Haunted Mirror

I haven't written since yesterday morning.

I think I need a break. ^_^

The wordcount, by the way, was a spare 50150. I wrote two pages, after doing a few extra the days before; work started, see.
However, if you count up all the other volumes with it I have:
          197157
words of manuscript since...I'm too lazy to check. I think Mayish. Is that too recent?
    Agh. Checking... [long involved shuffle to the end of my bed] in a failed attempt to find documentation.

Well, I have a LJ about Vol. 3 at the end of March.
    Sort of amusing quote from it:

Funny, I was looking at the crosspurposes chart from Bob&Jenny a few days ago (never knowing where we're going, nothing--I didn't even know I was almost at the end) and it's so innacurate to what's on the page it's funny. But it helped me know the depth of everyone's spats. Even if they ended up looking drastically different. Score one for some pre-writing! I'm still picking out a fossil, unhibited by the graph of string over the dig's ground.

I have a superiorly disregarding mind. It can block out plotting like a two-year-old blocks out the Dreaded Word "No".

Still true.

I'm pretty happy about this.
I even like the yellow of the image here, I'm that genial.

So, a few more chapters and I'll have won "Red's Finish The Year's Gargantuan Project Month-or-So".

You will be notified.

Some things I learned today:

~5 gallons of water is heavy. Almost too heavy for me to carry.
~It it impossible to stay cold carrying that much water, no matter how frozen the hose is.
~I really like dancing...like, to Irish reels. Step-dancing.

I pretty much choreographed an All New! folk dance for my story yesterday: the first time since I was on my choreographing kick at 14ish. I did it on paper, but used Lego blocks to try out the logistics of it, and I think it would work out.
I also think it will probably need to be cut, that scene of dancing. Because it was wicked boring to type up, except for the stuff going on in between.

I was at 46774 words yesterday afternoon.
This morning I wrote half the quota of pages, maybe, and last night I wrote a few extra. I think I'll be done tonight with NaNo, but not with the novel. Almost for both, though!

I have to talk about The Neverending Story soon. And read a few more books.

Just in case you never wondered what Aolon's capital looked like...well, you should because the Italian city I found that looks like it is amazing, and I can't believe I stumbled across this:
Today's Google Image Search hot topics were: Dogtown and Z-boys (as well as Zephyr Skate Team and Stacy Peralta...where's his spinning hair picture? *grumps*), air trolley (you'd be surprised...), streetcar/night, flower boxes (Holland/Netherlands) and city stairways.

Which brought me to Dolceaqua, as well as Kaymakli, a totally underground city among the many built in Turkey-area at the time of Arab invasions.
Good idea. People are such geniuses. I mean, they had an air system, still camoflagued entrances, and multiple levels.
    You think you're coming up with something fantastic for your speculative fiction, and there you have it. Just do random collage-bits image searches for thematic elements in your worldbuilding and it'll come to you.

Now, onto the to-the-death duel I have on with the books to be read on my shelves...


Shoubu! Stats:
Truth of the matter? It's all still there.
Headway made only against the incomers. I do want to read Name of the Wind and Water Mirror, but...
Well, I have two days. I'm not working.

And my Aolon Wordcount is:

29791.

I'm gonna make it. I may even have a novel by the end, too.

Today I needed a break from sitting under the screaming metal being drilled in the barn, where the alternative was get Sharpie-high (note: NOT a pleasant altered state).

So I went out to the bench in the remaining pumpkin patch and sat smelling my leather jacket warm in the sun on my back, and piecing the last quarter of my Navigator Star quilt block together. I ate while working, which was good, to have the half-hour just to be quiet.

Multi-faceted things fascinate me. I enjoy being multifaceted. Yesterday I was dancing on tiptoes down the hose to break up the ice inside to water our pony. Then I went to work and did a little graphic design (really mundane stuff, but still; formatting a brochure I put together the information for, too) with the technical prowess my boss somehow appreciates.

Last night I went to the “Dickens on the Boulevard” the city of Claremore does where lots of homeschooling families congregate, many in Victorian costume (some products of a musical my mother put on two years ago there). And a lot of other kinds of people, especially Civil War era belles.

Last night I went as a goth Chimney-sweep J-Pop-Idol.

You'd think I liked Halloween or something. ^_^ But actually, I only added a little kohl to my eyes, a loooong scarf and my brother's top hat to the outfit I wore to work.

And my Union Jack boots.

Only there for a few minutes. But my dad is going to Mexico and taking his camera, so I couldn't even get a shot of the wacky way I allow myself to be seen in public.

Tonight I was just a glamorous chimney sweep.

One thing that's pretty consistent in my life right now, in any spare moment, is obsessing. Obsessing about Dhaeniv and Qahl, the main characters in my NaNo project, because that's what I do now.

I always think about books a lot; mine, others', the theoretical, metaphysical, practical...

But I'd forgotten what it's like to think about a certain story all the time. To get enough story ready in my head to fill the paper I do that—and that's not the best way to write a novel long-term, maybe, or even as a general rule, but man. I know I used to be like this at the beginning of projects.

Maybe it's that it's been a half a year since I let myself really go planning a project. I'm finishing that one up now; the Main Story.

Don't have a word count: not enough time to type it in the last few nights. But I've been writing my five pages. One page not done this morning I have to finish now...so, see ya. I'm sorry about posting this wad after one so recently...but I'm offline tomorrow, and that was a mistake, anyway.

~20819~
I know, two posts in a row?

When the last was of rather fantasmagorical preportions?

Well, this'll be short.

I thought my last post was going to be long, but was too tired, so I won't say Epic in a title again for a long time *shamed*, but to warn you: it is my half-birthday.
 This is my tertiary indulgence. (Primary: to be seen below--Secondary: watching Howl's Moving Castle again.)

First of all, the Book Hoard. Sometimes I do feel rather dragonish about them, but really, riches make me feel generous. I give away books all the time. As soon as I finished Moonheart and Wizard's Hall I sent them to other people. Though I really would totally have kept Wizard's Hall for myself. I think it borders on a fluffy love, my feelings about that book. But you aren't here to hear about that!

Not that you're here for this either, but too bad--the last 2 month's book acquisitions...
    To further soothe the agony of so many choices (I really want to read Name of the Wind, but it's So. Big. Deep Secret ought to be fun to read, but it's not engaging me yet, Castle Cant is too low on my priority list, and Wicked Lovely has me scared for my wussy mind. Nightingale Floor is going to be bloody.) I've meanwhile cut out my first quilt block for my next quilt. Honestly, it will probably help me get back into reading, not otherwise.

But today is my half-birthday (21 and a HALF) so I'm costumed. Less extravagantly than last year (PyRates!) but more focusedly as Gen of the Thief.

( Pixie as Thief )

~18713 words~

Do you know how painful it is to know there is a perfectly beautiful little word-meter out there and that I've never been able to use it and likely, likely never will?
{weeps}
I'm at 16448 words as of this evening. That's only 400 behind my own projected average, and since I've been _catching_  _up_ on these workdays, rather than otherwise, 100% ahead.

My brother came home to a very nice surprise today:



That's an acoustic bass with a pick-up. In terms of Ishtari Quest, the band we hope to be eventually, this is excellent because it means we don't absolutely need an amp to do most of our songs. See, he writes them guitar style but with bass fretwork.
[Fretwork has a nice fake-swear sound to it. I shall take note...]

5579 / 50000 words. 11% done!
This is not going well.

Just sayin'.

Random Red's Life Fact:
My younger 3 sibs are doing geneology for history right now. Today my mom got us back to the ancestor on her side that came over from Europe/UK, and one of the other lines was on PEI at one point. (Nova Scotia is home to many slightly distant cousins; PEI is just a little cooler.) She also had an aunt corroborate a suspicion our German Catholic Grandfather Brinkman was Jewish. See, apparently the real Germans are Brinkmann. My mum's suspicions were more along the lines of Semitic noses, certain family traits, and the fact that a German Catholic was likely to be hiding something.
If you ever read my timed-out supers novel, this bit of history in my family comes up in an unexpected place. ^_^ I love writing.

Since I've been working at a Pumpkin Festival on a bonafide farm doing instruction sorts of things how about a random Thanksgiving fact?
Fact being defined losely in terms of Internet reality.

The Native Americans originated strawberry shortcake, as a way to enliven cornmeal. They mashed strawberries in the flour, I think with something to soak the grain in for softening. No doubt, like with salt and popcorn, the European propensity to season improved on the original.
The Japanese aren't the only ones to blatantly steal and make their own.

1812 / 50000 words. 4% done!

The pretty metre thingamabob iss no workk. Well, well, well.
Like the Nano site during after-work hours for the US.
But Zokutou's code ought NOT to be making a bar too big to fit in one line of my journal, or show the progress on the far side of the thermometer. Don't ask me how THAT happened.

The point: I almost reached one day's wordcount in two days. Today I might have reached almost two, in a less-close-almost sort of a way. I should have known this week would be a bit of a dead loss, but I don't like to believe that coffee and extensive [obsessive] preparation don't defeat the laws of physics as correlated to earth-relative time.

Or the inertia of not writing more than a few pages every few days in three weeks.

As of this morning, a warped Words Behind: 4188

Currently: Now I am a jolly 2722 words behind. With a little extra uncounted yet towards the positive side of things.

From now on, I promise you, LJ cuts about NanoNonsense. Today, I subject the masses.

Last night instead of a Halloween celebration my family had "imonikai" in our backyard.

This is a tradition from the area of Japan where we lived, a certain potato/beef soup made over a fire by the river. It's a fall event, and on the weekends around the right time there will be blue tarps spotting the riverbank down through Yonezawa by the Mogami where groups are having picnics with co-workers, families, clubs. You can go to a few different ones, if you know a wider range of people.

Last night was a perfect eve-of-November time. The soup boiled so well on the bonfire that after it got taken off it was still hot enough to burn the mouth by the time my family gathered inside. The gently coal-smudgy night came on, while my siblings played baseball. I joined for a few minutes, but I'm a wuss when it comes to not being able to see flying objects directed at me; I pitched a few, batted once, ran a little, and left. I came in too late because I was signing up for NaNoWriMo.

Redaelf.Pwyll is my moniker there. Pwyll was an actual figure of Welsh myth, which was a googling find that surprised and delighted me. My last name IS Welsh; there's no reason they can't be related, as far as I know.