Friday, December 6, 2013

The November Gauntlet

My current life, at this point, is relatively surprising.  Who would have thought that there would be a point where I would not only no longer wake up dreading going to work, but while at work, kind of like it because there are some pretty solid peeps that I work with.  Definitely not I.  Definitely not I at all.  November was an exciting month for me.  I am now working the phones and splitting duties at work between that and my original job.  It's better than I expected, because the people calling us up at the helpdesk are not customers but sales associates who need help to help the customers.  I haven't had too many negative calls, although it does happen.  Besides that, I served on a jury for a day courtesy of the Dane County Circuit court here in Madison, which was actually a pretty positive experience.  The other jurors were pretty solid people, all of who had a good sense of humor for our stupid "he said, she said" misdemeanor trial.  Nothing serious or exciting, but still pretty positive.

However, there was a daunting accomplishment that I managed to kick some ass on: National Novel Writing month.  Last year, I tried and failed miserably, not even getting past four figures;  However, this year, as of 11-30-13, I met, and slightly exceeded, the challenge which is to write 50,000 words in the month of November.  I wrote 50,074 words in the month of November, writing every single day except for the day that I had jury duty.  It averaged out to a little over 1700 words per day writing.  Some days were less, others more.  But I started a novel, and proved to myself that I have the willpower to set deadlines and meet them with grit and determination.  It's not only not finished, but it's a pretty convoluted, confusing, kind of pretentious piece of crap, but it's my piece of crap.  I feel pretty proud of myself, not going to lie.  I decided to take the week off of writing anything, just chilling and figuring out where to go from here.  Initially, I had some notes on an outline I was following, but lost that about a third of the way through the month as I just lost the time to try and keep my notes going.  That's part of the problem, but it was a pretty unestablished idea at the beginning.  Right now, I'm going to take a little break from it and bust out a short story while I figure out how to finish the novel.  My plan right now is to finish, then not touch it for a while before editing it.  Then after editing it, let it lie fallow again for a while before taking another look at it.  After that, who knows.

2 comments:

  1. You should publish it. When it's all done of course. Don't put it off too long either. Congratulations on getting it all done and proving to yourself that you can do it. Keep at it.

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  2. Things are looking up for you! At least you managed to keep your job, I got laid off. :\

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