and the other is Bright and Gray. We'll see if either sticks.

Current word count: 33,467 (should be past 35,000 by tonight...at some point).

Update: It took me three hours, but I ended up at 35,043.

There are just ENDLESS ways to distract myself on Facebook, dammit.

NaNoWriMo 2010: Week 2 Update

This has been a tough week for my novel.

NaNoWriMo calls it the Week 2 Doldrums, and I definitely felt it.

It didn't really help that I had a particularly discouraging week in terms of my unemployment, coming to terms with the fact that I don't think I'll get a job until the holidays are over, which means pinching my pennies REALLY REALLY hard for another few weeks.

Scary.

It took me three hours to write my daily quota a few days in a row, which was a little upsetting considering that when I'm not at home and distracted by everything going on on the internet, I can bust it out in an hour and a half or less.

I become aware just of the little word counter in the corner, barely even thinking about what words are coming out or if they sound at all good together.

Quantity, not quality, indeed!

Friday night, I met up with my friend to attend a regional write-in at the Prudential Center Food Court. Armed with a Starbucks chai latte and orange chicken from Panda Express, I was ready to surround myself with and be inspired by other WriMos, but when we sat near the window in the mall and saw that the WriMos were all old and female and that they were putting up charts to keep track of word count and moving tables so that we could all be together, we hightailed it out of there.

Give me a roomy booth and a glass of wine, please.

And I busted out the quota in under two hours.

Yesterday, I did it in an HOUR, which is a record, so far.

It helps that I'm nearing the halfway point and thinking about the emotional climax.

Certainly, I'm barreling along: 74 pages and 23,349 words!

NaNoWriMo 2010: Week 1 Update

So.

All evidence points to the fact that I'm writing a novel.

For someone who has never in her entire life had to write anything longer than about 15 pages, this is rather remarkable. (Although, I guess the 35-page play I wrote counts...)

I've been through a lot this first week, in my novel-writing endeavor.

The first few days, the words just kind of poured out of me.

I was way ahead of the daily word count of 1667 words a day, for days in a row. I'd write in the morning and then, I'd write at night too. Anticipating what I had to do the next day, so using my writing time very effectively.

A couple days in a row, I even wrote with my favorite writer ever, Suzan-Lori Parks. As part of her Watch Me Work project, she is holing up in the lobby of the Public Theater with her (orange)typewriter, a timer, and a camera. She invites people to join her there to write for an hour every weekday.

She's also live-streaming it on the web, so I spent my writing time on Wednesday and Thursday with her. I kept her visible on my minimized word document screen, typing away, compulsively sipping and eating mints and chewing gum.

At the end of the hour, she takes questions about process from the people there and on the internet.

So, I sent in a question. And she answered it.

Told me something like, if Taylor Swift can write about her personal experiences, then so can you. Then she made a heart with her hands.

It was pretty much perfect.

Friday, I spent the day writing with a friend at a cafe that served great food, great tea, AND alcohol. We spent about five hours there, chatting, catching up, and then struggling through our daily word quota. It took me about three hours to write what had previously taken me about an hour and a half.

It's been just as hard ever since, even having had a great breakthrough to include a long section of the book set in the past.

I am actually pretty amazed at how uncensored I've been. I'm not micromanaging myself, I don't reread what I've written each day and start revising. I just read from the previous sentence and continue. Watch the little word count in the bottom left corner of my screen.

37 pages and 11,676 words later, and I don't even hate it yet!

Gulp.

I have an announcement.

It's kind of big. And kind of scary.

Thanks to my friend, who reminded me about this event, and to my mom, who did it last year, I am going to attempt to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, during the month of November.

I just know that as soon as I announce this, I'll get a full-time job, be working 50-hour weeks and be scrambling to meet the deadline at midnight on the 30th.

BUT.

I really wanted to do it last year, just had zero time, while adapting and directing a play for my independent project.

So, we're going with NaNoWriMo 2010, instead!

This is going to be a GREAT challenge for me, who has, through the process of blogging, become fairly good at writing short, conclusive points with little buttons at the end of each post.

Fumbling through writing MUCH more than I'm used to is going to be a great exercise in patience and letting go creatively...(I think I'm going to have to get used to being OK with writing a lot of crap.)

Also, prepare for me to become totally obsessed with the number of words I produce a day and perhaps write about it here...

That's 1,667 words a day, by the way, if I want to make it to 50,000 by the 30th.

But, who's counting?

Ha.