Journaling has always been hit and miss for me. I was most successful last year. In January at the beginning of the pandemic I heard someone say the more people who wrote about our world and related it personally, the better for the archeologists who find said diaries.
I was extremely consistent and as accurate as I could be and let my worst fears, angers, and imaginations go wild. I managed longer than any other attempt at writing a journal. I think I wrote daily at least until June. Then the journal informed my Camp NaNo project Pandamapocalypse.
By September, I had fallen into my old habits. At first, I missed a day here or there. Before I knew it months had gone by with no entries.😪
At least here at the blog and Duolingo, I’ve been consistent for quite a while, a couple of years, actually. So, not a journal per se. But an entry a day. Yay!
Check out the rules and make friends for JusJoJan.
Since cataracts control my reading diet, and closing eyes to point won’t work for Audible books, I downloaded my next Kindle Unlimited book and went a few pages in to do the pointing. Here is the fantastic sentence I found. Sorry, chaos was the word but this! This is MARVELOUS! “Chaos will rot your plants and kill your dog and rust your bike.” This is from a book my friend, Michele, recommended, Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller. With just this sentence I can hardly wait to read the book!
I remember the line from Game of Thrones, …’Chaos is a ladder…’
So, does that mean you pile up your plants, dog, and bike to climb? Ouch! Yet, that seems to be implied with chaos, right? Maybe a rusty bike could have a comfortable seat. The dog is dead, use the hide to make the seat usable? Compost the dead plants and squeak through the old neighborhood on that bike to find friends or food. They’ll hear you coming so hopefully they are friendly.
This stream is far from drained. It is NaNo after all. Yet my novel, Crystal, isn’t post apocalyptic. This imagery could fit in either Pandamapocalypse or Marine’s Mission. But maybe I can get a little ‘chaos theory’ mixed into Crystal’s world. It is a lot of craziness going on.
But this isn’t adding to my word count. Which is currently 9,096. That’s not too bad. But I wanted to stay a couple days ahead so I’m aiming for over 13K. So it was nice floating in the Stream but it’s needed elsewhere or there will be chaos in my soul!
Remember Crystal under pressure? Yeah.
Linda’s newest prompt:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “close eyes and point.” Grab the closest printed material to you when you sit down to write your post, open it up (if it’s a book, flyer, etc.), close your eyes, and point. Whatever your finger lands on, use that as your prompt. Have fun!
After frogging yesterday’s hat, I nearly have a brim finished on the new one. Within a row or two, I will put that first row in the middle onto the pegs, knit the first and the last row together, and then start the main part of the hat.
And after ‘frogging’ yesterday’s podcast attempt, I spent the morning learning about starting a new project. I used Wondershare, the free version, to try and work on what might be salvageable from yesterday. I have only gone through the first couple of steps and feel confident I can do something to help others. Here’s their first YouTube.
So my attempt for tomorrow is to show how to set up for NaNoWriMo and hopefully show how my friends start theirs in other programs. I will even walk through setting up a new project on NaNoWriMo. Though I finished (Pandamapocalypse) and won last year’s, That book isn’t finished. I got halfway through another during the first CampNaNo with Marina’s Mission. And suddenly, I had another story, Meeps creep in, but I haven’t posted word count to NaNo yet. And now, because of #Inktober, I suddenly have Crystal. Which I set up in yWriter yesterday thinking I had screen sharing going on Zoom. Nope, it was just me talking, and all you could see was my glasses as I had to get really close to the screen to see. The nice thing about NaNo now, as opposed to how it used to be, is you can divide your wordage between projects or even aim for pages edited or other types of goals. So I plan to share that tomorrow also. So the mistakes of yarns yesterday become new projects today.
That’s how today has gone. Fast! When days like today happen, I remember when my kids were young. I remember being so busy the whole day and when my then husband got home the house was a mess and I was exhausted yet it looked like I didn’t do anything at all. I learned a little trick. Rather than write a list of tasks I wanted to achieve, I would list what I actually did. That made me feel so much better.
In fact, I think this blog is a bit like that for me. It is a way to help me not think that life has just passed by while I just lived it. You know what I mean? And it does help. If I want to know when the last snow happened, when the last pair of socks finished, what was I doing last year this date, I look it up here and say to myself, “See! I did do something.” ” Oh look it snowed bundles more last year,” etc.
So, I don’t have writing numbers for today as I haven’t written yet today. With yesterdays numbers I have Pandamapocalypse just 1,001 added. Marina’s Mission 5,360. As soon as I have this blog published I will go spend the time to make about 500 on Panda and 1,667 on Marina.
I did run through the Prelude from yesterday, not nearly as well. I think the light was worse for me at that time of day. Then I played a few bars of
No, I didn’t play it one handed. I have in the past but right now I just want to make music. Lesson learned, do piano things earlier in the day while the piano is in the living room. When we move it, it will be lighter longer as it will get a southern exposure.
I did play with the recorder a bit. I will be using this YouTube to help for a bit.
Then when I just wanted to make the music I went to practice on this website.
Then I did a little playing by ear just to work on breath control and moving stiff fingers.
Speaking of stiff fingers I did a few rows on the newest pair of charity slipper socks. Working on ankles then cuffs, yay!
Now it is close to midnight and I have some stories to write before bed.
According to my goal I am to write something that reflects what I did for CampNaNo. The editing is hard to quantify I worked on twenty pages. I added no words. Yet when I copied and pasted the number of pages I worked on to a blank sheet it said I had 2,041 words that I wandered and did edits to some.
And on another note, I am trying to get back into taking my daily walks. Today I walked .86 whatever that amounts to. I think it might be over 3/4 of a mile? That’s what the app told me. So that is now added as part of my 16/8 keto-ish/fast-ish eating/not eating program. I’m still learning, adjusting as I learn. Adding the walking makes Kali happy. She wants me to run, but not yet, sweetie!
Anyone watching American Gods? I read it a few years ago. I remember being quite lost as I read but it all came together in the end. I am following this better, or maybe it is because I know what to expect? It isn’t even PG rated so if you are under 18 or don’t like sex or violence this might not be for you. I don’t like the violence and find the sexy parts hard to watch if my brother or son are in the room. But the overall story is pretty good.
Another goal I have in mind to integrate into April is practicing my piano or singing or both. On my walks of the last two days I have been singing with my Spotify-ed songs. So–check!
All of this while trying to get healthier through my finally decent medical insurance. All this tests and appointment after a year of sitting in the recliner awaiting the end of this darned pandemic.
Anyway, that’s all I got for A!
By the way, I don’t like practical jokes or April Fools and I love laughing and puns of all kinds. I just don’t like making fun of people in any way.
Join a lot of us as we play with the alphabetical prompts of the A to Z Challenge. Click on the blue underlined link under the big A above or this one:
My goal is to edit the rest of Pandamapocalypse then actually end the book. I will try to use the A-Z prompt to write something that will fit into the book.
Last of the word count: WriteItNow reported to me that I had 80,129. I know I started with 25K from my CampNaNo experience in March. NaNoWriMo gives the goal of 50K. My goal then was 75K. I increased my yWriter by finding the missing chapters and scenes and my RTF in Word, where I found others missing from the other two programs. I think as I go through the edit and fixing yWriter7 problems, I will find the missing bits. Once I have everything moved from the unstable (for me) to Scrivener and a new Word file, I will feel this book complete. It is weird to think, ‘Did I write a scene with … or was it a dream?’ And then to find it again is like Christmas!
I will continue today’s writing as I have a scene that is dancing in my head. Then I will start that scene by scene editing and possible rewriting. I am not tired of this story or the characters. I hope someday others might like it. My first four chapters of the first book, Haven, can be found here. The whole book is here. I was a new writer, but the characters and the sentient planet have been my life for nearly two decades!
According to WriteItNow, I have 79,268 words. My guess is I lost fewer words in that program and managed the right saving system. So I say I won more than my 50K. But with all the maths and programs losing full chapters to full novels my word count on the NaNoWriMo site is still shy of 2K. The story continues and suddenly there is a new character that feels like another novel coming up. My brain is not ready for that! Yet I love this new person and what she knows about the Havenverse at large, especially the history and future for all true Gene-Poppers. I only have two in all my novels. But this one will bring us a population unknown until now. I think the last part of the words I need will be an introduction to all the questions my favorite character, Dusty has had most of her life.
The fun math says that tomorrow I will have over 80K. I don’t think I’ve written a book this long, ever. And though it is a jumbled mess I like all the ideas that are streaming in there. Yes, editing is going to be a bear, but it is a bear I want to meet!
I have options. I can accept the word count on WriteItNow that says of my CampNaNo/NaNoWriMo combination novel that says that I reached by writing the two words ‘The End’ 75,000. Or I can accept that my adding and subtracting with all the computer glitches, including finding yWriter an empty project as of this morning. Grr! My husband and I found my saved RTFs, and I copied and pasted the missing parts to WriteItNow, then added a few scenes today, making an additional 2,000 to NaNos word count app, bringing that total to 46,235. That one should be the goal for the 28th of 46,676. So, in that case, I am 441 words short. In that case, I need about 2,000 a day until the 30th. I think I will opt to try and find a better place to put that ending. There are lots of loose threads to tie-up. So I will just keep writing until I am satisfied. Then comes editing. Ugh! I doubt I can write 2K a day for the next two days, but I will try for the record.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “opt.” Use it as a word or find a word with “opt” in it and base your post on that. Have fun!
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
How does a free blog site work when everything is tied to dollars? How do you create content without using proprietary themes when it seems even the colors and fonts are tied to upgrades for usage? Is it even possible? I hope to find out.
Darswords 
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