I haven't blogged since mid-January, and it's March 11th now, so I'm just here catching up on filling in the writing log days. Nothing much happened in February. It was a boring month. And cold. Plenty of snow, rain, and clouds. I stayed indoors. I don't like cold weather. I like the sounds of rain on my umbrellas, and I'm indifferent to rain on most days, but sometimes I get sick of the rain. I live in the rainy part of Washington state (not D.C.), near Seattle, so it's always rainy most of the winter. It's been unusually snowier this winter, though, but no large accumulations. Maybe it did once or twice, but it's mostly been less than an inch.
As for February being the month of love: I'd rather have a cat than a guy for the rest of my life, so my Valentines Day is always spent giving my mom and sister Valentines Day gifts. I'd just rather have guys for friends because it's more secure. Breakups are hard, friendships can gradually fade away by moving far away and not talking much to one another. Although that's sad, it's sadder and heartbreaking to lose someone you've felt closely connected to. I just never want to go through that. I have dozens of other reasons besides that, including never wanting to have children due to health/genetic issues, but I don't want to list them all. Why waste my time? I'd rather write!
February 2nd:
Document 5: 12,532
February 5th:
Document 5: 12,533
February 7th:
Document 5: 16,321
February 8th:
Document 5: 17,153
February 9th:
Document 5: 18,378
February 15th:
Document 5: 19,473
February 16th:
Document 5: 20,114
February 20th:
Document 5: 22,722
February 21st:
Document 5: 23,478
February 22nd:
Document 5: 23,743
February 23rd:
Document 5: 23,845
February 26th:
Document 5: 24,911
February 27th:
Document 5: 25,340
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Friday, January 6, 2017
January 2017
January 1st:
Each page and word count of book so far:
Document 1: 98 pages, 53,883 words
Document 2: 103 pages, 65,415 words
Document 3: 104 pages, 60,462 words
Document 4: [I forgot to record the page count], 50,409 words so far
Total book word count so far: 230,169 words
January 2nd:
Document 4: 52,011 words
January 3rd:
Document 4: 52,928 words
January 4th:
Document 4: 53,073 words
January 5th:
Document 4: 53,843 words
Starting next week, I have to work on Fridays from now on. That means less writing late at night. But at least it's one less night.
I'll try to stress the importance to my family once again how they need to be more considerate when I'm trying to write, they're talking to each other at an unnecessary volume nonstop, and they're wanting to talk to me every 5 - 10 minutes. It probably won't work, simply because they're impulsive and lack the empathy of normal human beings (Then again, with the lack that I see in the world, maybe the whole world is breaking), are forgetful, and obviously don't understand the importance of what I'm making. All they see me do is sit in a chair and look at an inanimate object for hours. *sighs* It's too expensive for me (and them, especially since the rent and other bills were recently raised) to move out into my own place, so I'm stuck with these chatty squawkers.
But I should no longer complain. What benefit is there to be bitter about what you can not change? Dwelling in a way that makes your heart bitter only leads to you becoming a bitter person overall. I'll just have to continue finding ways that deter them until a company out there starts making non-writer human deterrent. Lol. 😄
Edit: Woohoo! I added some new features I think you'll like!
1. You can comment on posts without needing a Google+ account!
2. You can search for previous posts.
3. You can subscribe to the blog via email whenever I make a new post each month. Tip: Be sure to save the email you get at the beginning of the month, as I add to it until the end of the month. I only make a new post once a month. (Personally, I don't like getting a ton of emails, and I think you'd appreciate it, too.)
4. Poll. Personally, I love polls. It stems from my love of multiple choice questions in school. (Funny thing: I used to hate them when I was in Elementary school!) This month's poll is: What's your favorite Fantasy creature? The choices I give you are but some of the creatures you'll find in my book series. Of course, they're not your typical kind of dragons, etc. All of my creatures have several things about them you'd never dream they'd have or be able to do. Especially the Elves. ...And yes, I capitalize the E in Elves for an important reason. ...No spoilers! Hahaha! 😁
But really, think about it. I don't want to wreck the surprise for any of you. I love watching people's reactions. They're the best parts of giving gifts: Suspense and watching people's reactions.
...But I don't prolong the waiting for that reason. It takes a long time to write a story! I'm not a slow typer or anything, as my wpm (words per minute) is an average speed.
It's just a combination of things: The average time I write each day is about 2 hours. During that time, I briefly stop and imagine what should happen next. That can be anywhere from a few seconds to 5 minutes at a time, depending on how long or complex the following scenes or dialogue is going to be. If I'm having trouble problem-solving for my characters, or otherwise figuring out the specific sequence of all that should happen next, sometimes my thinking overheats and I have to make my mind go blank so as to prevent a total shutdown caused by frustration or an anxiety attack. This doesn't happen often, but when it does occur, I usually get up and eat/drink [not alcohol, mind you], go to social media to get my mind off it temporarily (*Twitter, Pinterest, DeviantArt, etc.), stare at the screen, or... most likely, I go back and read 1 - 3 pages before where I left off. Sometimes 4 or 6 pages, if I'm really stumped. But I do that whenever I sit down to write. I read a little before where I left off. That way, my mind's fully into the story, and I'm less conscious of the real world around me (But that's often interrupted when my family talks or makes too much noise, which is why I find it difficult to write when they're still awake, thus why I like writing late at night.). It prevents writer's block, and it makes it run away and cry for its mommy when it threatens to settle in.
*pandiculates* But look at me! I'm rambling again! Good thing I don't write my books like how I talk, or I'd get nowhere! Haha! 😄 Enjoy the new blog features! And please feel free to let me know what you think
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January 7th:
Document 4: 57,798 words
Woohoo! I'm roaring through! Plenty of words has been written since I was able to focus and write all day. Avoiding social media first thing in the morning helps. It prevents procrastination.
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January 8th:
Document 4: 58,850
January 9th:
Document 4: 58,982
January 10th:
Document 4: 60,022
Pages: 100
Since I want to keep each document to a limit of approximately 100 pages, time for Document 5! (December 10th continued into Document 5)
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January 13th:
Document 4: 59,943
Take that back about starting Document 5. I didn't like the last scene because I wrote it half asleep and the informative dialogue of a character didn't make sense. I just thought it was stupid and unnecessary, so I deleted a good 100 - 300 words, rewrote it, and make it much better. I don't often delete scenes like that. I hate doing that too early, but it was necessary because it would have affected future scenes.
January 14th:
Document 4: 59,947 (100 pages, just a few touch-ups, and then on to Document 5)
Document 5: 229
January 15th:
Document 5: 304
January 16th:
Document 5: 2,951
Nothing much happening in life. Rent went up by $50, and my mom is freaking out because she's also making payments on hospital bills from a couple of months ago, as well as paying a little extra on a phone bill we had to make payments on in December.
Many people tend to make payments on their bills in December for the sake of saving money and buying Christmas gifts instead. We don't normally do that, but our electricity bill went up because it's been an unusually cold winter here so far, and we've been running the heaters more often. Thankfully, the day temperatures are going to be in the low 50's (Fahrenheit) this week for the first time in several weeks. (Brr! I hate it when it's in the 40's and 30's! My hands and feet get cold easily, and that's when I can't focus well on writing! I get too restless, trying to get warm again between writing "bursts". Even though my main character loves cold temperatures, I don't! ...Except when it snows. I can spend a long time outside making snowmen and snow sculptures, taking pictures of snow falling, etc.
Now then... I need to get ready for bed. I'm going to start going to bed earlier for now on. I'm tired of being tired at work. Not a good thing to feel in such an important place. I take my job seriously, but since I barely survived during an especially busy day last week with my now-shorter hours barely giving me enough time to finish my duties that day (At one point, I was feeling a tiny bit faint), I really gotta start taking my health seriously, too. ...Haha, and that includes my weight. I don't look it except for my face (I have unusually thick cheeks, according to a few dentists, so any slight bit of chubbiness is noticeable) and one other area, but I'm actually getting a little bit overweight. Since lack of sleep can make you heavier, I'm going to try getting at least 8 hours of sleep each day. 7 isn't enough, but it looks like tonight it will be approximately that much.
And don't get me started on taking a nap after work. After that one time I had a seriously bad nightmare after school back in high school, I've rarely had the courage to take a nap during the daytime. And lately I've been having uncomfortable dreams. Dreams that are sort of bad dreams, but they're more unsettling than scary.
Like that one I had just the other day: It was a short dream just before I woke up, but I was looking closely at an old table with ants eating at the center of it. There was one unusually large termite in the mix that had been trying to eat the table, too, but the ants killed it and had since continued working. The environment I was in had a disgusting, sticky feel to it, the kind of feeling you get when you touch something sticky like dried, sticky apple juice that had been sticking to a table in a filthy, abandoned house, or like being in someone's filthy, smelly house. ...I swear, out of all homes I've ever visited, most were filthy and smelly.
I suppose mine is smelly a little bit. Having a cat litter box and a smelly dog does give this place a musty smell. But it's mostly the dog. Even a week after giving her a bath, she has a musty, greasy dog smell to her. Whatever she sleeps on ends up smelling like her. I've had to wash my robe a few times from forgetting it on the couch. One time, my mom had just pulled out the laundry out of the dryer, and she thought it was okay for Sandy to lie on my robe while she folded the laundry! I was a bit upset about it that time. I had been anticipating wearing it on that cold evening (I wear my robe all the time when it's cold), but the smell that had basically been stamped on made me gag.
Oh, I just remembered yet another bit of proof as to why I can't take a nap during the day. As I was saying a little bit ago, I've been having sort of bad dreams lately, right? Well, this morning, I guess this can be called an actual bad dream:
I was high up in an apartment skyscraper in Tokyo, and I was looking outside, staring in shock at the skycraper across from me rocking back and forth, the building having a split down the center, opening and closing. My building was rocking, too. We were having an earthquake. I finally took action and told an unknown person, "We need to get out of here, NOW!" and ran across a small living room. In my mind, I knew it would be a bad idea if I tried taking an elevator down, but I wondered if my building had stairs. I don't know why I even questioned that possibility.
I can't remember what all that happened in the dream, but it was so detailed, it was beautiful. I don't often have dreams that have many things like countless cars, buildings, people, voices, and the individual waves of the ocean glittering in the sunshine of a sunrise or a sunset, so it was breathtaking.
Down below, on the street, people were running and panicking, and several exclamations could be heard. I couldn't understand any of them. My brain didn't even form whole words in my head. Maybe except for one lady exclaiming, "Ichiohua!" According to Google Translate, it means "Position off." Well, I hope that's what it means. I don't want to be accidentally cussing on here just because Google Translate decides to make mistakes, like it always does. ...But I don't know. Maybe my memory is failing to remember what the lady was really saying. It could have been "Tichio" or "Hichio", but since I don't trust Google Translate to be translating my words correctly, I'm going to stop guessing.
Anyway, time is dragging me down, and I'm going to have about 6 hours of sleep now. (Oops.) So, I'll try to make this quick: The rest of the dream involved me trying to locate my family (For some reason, I switched from being me to my male cousin-in-law) by going through crowded road barriers, climbing over fences, and climbing up steep hills away from the city. I eventually found L (my cousin's name abbreviated for privacy) and the three kids. Oh, and I was the only one who had our van keys for some reason, so L and the kids had to wait until I made it to them to drive us out of there. But I woke before we went anywhere. I think it was my sigh of relief of finally seeing all three kids and L together safe and sound that might have woken me up. Oh, yeah. And I had called L on my cell phone several times during the long trek. And I was wearing a grey-blue business suit with white cuffs. Maybe my apartment doubled as my personal office? Either way, my suit and the apartment/office looked snazzy. Too bad there was a small split in the floor. ...That's right. I remember that now. I had to jump over that in my wooden living room floor. And there was a circle of floor cushions near my feet.
Agh. I knew I shouldn't have blogged tonight. I stopped writing at a decent time, thinking I was doing so good so far. Oh well, tomorrow night is another opportunity.
Good night, and stay safe! If you live in earthquake country, put together a survival pack near your front door. I need to do the same, too. A deadly earthquake is due to hit this region any possible day, according to experts. Then again, if the predicted earthquake were to hit here, I'd be gone in seconds. This whole area by the coast would be liquefied. So, if you hear of Seattle and the coast stretching 30 - 40 miles north of it being wiped out or having severe damage from an earthquake, call me gone. (P.S. I'd live anywhere else but here, but I love my job, and my mom and sister would find it impossible to keep up with the bills. Plus, they're too stubborn to leave this city, and I care too much about them to leave them unprotected. Neither of them have much of a head on their shoulders. Most of their heads have been hacked off. They're both like a Nearly Headless Nick from the Harry Potter series. ...But enough with funny/weird similes. Time to force myself off the internet to tackle Life and win one of its clever, unpredictable games: A game called "tomorrow."
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January 21st:
Document 5: 6,162
January 22nd:
Document 5: 9,374
January 23rd:
Document 5: 10,867
January 24th:
Document 5: 10,913
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Oops. It's March 11th, and I haven't been updating this blog. Nothing bad has happened. Blogging just takes away portions of my writing time. I'll try blogging at the end of every month at least, so this won't happen again. I can't perfectly guarantee I will, as life can be unpredictable, but it's now my goal. So, sorry for not blogging this long. Now to catch up....
January 26th:
Document 5: 10,935
January 28th:
Document 5: 11,589
Each page and word count of book so far:
Document 1: 98 pages, 53,883 words
Document 2: 103 pages, 65,415 words
Document 3: 104 pages, 60,462 words
Document 4: [I forgot to record the page count], 50,409 words so far
Total book word count so far: 230,169 words
January 2nd:
Document 4: 52,011 words
January 3rd:
Document 4: 52,928 words
January 4th:
Document 4: 53,073 words
January 5th:
Document 4: 53,843 words
Starting next week, I have to work on Fridays from now on. That means less writing late at night. But at least it's one less night.
I'll try to stress the importance to my family once again how they need to be more considerate when I'm trying to write, they're talking to each other at an unnecessary volume nonstop, and they're wanting to talk to me every 5 - 10 minutes. It probably won't work, simply because they're impulsive and lack the empathy of normal human beings (Then again, with the lack that I see in the world, maybe the whole world is breaking), are forgetful, and obviously don't understand the importance of what I'm making. All they see me do is sit in a chair and look at an inanimate object for hours. *sighs* It's too expensive for me (and them, especially since the rent and other bills were recently raised) to move out into my own place, so I'm stuck with these chatty squawkers.
But I should no longer complain. What benefit is there to be bitter about what you can not change? Dwelling in a way that makes your heart bitter only leads to you becoming a bitter person overall. I'll just have to continue finding ways that deter them until a company out there starts making non-writer human deterrent. Lol. 😄
Edit: Woohoo! I added some new features I think you'll like!
1. You can comment on posts without needing a Google+ account!
2. You can search for previous posts.
3. You can subscribe to the blog via email whenever I make a new post each month. Tip: Be sure to save the email you get at the beginning of the month, as I add to it until the end of the month. I only make a new post once a month. (Personally, I don't like getting a ton of emails, and I think you'd appreciate it, too.)
4. Poll. Personally, I love polls. It stems from my love of multiple choice questions in school. (Funny thing: I used to hate them when I was in Elementary school!) This month's poll is: What's your favorite Fantasy creature? The choices I give you are but some of the creatures you'll find in my book series. Of course, they're not your typical kind of dragons, etc. All of my creatures have several things about them you'd never dream they'd have or be able to do. Especially the Elves. ...And yes, I capitalize the E in Elves for an important reason. ...No spoilers! Hahaha! 😁
But really, think about it. I don't want to wreck the surprise for any of you. I love watching people's reactions. They're the best parts of giving gifts: Suspense and watching people's reactions.
...But I don't prolong the waiting for that reason. It takes a long time to write a story! I'm not a slow typer or anything, as my wpm (words per minute) is an average speed.
It's just a combination of things: The average time I write each day is about 2 hours. During that time, I briefly stop and imagine what should happen next. That can be anywhere from a few seconds to 5 minutes at a time, depending on how long or complex the following scenes or dialogue is going to be. If I'm having trouble problem-solving for my characters, or otherwise figuring out the specific sequence of all that should happen next, sometimes my thinking overheats and I have to make my mind go blank so as to prevent a total shutdown caused by frustration or an anxiety attack. This doesn't happen often, but when it does occur, I usually get up and eat/drink [not alcohol, mind you], go to social media to get my mind off it temporarily (*Twitter, Pinterest, DeviantArt, etc.), stare at the screen, or... most likely, I go back and read 1 - 3 pages before where I left off. Sometimes 4 or 6 pages, if I'm really stumped. But I do that whenever I sit down to write. I read a little before where I left off. That way, my mind's fully into the story, and I'm less conscious of the real world around me (But that's often interrupted when my family talks or makes too much noise, which is why I find it difficult to write when they're still awake, thus why I like writing late at night.). It prevents writer's block, and it makes it run away and cry for its mommy when it threatens to settle in.
*pandiculates* But look at me! I'm rambling again! Good thing I don't write my books like how I talk, or I'd get nowhere! Haha! 😄 Enjoy the new blog features! And please feel free to let me know what you think
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January 7th:
Document 4: 57,798 words
Woohoo! I'm roaring through! Plenty of words has been written since I was able to focus and write all day. Avoiding social media first thing in the morning helps. It prevents procrastination.
-------
January 8th:
Document 4: 58,850
January 9th:
Document 4: 58,982
January 10th:
Document 4: 60,022
Pages: 100
Since I want to keep each document to a limit of approximately 100 pages, time for Document 5! (December 10th continued into Document 5)
-------
January 13th:
Document 4: 59,943
Take that back about starting Document 5. I didn't like the last scene because I wrote it half asleep and the informative dialogue of a character didn't make sense. I just thought it was stupid and unnecessary, so I deleted a good 100 - 300 words, rewrote it, and make it much better. I don't often delete scenes like that. I hate doing that too early, but it was necessary because it would have affected future scenes.
January 14th:
Document 4: 59,947 (100 pages, just a few touch-ups, and then on to Document 5)
Document 5: 229
January 15th:
Document 5: 304
January 16th:
Document 5: 2,951
Nothing much happening in life. Rent went up by $50, and my mom is freaking out because she's also making payments on hospital bills from a couple of months ago, as well as paying a little extra on a phone bill we had to make payments on in December.
Many people tend to make payments on their bills in December for the sake of saving money and buying Christmas gifts instead. We don't normally do that, but our electricity bill went up because it's been an unusually cold winter here so far, and we've been running the heaters more often. Thankfully, the day temperatures are going to be in the low 50's (Fahrenheit) this week for the first time in several weeks. (Brr! I hate it when it's in the 40's and 30's! My hands and feet get cold easily, and that's when I can't focus well on writing! I get too restless, trying to get warm again between writing "bursts". Even though my main character loves cold temperatures, I don't! ...Except when it snows. I can spend a long time outside making snowmen and snow sculptures, taking pictures of snow falling, etc.
Now then... I need to get ready for bed. I'm going to start going to bed earlier for now on. I'm tired of being tired at work. Not a good thing to feel in such an important place. I take my job seriously, but since I barely survived during an especially busy day last week with my now-shorter hours barely giving me enough time to finish my duties that day (At one point, I was feeling a tiny bit faint), I really gotta start taking my health seriously, too. ...Haha, and that includes my weight. I don't look it except for my face (I have unusually thick cheeks, according to a few dentists, so any slight bit of chubbiness is noticeable) and one other area, but I'm actually getting a little bit overweight. Since lack of sleep can make you heavier, I'm going to try getting at least 8 hours of sleep each day. 7 isn't enough, but it looks like tonight it will be approximately that much.
And don't get me started on taking a nap after work. After that one time I had a seriously bad nightmare after school back in high school, I've rarely had the courage to take a nap during the daytime. And lately I've been having uncomfortable dreams. Dreams that are sort of bad dreams, but they're more unsettling than scary.
Like that one I had just the other day: It was a short dream just before I woke up, but I was looking closely at an old table with ants eating at the center of it. There was one unusually large termite in the mix that had been trying to eat the table, too, but the ants killed it and had since continued working. The environment I was in had a disgusting, sticky feel to it, the kind of feeling you get when you touch something sticky like dried, sticky apple juice that had been sticking to a table in a filthy, abandoned house, or like being in someone's filthy, smelly house. ...I swear, out of all homes I've ever visited, most were filthy and smelly.
I suppose mine is smelly a little bit. Having a cat litter box and a smelly dog does give this place a musty smell. But it's mostly the dog. Even a week after giving her a bath, she has a musty, greasy dog smell to her. Whatever she sleeps on ends up smelling like her. I've had to wash my robe a few times from forgetting it on the couch. One time, my mom had just pulled out the laundry out of the dryer, and she thought it was okay for Sandy to lie on my robe while she folded the laundry! I was a bit upset about it that time. I had been anticipating wearing it on that cold evening (I wear my robe all the time when it's cold), but the smell that had basically been stamped on made me gag.
Oh, I just remembered yet another bit of proof as to why I can't take a nap during the day. As I was saying a little bit ago, I've been having sort of bad dreams lately, right? Well, this morning, I guess this can be called an actual bad dream:
I was high up in an apartment skyscraper in Tokyo, and I was looking outside, staring in shock at the skycraper across from me rocking back and forth, the building having a split down the center, opening and closing. My building was rocking, too. We were having an earthquake. I finally took action and told an unknown person, "We need to get out of here, NOW!" and ran across a small living room. In my mind, I knew it would be a bad idea if I tried taking an elevator down, but I wondered if my building had stairs. I don't know why I even questioned that possibility.
I can't remember what all that happened in the dream, but it was so detailed, it was beautiful. I don't often have dreams that have many things like countless cars, buildings, people, voices, and the individual waves of the ocean glittering in the sunshine of a sunrise or a sunset, so it was breathtaking.
Down below, on the street, people were running and panicking, and several exclamations could be heard. I couldn't understand any of them. My brain didn't even form whole words in my head. Maybe except for one lady exclaiming, "Ichiohua!" According to Google Translate, it means "Position off." Well, I hope that's what it means. I don't want to be accidentally cussing on here just because Google Translate decides to make mistakes, like it always does. ...But I don't know. Maybe my memory is failing to remember what the lady was really saying. It could have been "Tichio" or "Hichio", but since I don't trust Google Translate to be translating my words correctly, I'm going to stop guessing.
Anyway, time is dragging me down, and I'm going to have about 6 hours of sleep now. (Oops.) So, I'll try to make this quick: The rest of the dream involved me trying to locate my family (For some reason, I switched from being me to my male cousin-in-law) by going through crowded road barriers, climbing over fences, and climbing up steep hills away from the city. I eventually found L (my cousin's name abbreviated for privacy) and the three kids. Oh, and I was the only one who had our van keys for some reason, so L and the kids had to wait until I made it to them to drive us out of there. But I woke before we went anywhere. I think it was my sigh of relief of finally seeing all three kids and L together safe and sound that might have woken me up. Oh, yeah. And I had called L on my cell phone several times during the long trek. And I was wearing a grey-blue business suit with white cuffs. Maybe my apartment doubled as my personal office? Either way, my suit and the apartment/office looked snazzy. Too bad there was a small split in the floor. ...That's right. I remember that now. I had to jump over that in my wooden living room floor. And there was a circle of floor cushions near my feet.
Agh. I knew I shouldn't have blogged tonight. I stopped writing at a decent time, thinking I was doing so good so far. Oh well, tomorrow night is another opportunity.
Good night, and stay safe! If you live in earthquake country, put together a survival pack near your front door. I need to do the same, too. A deadly earthquake is due to hit this region any possible day, according to experts. Then again, if the predicted earthquake were to hit here, I'd be gone in seconds. This whole area by the coast would be liquefied. So, if you hear of Seattle and the coast stretching 30 - 40 miles north of it being wiped out or having severe damage from an earthquake, call me gone. (P.S. I'd live anywhere else but here, but I love my job, and my mom and sister would find it impossible to keep up with the bills. Plus, they're too stubborn to leave this city, and I care too much about them to leave them unprotected. Neither of them have much of a head on their shoulders. Most of their heads have been hacked off. They're both like a Nearly Headless Nick from the Harry Potter series. ...But enough with funny/weird similes. Time to force myself off the internet to tackle Life and win one of its clever, unpredictable games: A game called "tomorrow."
-------
January 21st:
Document 5: 6,162
January 22nd:
Document 5: 9,374
January 23rd:
Document 5: 10,867
January 24th:
Document 5: 10,913
-------
Oops. It's March 11th, and I haven't been updating this blog. Nothing bad has happened. Blogging just takes away portions of my writing time. I'll try blogging at the end of every month at least, so this won't happen again. I can't perfectly guarantee I will, as life can be unpredictable, but it's now my goal. So, sorry for not blogging this long. Now to catch up....
January 26th:
Document 5: 10,935
January 28th:
Document 5: 11,589
Friday, December 2, 2016
December 2016
December 1st: Document 3: 60,350 words total
Words written in this 24 hour day: 41 words
Each page and word count of book so far:
Document 1: 98 pages, 53,883 words
Document 2: 103 pages, 65,415 words
Document 3 (currently in progress): 104 pages, 60,355 words
Document 4 (where I left off): 54 pages, 32,586 words
Total pages count so far: 359 pages
Total book word count so far: 212,239 words
For comparison, it's longer than any of the Harry Potter books besides The Order of the Phoenix. Does it sound dauntingly long? Probably, but this is not the first book in the series, nor has it gone through much of any editing. Although I could remove some scenes, I choose to do that later, so I can look at the overall picture and decide which scenes are best omitted or shortened.
You never know how important a scene can be until you finish writing the book. So, if you're writing, don't worry about excessive word count for now. It's harder to fix things once you've taken too much out or the wrong things out. Plus, it's just a good way to distract you from writing and make you forget what you were going to write, which results in writer's block. That's one of the reasons why writers, teachers, etc. encourage you to just write your book or paper as a rough draft to get your thoughts to come out and not stop, then revise it and pretty it up into a final draft.
Anyway, I'm having trouble staying awake at the moment (It's 1:20 AM of December 2nd, but I had to get up an hour early yesterday morning on December 1st). I'm wiped out. Good night!
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December 2nd:
Document 3: 60,369 words
December 3rd:
Document 3: 60,462 Finished Document 3! Onto Document 4! 😃
Document 4: 32,689 words
December 4th:
Document 4: 32,733 words
The word count is creeping along rather slowly because I haven't been needing to edit or add in much. It's getting towards the end of my task. I'm on page 35 of 54. Once I have read (and edited where need be) down to where I left off several months ago, then I'll finally get back into actually writing again. I'm both excited and nervous about it. Will I know what to write, next? Will I hit a wall of indecision with a variety of choices? Several things have yet to happen, and I'll have to decide what order they'll be in. I usually just write and let things happen as the story goes along, but I'm always afraid of getting writer's block.
If I let myself be indecisive and not do anything for too long, I might sort of give up or get lazy (get too comfortable with doing nothing), then hit the wall of writer's block. For me, when writer's block hits, I can't write for a long time. When I think about writing during writer's block, I picture writing as an exhausting and difficult feat, and moan in my thoughts, "Too hard!" Then I force myself to do or think of something else. Guilt tears me down over time, so I try not to go without writing for too long.
Okay, time to write! 😄
Oh, I forgot to mention: Yesterday, I visited a mall I haven't seen in 7 or 8 years. It was when I was living with my abusive aunt, so the trip was... um.... I can't quite place it in one word, but I had a flashback passing by a certain store she took me to when she was shopping for her own clothes. That day she was very angry and unpredictable. I can't remember what she was angry about, and I don't want to remember. All I know is she was so angry, I never liked passing by there. I would close my eyes so I wouldn't have to look at it. Well, I closed my eyes yesterday for the same reason, even though I didn't remember doing that years earlier. I guess some old habits never change. Anyway, I didn't have any more flashbacks for the rest of the trip, but I did have countless feelings of strange, unsettling, and somewhat uncomfortable deja vu. Certain other stores, streets, buildings, etc. Thankfully, so much had changed in the mall over 7 or 8 years (There was a lot of construction going on at the mall at the time, which made the mall become even bigger.), I had very little memory of the inside. I kept getting lost. Only a fountain, four stores, and the food court seemed familiar to me. But I had fun. A friend of mine was supposed to meet me there later, so I browsed, shopped, and ate food by myself, which allowed me to shrug off feelings of limitation. You would not believe how strict that woman was. My aunt did not let a living, breathing moment go by with me being alone in public, and she never let me go hang out with friends anywhere. I always wanted to go to the mall or theatres with a friend. I never had friends who were the rough dangerous type. Being a quiet shy girl, I had few friends, but they were all good, caring friends. But nobody knew what was happening back at "home". They had no idea I was living in total isolation for months at a time with few but a grandma who didn't want to get involved, a cousin who kept to himself, and an aunt who was verbally abusive, controlling, and ...dehumanizing. It's a harsh word, but I often felt like she was trying to limit me so much as to limit my very identity.
...Oh man. I just had a flashback just now. My mom was unlocking the front door behind me, and I felt like my aunt was opening my bedroom door. I can't type about this anymore. I need to stop thinking of these past things. It's too soon. Yesterday was a mind-bending event in my life, and it's too early for me to start thinking of the old memories again. It's always too early. It would be best if I never thought of any of it ever again. Just let my past be thought of as just a nightmare. Like it never really happened. ...But I won't go crazy thinking this. I know it all happened for real, I just want to not let it be part of me. Just as my mom used to say when I was a kid: "Don't worry, honey. It was just a bad dream." The bad parts of my past are not to be worried or thought about, only to be forgotten as though it was all a bad dream.
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Yahoo! I did it! I read and editing the book! Now I can finally get back to writing the book in its proper order knowing exactly what to write next! ...I think. Heheheh. 😄 I might have to make a list of things for my characters to do before they leave a certain place. That day is coming up fast.
...Hey! I haven't done that in a long time, have I? *smirks* Given you little hints of what I'm currently writing? Hahaha! Old habits die hard, don't they? X'D It's 10:53 PM of December 5th right now, so once I hit midnight or decide to stop writing before then, I'll put in today's word count.
December 5th:
Document 4: 33,477 words
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December 6th:
Document 4: 33,738 words
December 7th:
Document 4: 34,426 words (So far. It's 1:34 AM. Time for a quick shower, then bed. My cat had a nightmare that involved whiny growling a little bit ago, so I woke her and gave her catnip. She was happy and rolled in it. Since then, she's been sleeping in my lap as usual, but she's gotten so heavy, it's cramping up my leg! She's not fat in the least, though. I think it's just a little winter fat, since this started in Fall. ...I can't stay awake typing this. Ugh....)
P.S. My grandma went to the ER this evening after falling in her house, but there are nor broken bones to speak of, and she's back at home resting.
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December 8th:
Document 4: 35,169 words
It finally snowed! The weather forecast this week kept predicting 1 - 3'' of snow for a few days this week, but I kept getting disappointed with nothing. Then, a more certain prediction said it would definitely snow tonight. I kept waiting, looking out the window, waiting, looking out the window. Then, after I had given up most hope, I looked outside one more time and there it was! Light snowfall and gusts of strong wind!
Knowing how this area is reputed to have short-lived snow, I thanked God for the little cheer-me-up, not caring if it only lasted 10 minutes. I was glad it snowed. It ended up snowing lightly for about an hour, then it stopped.
Otherwise, not much else happening in life. I went to a dollar store and was able to find a bunch of stocking stuffers for Christmas. Everything from candy to toys. It's great because the energy and phone bills have gotten higher lately, so there's been a need to save money. I'm not sure why the phone bill has gotten so high (I think it's because the phone company decided to change its costs a little bit, but we'll call them and find out.), but the energy bill has gotten higher because we've been running the heater more often. It's been cold lately. Last night, it was 19 F (-7.22 C).
It doesn't usually get that cold here, so we're not used to it. My mom and I both get cold easily. For instance, I've been using hand warmer packets to keep my hands warm. Otherwise, my hands feel like ice and get stiff. When I feel cold, and my hands feel cold, then I get uncomfortable and restless, resulting in less writing. Because not only am I distracted by my bodily discomfort (reality), but my brain can't think or focus as well as it needs to (slower brain function = little imagination).
My way of getting warm at home: Fuzzy pajamas, fuzzy bathrobe, slipper socks (fuzzy or knitted), heater, warm-hot tea (I don't like food and drinks too hot. Burning my tongue ruins taste, and I prefer to enjoy flavor over trying to be tough.), holding my hands under running hot water, and I just recently started trying hand warmers.
...I just looked outside!! It snowed a lot more!! 😃
...I can barely type this. Or read this for that matter. I was on the porch taking pictures and videos of the snow (It's supposed to rain in the wee hours of the morning), so my fingers are numb and my glasses are fogged up. ...Okay, I put my glasses back on. It's just a little fogy in the corners, but I can still see out of them.
Brr! It's 30 degrees! Yep, I'm a wimp compared to most of the rest of you. Western Washington is known for its mild temperatures, so I don't doubt many of you are used to much colder temperatures.
But I love snow. I don't care if it gets cold, I love seeing and playing in snow. I'm a 24 year old woman who loves building snowmen, and I plan on trying new things with it. Two years ago, I put a little glitter on mine for an extra sparkle. Maybe if I get more snow that will last longer, I'll build a snow dragon! Last year's little bit of snow didn't stick very well (It was that annoying powdery kind), but I hope this year will be my opportunity to explore my abilities.
...I'm too sleepy to upload you pictures of the snow! I was sitting here looking through the video I took of the snow and making still images within the video, but I can't continue. I have to go to bed now. I can't stay awake. Goodbye, snow! 😞 The rain will probably melt it all before I wake up tomorrow.
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Guess what I did? I built a snow dragon! 😁
4 videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF07Q8clXG4SllWxBBjy4yTp8LE6m4HGl
But yeah, I had fun anyway. Oh! I almost forgot! I made one other thing:
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December 10th:
Document 4: 36,574 words
December 11th:
Document 4: 37,313 words
All of the snow melted by the next morning, by the way. 😢 But that's usually what happens around here. It snows once or twice a year, and it usually doesn't last long, either. We usually get a lot of rain in fall, winter and spring, and if it isn't raining, it's cloudy or windy or all three at the same time. I wish we had more snow! 😫
And nothing new much happening otherwise. I've been doing a little Christmas shopping, including going to a dollar store for stocking stuffers and taking my sister to the mall to find gifts for our mom. She bought one thing for me, but it doesn't take much to make me happy.
I was going to bake some cookies tonight, but my left arm is sore from pulling a bunch of board books from the shelves for inspection. Since babies are prone to making messes, chewing or sucking on books, and ripping lift-the-flap board books, we check for damage or yucky stuff. (P.S. If you ever come across a damaged or yucky book in a library, or you accidentally damage it or make it dirty or sticky, always feel free to notify library staff so they can clean or fix it. Don't try to do it yourself! 😊 )
Even though it can be gross or sad seeing damaged books, I find the task fun. I like prettying up displays and making things better, organizing and cleaning and the like. It's something that's hard-wired in my brain. It's largely because my mom had so much trouble with my brother making messes and throwing tantrums all the time, I'd end up being the one fetching items and doing favors for her. It was really the only times when I felt noticed, loved, and appreciated as a child, because all other times I was slow-minded, clumsy, a coward, and wanted to help when I couldn't. It was hard watching the world around me fall apart all the time.
Anyway, tomorrow and the next day will involve plenty of cookie-baking! 😁 I'll be baking peanut butter cookies, and chocolate chip cookie Christmas trees. The trees will be simple: Bake cookies of differing sizes, then "glue" them together in a stack from large to small with icing. I saw the idea on Pinterest, and I loved it for its beautiful simplicity:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/451274825146428527/
I'm not sure if I'd add that much icing, though. I don't want it to be too messy when friends separate the cookies. I might add the sprinkles. I'm not sure, yet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ *shrugs*
I'm not sure if I'll be able to write the day after tomorrow (I'll try to write tonight past midnight for tomorrow's writing), but we'll see.
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December 12th:
Document 4: 37,578 words
December 13th:
Document 4: 37,643 words
December 16th:
Document 4: 40,889 words
I made these (and this video)! Details later. I'm busy writing at the moment.
https://youtu.be/nY93ZK1TBsA
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December 17th:
Document 4: 41,213 words
December 18th:
Document 4: 42,199 words
December 19th:
Document 4: 42,422 words
The cookies were for some friends. I don't know if I mentioned that, but I'm too tired to care at the moment to check.
I know I keep saying this, but I'll share you the results of the chocolate chip cookies very soon. It just takes time to upload it via a memory card, and I'm running low on energy. I had 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night because I was writing, not paying attention to the time, took a shower, and had to figure out why my cell phone alarm wasn't setting on vibrate instead of stupid ringtones.
I get major panic attacks when I'm startled awake by loud noises. Many times in the past, I've hyperventilated, had heart palpitations, suffered massive confusion, and had a sense of unreality. In my confused state, I'd freak out and fumble with the buttons trying to figure out how to make the cell phone shut up. It first started happening to me when I was about 14 or 15 and had an alarm clock with super loud bells inside it (My cruel-as-always aunt thought it work to make me unable to fall back asleep after my alarm would go off. She was wrong.). It's pitiful. Reminds me of my grandma when she'd jump at the sound of her old house phone howling "GOOOOOOOOO!!!" super loud when she'd accidentally set the phone to speaker phone. Although I felt sorry for her when she fumbled with the buttons a second or two more, I'd also laugh the next moment when she'd snap at it, "OH! SHUT! UP!" and slam the phone down on the receiver to silence it. ...Come to think of it, I think I've told you that same story before. AGH! I really am like a grandma! *facepalm*
Despair aside, it's getting late, I want to write just a little before I head to bed, and I could have had that picture up by now with the amount of time I spent writing this. Oh well. Here's the picture of the peanut butter cookies I baked, though. The picture is on the very bottom of the post: http://pumpkinsrandomprojects.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-best-peanut-butter-cookies-youll.html
P.S. Those who tried the cookies all said they loved them. Yay! ^_^ 😊❤ Making others happy makes me happy. It's one of the biggest things in my life that helps keep me going.
Oh! I almost forgot! I might be too busy to write until after Christmas. I have to run a ton of errands and do so many things.
Tonight, I went through the gifts I bought, and it ends up most of them are stocking stuffers from the dollar store. Eheheheheh.... 😓😖😩 Only 5-ish gifts each, and all but one each are small. Sooooo, I'm going to have to get some last minute things. But don't worry. I know where to go.
I also have to buy myself new shoes. I'm not a shoe person, as I only have three pairs: One pair of sneakers I wear every day, one pair of dress shoes (I rarely wear dresses and skirts because there are too many creeps living in this city, and because I want to be able to run or get on my knees at any given time without worrying about a wardrobe malfunction. I used to live on farms, after all. I have no patience for pretty things getting dirty or damaged.), and one pair of snow boots (and it rarely snows more than 3 times a year here). My sneakers are worn out and are hurting my feet. I've been too busy to go to the shoe store, so I've been having to stretch out my agony for a few more months. What's crazy is these shoes only lasted me 4 months before they started hurting my feet and wearing out. And they're Sketchers! I remember when Sketchers used to make excellent, long-lasting shoes. But the good old days are called that for a reason, right? Nothing is ever like what it used to be. Everything made by big companies is over-industrialized, and they have money on their minds more than the hearts of their customers. It's sad, but I figure I'll just keep searching for good brands and boycott the bad ones. Not this time, though. I want to save money for gifts, so I'll go to the cheap Payless Shoesource and buy the only brand of sneakers they sell: Cheap, old Champion shoes. It's better than paying $50+ for shoes that will last 4 months. Champion shoes last me about 6 or 7 months before they wore out and abuse my feet.
But first, tomorrow (Ha! Today! It's the wee morning of December 20th, after all. Speaking of which, it's 2:01 AM. Ack!), I have to go to the post office to send my brother's box (He's disabled and lives in a group home for adult men with disabilities), as well as a box to a... certain friend in Renfrew, Ontario, Canada. ...Okay, I'll tell you. It's Matt McDougall. He's the one-man-show behind the YouTube channel, "50 Ducks In A Hot Tub" (https://www.youtube.com/user/moviematcanada/videos). My family watches his show almost on a daily basis, so we feel like we've become good friends with him. I've sent him a package before, and he appreciates gifts and donations from fans all around the world. He's had European chocolate (His favorite!) sent to him, duck slippers sent from a random person, cute things sent to him from somewhere in Asia, even a drone sent from a fan from the USA. He recently broke it by crashing it in his trees, though. I feel so sorry for him. He tried fixing it, but something is damaged in the motors, so no more drone footage. For now. Maybe someone will send him a new one.
Anyway, I could rattle on, but now I definitely need to go to bed. No writing tonight. ...I ...I don't want to close it. I really want to write. But last night, I got 3 1/2 hours of sleep. Time to be more strict with myself. *closes book document* It makes me feel bad not writing, and I definitely act differently on social media when I miss a night of writing (I either get super wordy and come up with wild ideas and jokes and puns, etc., or I get restless and not know what to say to anybody). We'll see what I'm like tomorrow (daytime).
...But again, I'm going to busy until after Christmas, so I'm not sure if I'll even write between now and then. We'll see where the waters of life flows and go with the flow of it.
Oh, and if in case I forget that day: Merry Christmas! 😃 And it doesn't matter if you don't celebrate it. It's a holiday about love, and one way to show you my love is to tell you I care about all of you.
Unless nobody reads my blog. Then I guess I've been writing to my imaginary friends and future self. It is like a diary, after all. I tell you about my day, what has happened, what I expect to come, what ends up happening instead, what I learn, what I hope, what I dream about, all kinds of personal things. But figuring how Google Stats tells me otherwise, that I do get views, I'll keep believing I have some very good listeners who listen to me ramble and don't interrupt me, no matter what. Lol.
*Ahem* Time for bed. It's 2:39 AM, dummy! 😲
Anyway, I wish you all happy and safe holidays and the rest of 2016, no matter where you are, who you are, or what you celebrate! ^_^
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December 26th:
Document 4: 46,878 words
December 27th:
Document 4: 47,652 words
Sorry I didn't update you on how my Christmas went. I've been tired lately. It went well. Better than last year, when my sister was a selfish snob who complained of having fewer presents than Mom, even though I gave them the same amount. This year, I didn't have as much money to spend (The bills have gotten higher.), and I didn't know what to give them, so there were fewer gifts, and a lot less "wow" to the gifts.
I gave my sister owl pajamas, a small "mermaid" pillow, and dolphin-shaped slippers. The rest were smaller, insignificant gifts I can't remember. Mostly candy, I think.
As for my mom, I gave her new slippers (Her old ones were making her feet itch), several pairs of Christmas earrings (She loves Christmas year-round. They were on clearance at the mall, too!), an Alice in Wonderland DVD, and a nice cheese cutter. It's made in Germany. The handle of our old cheese cutter broke a long time ago, and since she's the one who most often cuts cheese, I knew she would love it. This should save her hand, which has been hurting lately.
You know what's funny about that? I had plans of throwing away or hiding our old one Christmas Eve night, and wouldn't you know it? I forgot to do that, and yet she couldn't find it anywhere a day or two before Christmas, anyway! 😄
And the day was pretty relaxed. We stayed home all day, enjoying our presents and the company of each other.
Oh, I forgot about my gifts: I received several slipper socks (I love those because my feet get cold easily, and my old ones had worn holes in the heels), flexible slipper boots (I hate the popular slippers nowadays that have rubber bottoms. I understand they enable you to walk outside, but why can't it be easier to find the other, non-rubber kind? The soft, flexible slipper boots keep my legs warm where they would otherwise not be completely covered by my pajama pants, and I'm able to wear them in bed, too. I used to have a pair when I was a teen, and I've never had a love for any other kind of slipper since. I'm really thankful my mom found a pair.), soft blankets, a large bean bag chair identical to my sister's (Because the little brat gets jealous all the time.), a Howl's Moving Castle t-shirt (Calcifer: "May all your bacon burn."), a glass mug for tea, an arm-knitting kit with instructions (I really want to learn how to knit, but I've failed to see where my knitting needles need to be and in which directions to move them. Book diagrams are often poorly illustrated, and video tutorials move too fast, so maybe if I didn't need needles, I'd understand the concept better? ...But I still want to learn how to knit with needles. I've been wanting to learn ever since I was a teenager. I think I need someone to help guide my hands and needles so I can see the directions with my own eyes. I'm spatially challenged, I guess. But I have a couple of friends who knit, so maybe one of these days when they're not busy, I can bring my yarn and needles with me and ask them for help. ...I'm a wimp when it comes to asking for help. I'm too afraid of inconveniencing people by taking up their "Me" time.), a 2-DVD set of the first season of The Amanda Show (which is a show I loved growing up), and I can't remember what else. But I loved everything given to me. (Last year, I was given several things that I never ended up using, and I feel bad about it. Example: Money origami book. I'm not good at making origami, so making complex creations using non-square-shaped paper sounds like a daunting challenge. I'm hardly much better than when I could hardly make an origami cat 8 years ago. I just have a 2D mind. Even when I write, it's often difficult for me to get sizes, shapes, and proportions correct in my head. But thankfully this time I didn't have to feel bad about anything other than one pair of slipper socks I know will be too tight on me, and I think I know a smaller, less fortunate friend who I can give it to who needs it far more than I do.)
My sister had never watched it before, and I was excited about watching it for the first time in many years, so I was able to introduce that to her. I had very little memory of what was in the show, so in some way I was a little afraid that I might not like it as much as I did when I was a kid. I already felt horrible about my disappointed impressions of Rugrats, CatDog, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and a few others, but thankfully my love of The Amanda Show was renewed. Some elements of the show finally came back to me, awakening memories I thought I had long forgotten.
So, after unwrapping presents and cleanup, we watched The Amanda Show, ate candy and cookies, and relaxed the rest of the day. After The Amanda Show was over, I went on my computer to check on family and friends who lived abroad, my mom baked turkey (We don't normally have a Christmas feast, but somebody gave the frozen turkey to us, so we figured we might as well eat it on Christmas), and my sister watched a movie I gave her (She loves The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe).
Sweetie, my black Siamese-mix writing companion and best friend, was (and still is) in heat, so she hasn't had a clear head to enjoy her new toys, yet. Sandy, our black Labrador retriever, gobbled up the treats I got her, loves the big bone my mom found at the health food store, and loves sleeping on her new bed (She has hip displasia, so it's becoming hard for her to jump on the couch to sleep, so my mom gave her a bed to sleep on the floor.). Tree, our pet mouse (so-named for a tree design in her fur), loved the goodies in her tiny stocking and loved her first adventure inside her mouse ball. She had fun running around the apartment for a while until I put her back in her cage so she could have water and food. The silly mouse didn't want to come out of the ball at first, because she was having so much fun! But it had been about an hour of play.
...Okay. I need to head to bed. Last night, I was up late, and I only got 4 hours of sleep. I wanted to write last night and tonight, but I must hold myself back one more day. I wanted to focus on this blog post so I wouldn't keep you waiting and so you wouldn't worry that Christmas turned out horrible for me or something. It's 2:09 AM, Thursday, December 29th. Good night. ZZZZZZZZZ 😴
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December 29th:
Document 4: 49,311* words
*Approximate. I forgot to stop at 11:59 PM or 12:00 AM and record my word count. I removed a few hundred words at 12:30-ish, so this word count comes close.
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December 30th:
Document 4: 50,382 words
Words written in this 24 hour day: 41 words
Each page and word count of book so far:
Document 1: 98 pages, 53,883 words
Document 2: 103 pages, 65,415 words
Document 3 (currently in progress): 104 pages, 60,355 words
Document 4 (where I left off): 54 pages, 32,586 words
Total pages count so far: 359 pages
Total book word count so far: 212,239 words
For comparison, it's longer than any of the Harry Potter books besides The Order of the Phoenix. Does it sound dauntingly long? Probably, but this is not the first book in the series, nor has it gone through much of any editing. Although I could remove some scenes, I choose to do that later, so I can look at the overall picture and decide which scenes are best omitted or shortened.
You never know how important a scene can be until you finish writing the book. So, if you're writing, don't worry about excessive word count for now. It's harder to fix things once you've taken too much out or the wrong things out. Plus, it's just a good way to distract you from writing and make you forget what you were going to write, which results in writer's block. That's one of the reasons why writers, teachers, etc. encourage you to just write your book or paper as a rough draft to get your thoughts to come out and not stop, then revise it and pretty it up into a final draft.
Anyway, I'm having trouble staying awake at the moment (It's 1:20 AM of December 2nd, but I had to get up an hour early yesterday morning on December 1st). I'm wiped out. Good night!
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December 2nd:
Document 3: 60,369 words
December 3rd:
Document 3: 60,462 Finished Document 3! Onto Document 4! 😃
Document 4: 32,689 words
December 4th:
Document 4: 32,733 words
The word count is creeping along rather slowly because I haven't been needing to edit or add in much. It's getting towards the end of my task. I'm on page 35 of 54. Once I have read (and edited where need be) down to where I left off several months ago, then I'll finally get back into actually writing again. I'm both excited and nervous about it. Will I know what to write, next? Will I hit a wall of indecision with a variety of choices? Several things have yet to happen, and I'll have to decide what order they'll be in. I usually just write and let things happen as the story goes along, but I'm always afraid of getting writer's block.
If I let myself be indecisive and not do anything for too long, I might sort of give up or get lazy (get too comfortable with doing nothing), then hit the wall of writer's block. For me, when writer's block hits, I can't write for a long time. When I think about writing during writer's block, I picture writing as an exhausting and difficult feat, and moan in my thoughts, "Too hard!" Then I force myself to do or think of something else. Guilt tears me down over time, so I try not to go without writing for too long.
Okay, time to write! 😄
Oh, I forgot to mention: Yesterday, I visited a mall I haven't seen in 7 or 8 years. It was when I was living with my abusive aunt, so the trip was... um.... I can't quite place it in one word, but I had a flashback passing by a certain store she took me to when she was shopping for her own clothes. That day she was very angry and unpredictable. I can't remember what she was angry about, and I don't want to remember. All I know is she was so angry, I never liked passing by there. I would close my eyes so I wouldn't have to look at it. Well, I closed my eyes yesterday for the same reason, even though I didn't remember doing that years earlier. I guess some old habits never change. Anyway, I didn't have any more flashbacks for the rest of the trip, but I did have countless feelings of strange, unsettling, and somewhat uncomfortable deja vu. Certain other stores, streets, buildings, etc. Thankfully, so much had changed in the mall over 7 or 8 years (There was a lot of construction going on at the mall at the time, which made the mall become even bigger.), I had very little memory of the inside. I kept getting lost. Only a fountain, four stores, and the food court seemed familiar to me. But I had fun. A friend of mine was supposed to meet me there later, so I browsed, shopped, and ate food by myself, which allowed me to shrug off feelings of limitation. You would not believe how strict that woman was. My aunt did not let a living, breathing moment go by with me being alone in public, and she never let me go hang out with friends anywhere. I always wanted to go to the mall or theatres with a friend. I never had friends who were the rough dangerous type. Being a quiet shy girl, I had few friends, but they were all good, caring friends. But nobody knew what was happening back at "home". They had no idea I was living in total isolation for months at a time with few but a grandma who didn't want to get involved, a cousin who kept to himself, and an aunt who was verbally abusive, controlling, and ...dehumanizing. It's a harsh word, but I often felt like she was trying to limit me so much as to limit my very identity.
...Oh man. I just had a flashback just now. My mom was unlocking the front door behind me, and I felt like my aunt was opening my bedroom door. I can't type about this anymore. I need to stop thinking of these past things. It's too soon. Yesterday was a mind-bending event in my life, and it's too early for me to start thinking of the old memories again. It's always too early. It would be best if I never thought of any of it ever again. Just let my past be thought of as just a nightmare. Like it never really happened. ...But I won't go crazy thinking this. I know it all happened for real, I just want to not let it be part of me. Just as my mom used to say when I was a kid: "Don't worry, honey. It was just a bad dream." The bad parts of my past are not to be worried or thought about, only to be forgotten as though it was all a bad dream.
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Yahoo! I did it! I read and editing the book! Now I can finally get back to writing the book in its proper order knowing exactly what to write next! ...I think. Heheheh. 😄 I might have to make a list of things for my characters to do before they leave a certain place. That day is coming up fast.
...Hey! I haven't done that in a long time, have I? *smirks* Given you little hints of what I'm currently writing? Hahaha! Old habits die hard, don't they? X'D It's 10:53 PM of December 5th right now, so once I hit midnight or decide to stop writing before then, I'll put in today's word count.
December 5th:
Document 4: 33,477 words
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December 6th:
Document 4: 33,738 words
December 7th:
Document 4: 34,426 words (So far. It's 1:34 AM. Time for a quick shower, then bed. My cat had a nightmare that involved whiny growling a little bit ago, so I woke her and gave her catnip. She was happy and rolled in it. Since then, she's been sleeping in my lap as usual, but she's gotten so heavy, it's cramping up my leg! She's not fat in the least, though. I think it's just a little winter fat, since this started in Fall. ...I can't stay awake typing this. Ugh....)
P.S. My grandma went to the ER this evening after falling in her house, but there are nor broken bones to speak of, and she's back at home resting.
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December 8th:
Document 4: 35,169 words
It finally snowed! The weather forecast this week kept predicting 1 - 3'' of snow for a few days this week, but I kept getting disappointed with nothing. Then, a more certain prediction said it would definitely snow tonight. I kept waiting, looking out the window, waiting, looking out the window. Then, after I had given up most hope, I looked outside one more time and there it was! Light snowfall and gusts of strong wind!
Knowing how this area is reputed to have short-lived snow, I thanked God for the little cheer-me-up, not caring if it only lasted 10 minutes. I was glad it snowed. It ended up snowing lightly for about an hour, then it stopped.
Otherwise, not much else happening in life. I went to a dollar store and was able to find a bunch of stocking stuffers for Christmas. Everything from candy to toys. It's great because the energy and phone bills have gotten higher lately, so there's been a need to save money. I'm not sure why the phone bill has gotten so high (I think it's because the phone company decided to change its costs a little bit, but we'll call them and find out.), but the energy bill has gotten higher because we've been running the heater more often. It's been cold lately. Last night, it was 19 F (-7.22 C).
It doesn't usually get that cold here, so we're not used to it. My mom and I both get cold easily. For instance, I've been using hand warmer packets to keep my hands warm. Otherwise, my hands feel like ice and get stiff. When I feel cold, and my hands feel cold, then I get uncomfortable and restless, resulting in less writing. Because not only am I distracted by my bodily discomfort (reality), but my brain can't think or focus as well as it needs to (slower brain function = little imagination).
My way of getting warm at home: Fuzzy pajamas, fuzzy bathrobe, slipper socks (fuzzy or knitted), heater, warm-hot tea (I don't like food and drinks too hot. Burning my tongue ruins taste, and I prefer to enjoy flavor over trying to be tough.), holding my hands under running hot water, and I just recently started trying hand warmers.
...I just looked outside!! It snowed a lot more!! 😃
...I can barely type this. Or read this for that matter. I was on the porch taking pictures and videos of the snow (It's supposed to rain in the wee hours of the morning), so my fingers are numb and my glasses are fogged up. ...Okay, I put my glasses back on. It's just a little fogy in the corners, but I can still see out of them.
Brr! It's 30 degrees! Yep, I'm a wimp compared to most of the rest of you. Western Washington is known for its mild temperatures, so I don't doubt many of you are used to much colder temperatures.
But I love snow. I don't care if it gets cold, I love seeing and playing in snow. I'm a 24 year old woman who loves building snowmen, and I plan on trying new things with it. Two years ago, I put a little glitter on mine for an extra sparkle. Maybe if I get more snow that will last longer, I'll build a snow dragon! Last year's little bit of snow didn't stick very well (It was that annoying powdery kind), but I hope this year will be my opportunity to explore my abilities.
...I'm too sleepy to upload you pictures of the snow! I was sitting here looking through the video I took of the snow and making still images within the video, but I can't continue. I have to go to bed now. I can't stay awake. Goodbye, snow! 😞 The rain will probably melt it all before I wake up tomorrow.
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Guess what I did? I built a snow dragon! 😁
4 videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF07Q8clXG4SllWxBBjy4yTp8LE6m4HGl
The spiked tail and hips:
The finished dragon (with a bucket head):
I couldn't finish it because I was cold from being outside for 3 hours, and the temperature was rising, which was making the snow clump up. That's why the wings look so lumpy. It was hard to make it stick together. The bucket head? Same reason. I knew if I started on it, I wouldn't be able to stop until it had high detail. Maybe next time. This was the first snow dragon I had ever made. All others I've ever made were snowmen. It was fun. 😊
Oh, and that day (December 9th), I did not write a single word. Oops! After I was done with the snow dragon, I went home and made myself some genmaicha tea.
It's probably my favorite tea. I also like pu-ehr tea, but only if it's high quality and very expensive. I only tried it once, at the Seattle Tea Festival, but I loved it.
Anyway, it took a long time for me to get warm again. My fingers were almost impossible to get warm again. That's one of the reasons why I couldn't write. I was also too cold to think, and I only had 6 hours of sleep the night before. I didn't remember that and didn't mention it in any of the videos.But yeah, I had fun anyway. Oh! I almost forgot! I made one other thing:
Before I started on the snow dragon, I made this with the bucket (before the wind knocked it down):
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December 10th:
Document 4: 36,574 words
December 11th:
Document 4: 37,313 words
All of the snow melted by the next morning, by the way. 😢 But that's usually what happens around here. It snows once or twice a year, and it usually doesn't last long, either. We usually get a lot of rain in fall, winter and spring, and if it isn't raining, it's cloudy or windy or all three at the same time. I wish we had more snow! 😫
And nothing new much happening otherwise. I've been doing a little Christmas shopping, including going to a dollar store for stocking stuffers and taking my sister to the mall to find gifts for our mom. She bought one thing for me, but it doesn't take much to make me happy.
I was going to bake some cookies tonight, but my left arm is sore from pulling a bunch of board books from the shelves for inspection. Since babies are prone to making messes, chewing or sucking on books, and ripping lift-the-flap board books, we check for damage or yucky stuff. (P.S. If you ever come across a damaged or yucky book in a library, or you accidentally damage it or make it dirty or sticky, always feel free to notify library staff so they can clean or fix it. Don't try to do it yourself! 😊 )
Even though it can be gross or sad seeing damaged books, I find the task fun. I like prettying up displays and making things better, organizing and cleaning and the like. It's something that's hard-wired in my brain. It's largely because my mom had so much trouble with my brother making messes and throwing tantrums all the time, I'd end up being the one fetching items and doing favors for her. It was really the only times when I felt noticed, loved, and appreciated as a child, because all other times I was slow-minded, clumsy, a coward, and wanted to help when I couldn't. It was hard watching the world around me fall apart all the time.
Anyway, tomorrow and the next day will involve plenty of cookie-baking! 😁 I'll be baking peanut butter cookies, and chocolate chip cookie Christmas trees. The trees will be simple: Bake cookies of differing sizes, then "glue" them together in a stack from large to small with icing. I saw the idea on Pinterest, and I loved it for its beautiful simplicity:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/451274825146428527/
If you can't see it in the link:
I'm not sure if I'd add that much icing, though. I don't want it to be too messy when friends separate the cookies. I might add the sprinkles. I'm not sure, yet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ *shrugs*
I'm not sure if I'll be able to write the day after tomorrow (I'll try to write tonight past midnight for tomorrow's writing), but we'll see.
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December 12th:
Document 4: 37,578 words
December 13th:
Document 4: 37,643 words
December 16th:
Document 4: 40,889 words
I made these (and this video)! Details later. I'm busy writing at the moment.
https://youtu.be/nY93ZK1TBsA
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December 17th:
Document 4: 41,213 words
December 18th:
Document 4: 42,199 words
December 19th:
Document 4: 42,422 words
The cookies were for some friends. I don't know if I mentioned that, but I'm too tired to care at the moment to check.
I know I keep saying this, but I'll share you the results of the chocolate chip cookies very soon. It just takes time to upload it via a memory card, and I'm running low on energy. I had 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night because I was writing, not paying attention to the time, took a shower, and had to figure out why my cell phone alarm wasn't setting on vibrate instead of stupid ringtones.
I get major panic attacks when I'm startled awake by loud noises. Many times in the past, I've hyperventilated, had heart palpitations, suffered massive confusion, and had a sense of unreality. In my confused state, I'd freak out and fumble with the buttons trying to figure out how to make the cell phone shut up. It first started happening to me when I was about 14 or 15 and had an alarm clock with super loud bells inside it (My cruel-as-always aunt thought it work to make me unable to fall back asleep after my alarm would go off. She was wrong.). It's pitiful. Reminds me of my grandma when she'd jump at the sound of her old house phone howling "GOOOOOOOOO!!!" super loud when she'd accidentally set the phone to speaker phone. Although I felt sorry for her when she fumbled with the buttons a second or two more, I'd also laugh the next moment when she'd snap at it, "OH! SHUT! UP!" and slam the phone down on the receiver to silence it. ...Come to think of it, I think I've told you that same story before. AGH! I really am like a grandma! *facepalm*
Despair aside, it's getting late, I want to write just a little before I head to bed, and I could have had that picture up by now with the amount of time I spent writing this. Oh well. Here's the picture of the peanut butter cookies I baked, though. The picture is on the very bottom of the post: http://pumpkinsrandomprojects.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-best-peanut-butter-cookies-youll.html
P.S. Those who tried the cookies all said they loved them. Yay! ^_^ 😊❤ Making others happy makes me happy. It's one of the biggest things in my life that helps keep me going.
Oh! I almost forgot! I might be too busy to write until after Christmas. I have to run a ton of errands and do so many things.
Tonight, I went through the gifts I bought, and it ends up most of them are stocking stuffers from the dollar store. Eheheheheh.... 😓😖😩 Only 5-ish gifts each, and all but one each are small. Sooooo, I'm going to have to get some last minute things. But don't worry. I know where to go.
I also have to buy myself new shoes. I'm not a shoe person, as I only have three pairs: One pair of sneakers I wear every day, one pair of dress shoes (I rarely wear dresses and skirts because there are too many creeps living in this city, and because I want to be able to run or get on my knees at any given time without worrying about a wardrobe malfunction. I used to live on farms, after all. I have no patience for pretty things getting dirty or damaged.), and one pair of snow boots (and it rarely snows more than 3 times a year here). My sneakers are worn out and are hurting my feet. I've been too busy to go to the shoe store, so I've been having to stretch out my agony for a few more months. What's crazy is these shoes only lasted me 4 months before they started hurting my feet and wearing out. And they're Sketchers! I remember when Sketchers used to make excellent, long-lasting shoes. But the good old days are called that for a reason, right? Nothing is ever like what it used to be. Everything made by big companies is over-industrialized, and they have money on their minds more than the hearts of their customers. It's sad, but I figure I'll just keep searching for good brands and boycott the bad ones. Not this time, though. I want to save money for gifts, so I'll go to the cheap Payless Shoesource and buy the only brand of sneakers they sell: Cheap, old Champion shoes. It's better than paying $50+ for shoes that will last 4 months. Champion shoes last me about 6 or 7 months before they wore out and abuse my feet.
But first, tomorrow (Ha! Today! It's the wee morning of December 20th, after all. Speaking of which, it's 2:01 AM. Ack!), I have to go to the post office to send my brother's box (He's disabled and lives in a group home for adult men with disabilities), as well as a box to a... certain friend in Renfrew, Ontario, Canada. ...Okay, I'll tell you. It's Matt McDougall. He's the one-man-show behind the YouTube channel, "50 Ducks In A Hot Tub" (https://www.youtube.com/user/moviematcanada/videos). My family watches his show almost on a daily basis, so we feel like we've become good friends with him. I've sent him a package before, and he appreciates gifts and donations from fans all around the world. He's had European chocolate (His favorite!) sent to him, duck slippers sent from a random person, cute things sent to him from somewhere in Asia, even a drone sent from a fan from the USA. He recently broke it by crashing it in his trees, though. I feel so sorry for him. He tried fixing it, but something is damaged in the motors, so no more drone footage. For now. Maybe someone will send him a new one.
Anyway, I could rattle on, but now I definitely need to go to bed. No writing tonight. ...I ...I don't want to close it. I really want to write. But last night, I got 3 1/2 hours of sleep. Time to be more strict with myself. *closes book document* It makes me feel bad not writing, and I definitely act differently on social media when I miss a night of writing (I either get super wordy and come up with wild ideas and jokes and puns, etc., or I get restless and not know what to say to anybody). We'll see what I'm like tomorrow (daytime).
...But again, I'm going to busy until after Christmas, so I'm not sure if I'll even write between now and then. We'll see where the waters of life flows and go with the flow of it.
Oh, and if in case I forget that day: Merry Christmas! 😃 And it doesn't matter if you don't celebrate it. It's a holiday about love, and one way to show you my love is to tell you I care about all of you.
Unless nobody reads my blog. Then I guess I've been writing to my imaginary friends and future self. It is like a diary, after all. I tell you about my day, what has happened, what I expect to come, what ends up happening instead, what I learn, what I hope, what I dream about, all kinds of personal things. But figuring how Google Stats tells me otherwise, that I do get views, I'll keep believing I have some very good listeners who listen to me ramble and don't interrupt me, no matter what. Lol.
*Ahem* Time for bed. It's 2:39 AM, dummy! 😲
Anyway, I wish you all happy and safe holidays and the rest of 2016, no matter where you are, who you are, or what you celebrate! ^_^
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December 26th:
Document 4: 46,878 words
December 27th:
Document 4: 47,652 words
Sorry I didn't update you on how my Christmas went. I've been tired lately. It went well. Better than last year, when my sister was a selfish snob who complained of having fewer presents than Mom, even though I gave them the same amount. This year, I didn't have as much money to spend (The bills have gotten higher.), and I didn't know what to give them, so there were fewer gifts, and a lot less "wow" to the gifts.
I gave my sister owl pajamas, a small "mermaid" pillow, and dolphin-shaped slippers. The rest were smaller, insignificant gifts I can't remember. Mostly candy, I think.
As for my mom, I gave her new slippers (Her old ones were making her feet itch), several pairs of Christmas earrings (She loves Christmas year-round. They were on clearance at the mall, too!), an Alice in Wonderland DVD, and a nice cheese cutter. It's made in Germany. The handle of our old cheese cutter broke a long time ago, and since she's the one who most often cuts cheese, I knew she would love it. This should save her hand, which has been hurting lately.
You know what's funny about that? I had plans of throwing away or hiding our old one Christmas Eve night, and wouldn't you know it? I forgot to do that, and yet she couldn't find it anywhere a day or two before Christmas, anyway! 😄
And the day was pretty relaxed. We stayed home all day, enjoying our presents and the company of each other.
Oh, I forgot about my gifts: I received several slipper socks (I love those because my feet get cold easily, and my old ones had worn holes in the heels), flexible slipper boots (I hate the popular slippers nowadays that have rubber bottoms. I understand they enable you to walk outside, but why can't it be easier to find the other, non-rubber kind? The soft, flexible slipper boots keep my legs warm where they would otherwise not be completely covered by my pajama pants, and I'm able to wear them in bed, too. I used to have a pair when I was a teen, and I've never had a love for any other kind of slipper since. I'm really thankful my mom found a pair.), soft blankets, a large bean bag chair identical to my sister's (Because the little brat gets jealous all the time.), a Howl's Moving Castle t-shirt (Calcifer: "May all your bacon burn."), a glass mug for tea, an arm-knitting kit with instructions (I really want to learn how to knit, but I've failed to see where my knitting needles need to be and in which directions to move them. Book diagrams are often poorly illustrated, and video tutorials move too fast, so maybe if I didn't need needles, I'd understand the concept better? ...But I still want to learn how to knit with needles. I've been wanting to learn ever since I was a teenager. I think I need someone to help guide my hands and needles so I can see the directions with my own eyes. I'm spatially challenged, I guess. But I have a couple of friends who knit, so maybe one of these days when they're not busy, I can bring my yarn and needles with me and ask them for help. ...I'm a wimp when it comes to asking for help. I'm too afraid of inconveniencing people by taking up their "Me" time.), a 2-DVD set of the first season of The Amanda Show (which is a show I loved growing up), and I can't remember what else. But I loved everything given to me. (Last year, I was given several things that I never ended up using, and I feel bad about it. Example: Money origami book. I'm not good at making origami, so making complex creations using non-square-shaped paper sounds like a daunting challenge. I'm hardly much better than when I could hardly make an origami cat 8 years ago. I just have a 2D mind. Even when I write, it's often difficult for me to get sizes, shapes, and proportions correct in my head. But thankfully this time I didn't have to feel bad about anything other than one pair of slipper socks I know will be too tight on me, and I think I know a smaller, less fortunate friend who I can give it to who needs it far more than I do.)
My sister had never watched it before, and I was excited about watching it for the first time in many years, so I was able to introduce that to her. I had very little memory of what was in the show, so in some way I was a little afraid that I might not like it as much as I did when I was a kid. I already felt horrible about my disappointed impressions of Rugrats, CatDog, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and a few others, but thankfully my love of The Amanda Show was renewed. Some elements of the show finally came back to me, awakening memories I thought I had long forgotten.
So, after unwrapping presents and cleanup, we watched The Amanda Show, ate candy and cookies, and relaxed the rest of the day. After The Amanda Show was over, I went on my computer to check on family and friends who lived abroad, my mom baked turkey (We don't normally have a Christmas feast, but somebody gave the frozen turkey to us, so we figured we might as well eat it on Christmas), and my sister watched a movie I gave her (She loves The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe).
Sweetie, my black Siamese-mix writing companion and best friend, was (and still is) in heat, so she hasn't had a clear head to enjoy her new toys, yet. Sandy, our black Labrador retriever, gobbled up the treats I got her, loves the big bone my mom found at the health food store, and loves sleeping on her new bed (She has hip displasia, so it's becoming hard for her to jump on the couch to sleep, so my mom gave her a bed to sleep on the floor.). Tree, our pet mouse (so-named for a tree design in her fur), loved the goodies in her tiny stocking and loved her first adventure inside her mouse ball. She had fun running around the apartment for a while until I put her back in her cage so she could have water and food. The silly mouse didn't want to come out of the ball at first, because she was having so much fun! But it had been about an hour of play.
...Okay. I need to head to bed. Last night, I was up late, and I only got 4 hours of sleep. I wanted to write last night and tonight, but I must hold myself back one more day. I wanted to focus on this blog post so I wouldn't keep you waiting and so you wouldn't worry that Christmas turned out horrible for me or something. It's 2:09 AM, Thursday, December 29th. Good night. ZZZZZZZZZ 😴
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December 29th:
Document 4: 49,311* words
*Approximate. I forgot to stop at 11:59 PM or 12:00 AM and record my word count. I removed a few hundred words at 12:30-ish, so this word count comes close.
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December 30th:
Document 4: 50,382 words
Sunday, November 6, 2016
November 2016
Big announcement: I'm doing NaNoWriMo with G4:O!
Of course, I'm not cheating the targeted word count by counting what I've already written, so I made a separate document containing only what I've written in November.
In case you don't know what NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's basically a challenge for anyone who's ever thought of writing a novel. From 12 AM November 1st until 11:59 PM on November 30th, you write as many words as you can. The challenge is 50,000 words, but you don't have to make it. Last year, I didn't. It's just a way to see how far you get.
For me, the fun part was updating my word count and watching the column chart grow. I don't know why, I just like graphs and charts. They make things look fun, and they're easier and faster to understand by a quick glance, too.
Last year, I tried writing a side story (not related to the G series) for NaNoWriMo, but I made the mistake of forcing myself to do what I didn't want to do. I kept feeling like writing G4:O. It was pure torture not writing it for an entire month. That's why I missed so many days.
But this time is different. I figured out how to write G4:O without cheating. I had a writing buddy who told me that she was using a story she already started, and her word count was ginormous.
Personally, I don't like cheating, lying, being fake, or anything like that. I got lied to when I was a kid by adults too many times, and kids hardly ever played fair games with me, so I've grown sensitive to it and conscious of myself. But it's not a bad thing. Most people have a bad habit of lying a lot, and they either have difficulty breaking it, or they give themselves the notion that it's totally okay to lie.
But anyway, I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. It's not too late for you to join. You can even be my writing buddy. My username is SlugDiaper. http://nanowrimo.org/
Oh yeah, and on October 29th, I took a train for the first time. 65 miles from home to stay the weekend with some cousins. My cousin Sara got married on Halloween, so most people were in costumes of their choice. I wore a dress and a horse head mask, my cousin wore a wedding dress handmade with 100% pure silk by her grandma-in-law, and her husband was the 13th doctor from Doctor Who. It was fun. Later, at the after party, we played a Mario Kart game and a hilarious (though, rather inappropriate) card game of Superfight. Everybody else but me drank mixtures of hard liquor, mostly vodka and juice.
I'm not a fan of hard liquor. I've never been drunk, and never plan on it, either. I'm more of a red wine or ginger beer kind of simple gal. And I rarely drink, especially now that I'm on allergy medicine twice a day.
Other than that, nothing much new other than a little bit of health problems. A week before I went I on my train trip, I had a sinus infection. I got better just in time for the trip, but I had a little bit of allergies during and afterwards because both places were a bit dusty. And since I didn't have much sleep (3 1/2 hours of sleep on the first train trip), my body's resistance went down, so now I think I have a cold, passed over to me from my 2-year old cousin. It doesn't feel like a sinus infection, so I'm sure it's a cold. I've been feeling crummy for the past few days, and my nose has felt like it's been stuffed with a wet sock. Fortunately, today I'm starting to feel better, thanks to chicken noodle soup and a few drops of oregano oil in a high vitamin C juice mixture.
Usually when I have a cold, I feel too fatigued and miserable to write, but thankfully that's not the case this time.
You can keep track of my word count each day (or hour, especially in the evening and night when I usually write, as I like updating it frequently) via the NaNoWriMo website or on here.
*November 2nd: 166 words total
November 3rd: 1,330 words total
November 4th: 1,484 words total
November 5th: 3,714 words total
26,094 (very beginning) + 163,586 (body of story) = 189,680 + 3,714 (NaNoWriMo total) = 193,394 (absolute total)
Maybe to give me more time to write, I'll do these calculations in threes. Which means less blogging. I'd hate to do that, but it would make it more fun to see in threes. Unless you like seeing math problems all the time. Lol. If you want to see more updated, daily word count totals, you can see them here: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/slugdiaper/novels/g4-o-title-abbreviated-i-can-t-reveal-it-on-nanowrimo-spoilers-this-is-the-4th-book-in-an-unpublished-series/stats
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*Edit: At first, I couldn't find the place on the NaNoWriMo website where I wrote on November 2nd. I could have sworn I did write on that day, but for some reason the graph wasn't showing it. I later found it.
I can't remember the original reason why I delayed posting here, but it's mainly because I've been too tired and didn't feel like posting here. It just takes extra time to type here. But really, I don't *have* to say much of anything here. I just feel obligated to. It's a blog after all. Aren't blogs supposed to be fun to read?
...Wait. I remember why! I can't believe I forgot to mention it here. I've been running errands lately because my mom had some blood and mucous, along with lower abdominal cramping, went to the ER and found out she has cysts on her right ovaries and "likely polyps" in her colon. They highly suggested her to have a colonoscopy, so she's going to have one on November 29th. Due to her pain, she had to stay home with a heating pad while I ran errands. I don't have a drivers' license due to my own health issues, as you already know, so grocery shopping involved pushing a cart home (one of the times was with our own plastic shopping cart, but one of the double wheels broke off a long time ago. I was sore for a few days after I tried not lift that side up all the way home (to reduce the change of breaking the last wheel in that corner), while pushing it home.
So, yeah. And then it was worrying about my mom, because it's the fear that she has colon cancer. Her dad, my grandpa, died from colon cancer. Well, he had a heart attack and died, but he also had untreated colon cancer, so it could have been caused by the cancer. He didn't want to tell his family. He didn't want to treat it and leave his family with having to pay huge bills after his death. And my mom likely will want to follow his footsteps. She thinks that low of herself. She's said she'd rather live on the street than live in a retirement center, and she's not saving any money for retirement. It's a huge frustration on my part, because she's lived through some serious stuff, and I don't like seeing bad things happen to people. I'm sensitive to that thanks to watching her get physically abused and seeing other bad things happen. It's things kids should never, ever see.
Anyway, I don't want to talk anymore about it. It's too dark. It's too stressful. I don't want you to worry about it. This is why I've been loathe to go on here and blog to you guys.
It's where I open my mind and don't have to worry about my family and friends commenting on it on Facebook. But I'm not asking for anybody's help. Nobody can help me. People's comments of "I'm sorry hon" and words of encouragement are just words. I read it, and it doesn't improve my situation. They're words meant to hamper fear, but since they're not words that give solutions, I feel more fear because it means I'm alone. Since I was a kid, I learned the hard thing about life: Those who say "everything's okay" is not feeling okay. Those who say "I'm sorry" for your bad situation is distancing themselves from you and basically saying "don't ask me for advice, I'm not going to do anything because that's your life and this one's mine".
Adults couldn't be trusted to tell me the truth when I was a kid. But they didn't realize that I always saw something and heard something there: I saw the clues that something was wrong. And the fear of not knowing was the worst thing. The fear of the unknown is like being afraid of the dark when you hear scary noises, because there could be something there, but you can't see what it is.
I'm stopping here. I need to write, and I'm just in a depressed mood at the moment. Later I'll be in a better mood, read all this, and regret it. My cat has even sensed my heavy heart, as she's sitting on the table in between me and my laptop right now (black cat on the right):
Anyway, here's what I've been writing. I've made it a goal to write at least one word each day, just as long as I'm writing every day.
Month, Day: Total
November 6th: 5,477
November 7th: 6,461
November 8th: 7,417
November 9th: 7,434
November 10th: 7,474
November 11th: 7,475
November 12th: 7,504
November 13th: 11,695
November 14th: 13,311
November 15th: 13,669
November 16th: 13,741
November 17th: 14,044
November 18th: 14,048
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November 19th: 16,482
November 20th: 17,737
I've been getting myself confused here. I forgot to add a couple of scenes. Minor, but important. But yeah, I foresaw this. Getting confused. I knew I'd get to this point about a month or two ago. It's just because I've reached that point where I have to join two pieces of writing together, which were written over a year apart.
It's like holding two long tiny chains in each hand as though wanting to join them together. But! knowing you have some individual links that fell off the longest link a long time ago, due to being lazy and doing a sloppy job in the beginning, you look up and sigh as you put down the two links, not ready for a delicate challenge. Unfortunately, since you were impatient and didn't feel ready to do some hard work again, your sigh blew away a couple of links. You look down and suddenly realize with dread that you lost some and didn't know where they went because you weren't paying attention, so you look around until you find them. Once they're all together, you try to be more careful with your work and focus harder so you don't mess up again.
Remembering what is supposed to happen both is and isn't the problem. It isn't, because I basically already wrote the scenes and events that are to follow. It is, because when I get nervous or panic (or both), I have difficulty thinking and have trouble with my memory. (I was especially that way when I was being abused, but we won't focus on that.) And when I was getting out of writing the simple, incomplete sentence summary part, I was starting to make slightly more complete sentences in addition to skipping over some scenes, as well as vice versa. And the parts where I didn't quite make complete sentences, I now have to make them make more sense.
I'm not sure if you understood my metaphor about the chains and links, but that's what's happening with me and my writing. From now on, there probably won't be much of a word count.
To put it in a different way from the chains and links bit, I need to sew rags together to join two halves of blankets together. ...Uh, I don't know why I need rags to do that! Hahahaha! Maybe the blanket halves are crooked and I don't want to cut the excess fabric on them because it'd make the entire blanket smaller than it's supposed to be. There we go! Now it's making more sense! Though, you're probably reading this with a funny face right now. My family doesn't understand me either. That's why I write. Also why I've made a few characters talk this way. Because they're somehow able to explain themselves better to others than me. Or that others don't judge them and think they're weird.
If you still don't understand my meaning, I'm sorry. In real life, I'm a worse communicator than this. I'm bad at talking because I have difficulty thinking. I have difficulty thinking because my brain is literally slow at processing thoughts. Even simple thoughts. I used to be much slower when I was a kid. I was called a retard by kids all the time. I was so stupid back then (4th - 6th grade), I didn't even know what retard meant! I just thought "retard" meant "stupid, hyper weirdo" or something. And the thing about my thoughts that makes me even slower is when I, most all the time, pressure myself to think as fast as I can. It works when I'm working and making sure I get things done and not forget things, but when I'm talking to coworkers, friends, and family? (Especially those I know.) I'm often overwhelmed by how quickly others think and talk, that I'm left out in the cold waiting for an opportunity to speak.
There aren't many pauses or gaps in people's conversations, let me tell you. And I'm not one to interrupt people. I don't like seeming rude and brusque. I want to be seen as polite and automatically deserving respect, just as anybody should be treated: Fairly.
From time to time, I do interrupt people, and it makes me feel bad, but it's usually when I feel that what I want to say is important and should be heard. Sometimes it's just a phase, when I'm tired of being interrupted and talked over and ignored all the time. No gaps in people's conversations when I really want to talk frustrates me. Sometimes, that frustration leads into impatience and turns me into a rhino with a long horn (interrupting tongue). Oh, did my horn push you to the side? Sorry. I can't help I exist. (I have to be heard, too, right? We all deserve a chance to speak. I'm not a robot.) Sometimes I've done that to more important people. I've wondered why I do that, and I think on a psychological standpoint, I guess it's because I'm afraid of being treated like I'm just a slave. Just their robot. Just a peasant who shouldn't be respected just because of their low status. I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'm afraid of being treated like poop. I was abused by adults (the important people, compared to me, a kid at the time), and they treated me like I was a useless animal. And seeing how my mom has been treated by previous bosses, employers, managers, higher-status coworkers, etc., I want to make sure that doesn't happen to me, too. Because I'm afraid of letting others go too far and get comfortable and then think they can get mad at me and try to beat me down when I least expect it.
My aunt, being a bipolar (P.S. I'm friends with two people with bipolar disorder, so I have nothing against those suffering from it) nurse who worked in an adult psych ward in various hospitals for several years, was strange in that she'd get angry for even the littlest things, especially when I let my guard down. If I wasn't silent or if I was having any sort of fun, she'd find ways to shut me up and make me shut down.
I don't want to think of any examples. I just want to move on and forget it all happened.
I have to take a quick shower and get to bed now. I could spend all night talking to you, but it's 3:18 AM, and I have work tomorrow. I did alright getting 8 hours of sleep this weekend, but tonight I'll have approximately 4. *sighs* I originally wanted to make this post short, but maybe you'll appreciate the information I spilled out on you. I was feeling too restless and uncomfortable to get ready yet, anyhow. But then, that's often been my excuse for getting very little sleep, and I need to fix it by forcing myself to get off the computer and do what I need to do.
Stupid anxiety, taking over my life. I need to pick up my sword and start fighting it for once.
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November 21st: 17,743
It's not midnight yet, but I'm heading to bed early. Last night, after showering, it took me hours to fall asleep. It's happened to me a few times before, but it was still agonizing. I was desperate almost to the point of crying to fall asleep, but my body just wasn't listening to me. My mom's alarm clock went off at 5:00 AM, so it was another hour or so until I finally fell asleep. My cat, Sweetie, wasn't faring well with it either. She's in heat (Yes, once I save enough money, I'll have her spayed), so it was bad for her, too. She waits for me to go to bed to go to bed because I'm her bed. (Say that ten times fast!) She sleeps on my legs, and she won't sleep long knowing I'm still awake. Poor little girl. I can always tell when she is super tired. She doesn't get bags under her eyes, but her eyes get slightly droopy and the outlines of her eyelids get tight, especially her lower eyelids. Just a few minutes ago, she was having difficulty staying awake in my lap, and she looked like this (I took these pictures a few minutes ago):
I look as bad, but not as cute, so I'm not sharing you my ugly selfies. No. Really. I have an acne problem right now. I recently saw a dermatologist, so I've been trying out a cream to help bring down the acne. It's two different kinds of acne, so I need to use two different kinds of cream. For some reason, my local store pharmacy didn't have the other one until today.
My face will hopefully improve in two months. I'm tired of looking like the surface of Io. ...No, that moon looks worse (and gross). Maybe that should be labelled as zombie skin.
Whatever. I need to stop writing and get to bed before Sweetie releases a death rattle on me.
😖 <-- Oh! I didn't know I could make these on this blog! Cool! 😃
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November 23: 17,941
Yeah, I broke that daily writing streak. Sorry. I just couldn't write on November 22nd. I was going through a short bit of anxiety that day. No doubt it was mostly because I only had 2 hours of sleep, but I also couldn't get my thoughts together as to what to do next.
I was stuck with a hard decision: What to do first? Go back and write the missing scenes, or continue and carefully incorporate (partially write, partially keep what was already written, and partially rewrite whatever scenes don't work out [while being careful not to do that too much]) where I just left off?
Anyway, I'm getting a better and more sure idea of what to do first: I'll keep going until the two frayed ends are woven together, then I'll go back and write those missing scenes. Because I see it now: I became indecisive when I realized I missed those scenes. The guilt of leaving those friends behind (figuratively speaking) made me screech to a halt and spin out in all directions. I've started to reorient myself, so once I get back in the right direction again, I'll be heading on my way.
Unless November 23rd was going into progress? I can't remember much of yesterday. I had a little less sleep last night because I went to bed at [I think?] 2 AM, and got up for about 15 minutes this morning at 6 AM to watch the Thanksgiving parade (Yep, that's today. Happy Thanksgiving! Even though some of you don't live in the United States, I wish you a happy and safe day/weekend/rest-of-your-life. <-- I didn't want to keep it just to one day, then I didn't want it to be just a weekend. Hahaha!
I also have some difficulty remembering yesterday because I had a long, complex, realistic dream this morning before I woke up. I was having some kind of family reunion, and I was meeting distant cousins for the first time. Although I can not exactly remember much of the dream now, it had to do with me seeing a threat and giving warning to one of my cousins, saving his life several times. In return, when I was in danger, he rescued me. Even though he was such a distant cousin, there was something that I still didn't want to do, just because he was family: It was hard not to be attracted to him and fall in love with him. I kept thinking of his personality and personal qualities, and how he was... um... hot. I've never felt this way about a family member, so this was very strange to me. And I don't normally think this type of thing (guys, relationships, etc.), let alone use that word, believe me. I've barely been attracted to any guy.
Since I went through traumatic things when I was a kid (abusive men), I have had trust issues. It started with me being afraid of men for many years. Boys I wasn't afraid of at all. I can't say I acted normally around them, though. I used to freak them out by being hyper and weird all the time (It was fun giggling and snorting on purpose as I chased them around at recess and in between classrooms in Elementary school. Their reactions and faces were funny when they ran away from me, and that's why it took me so long for me to learn the meaning of "retard". I thought the word meant something like "hyper weirdo".). Anyway, after I grew out of my fear of men, I still didn't trust them. With good reason, too: I hear of men cheating on women all the time. Sure, it's often the other way around, but I used to watch a lot of Divorce Court (a TV show that had a divorce judge finding out why one or both in a couple wanted to divorce), and the majority was that men couldn't keep their thing in their pants and their eyes away from other women. Then, in high school and beyond, I've had so many friends who've broken up, and I shake my head at the thought and say, "No, I can't risk going through that. I have a sensitive heart, easy to hurt, and I've already been hurt by adults when I was a kid. I'm a one-time love. A swan mates for life: If its partner dies or goes away, that's it. It's done. The swan never finds another mate ever again. Therefore, I am a swan. But a scared swan. If I ever feel loved, if I ever learn the feeling of the opposite of alone, I would never be myself again. A part of me would be torn out of me. I want to be whole. I want to be preserved. I want to be left alone. I'd rather make myself feel happy and find satisfaction in life in what I do rather than depend on others. Like some needy puppy. I already had to watch my pathetic mom not be able to stand it anymore, seeking for a mate again like an animal in heat. I already had to watch my mom look lost and confused by herself. Like she lost something but can't remember what it was and where to look for it. She never was able to find it. She tried several times. She still has hope of finding it one day, but I have a strong gut feeling that she never will find it again. I'm relieved she isn't actively seeking, being too busy for a relationship, and being more careful than she was before. But yeah, I've never actively sought for a relationship, myself. I'm never planning on it, either. I'm staying in my comfort zone, and it only takes a look and a short sentence to make a man afraid of me and grow silent. I'm glad I'm ugly, too. You can't convince me from saying I'm not a hot chick, as I don't feel very bad about it. Sure, I wish my acne wasn't so bad and that my smile didn't look so much like I'm baring my teeth, but overall I'm happy with my looks. Many women are so uncomfortable with themselves these days, they compare themselves to others and strive for being thin, hiding their face with caked-on heavy makeup, and wearing clothes from the latest fashions. That's because they can't find satisfaction within themselves. Until they do, they will forever be in that vicious circle of changing their looks, constantly seeking to be perfect enough to be noticed by others and loved. No one likes to be invisible. No one does. I wish I could hug all of them and say they are beautiful and that I care about them, even though I've never met them, nor heard of them.
*wipes away tears* Pardon, I got side-tracked. ...But I suppose some of you need an explanation to my sign of emotion. Needless to say... I once felt invisible to the entire world. Nobody should ever have gone through constant isolation like I did in my bedroom at my aunt's house, but the one thing I had to do to comfort myself out of my depression and extend my sanity was to open my mind to the entire world.
Doing that was scary and overwhelming, like a sort of spiritual meditation, I suppose. I imagined myself surrounded by billions of people living their lives around me, oblivious to what I was going through. Although that gave me a deeper sense of loneliness and helplessness at first, my personal emotions quickly turned off and it was silent where I was, while the rest of the world, wherever there was a person, there were emotions, thoughts, and voices. And everywhere there were people, there were also situations. Some were okay and safe. Others were afraid and in various terrible situations: Witnessing terrifying things, car accidents, people or animals getting hurt. Them being so scared, they're all screaming, crying, or both. Then there were lonely people, angry people, sad people, even people in similar situations as me. It was then I realized I was not alone. I was never alone. Someone out there is still living in isolation and abuse, and I'm simply having my turn of peace. Whatever peace is. The world is an ever-moving, flowing, unpredictable ocean. Anything can happen anytime, anywhere, anyway, anyhow. There are all kinds of possibilities in everything that happens. And when things don't happen, other things are always happening.
When I became conscious of the screams and crying and other terrible things happening all around me, all around the world, I realized the world was a terrible place. You hear all the time of bad things happening in the news, and there are far more things that are not reported. If the news was on 24/7 with no commercial and just reported bad things happening, not even all the channels on TV would cover everything. The world has always been bad, but the more people there are, the more bad things happen. It's just due to hardship from the constant competition of daily life. City people in traffic are more compulsive and competitive than people on empty roads in small towns. And when people can't stand it anymore, they break and don't make good decisions. It's just the way it is. When I realized that, only then did I finally calm down. Because at first, I was overwhelmed and was so dismayed at seeing the world so corrupt, I thought it was close to the end of the world. Thing is, we don't know when the end is, and neither should we. Can you imagine how much worse the world would act if everybody knew when the world would end?
Once I was calm, I finally looked at the entire world as just an ever-moving, flowing, unpredictable ocean.
The world was the world. It was what it was. I was just one person. I can't change the world. The world would be the world the way it wanted, and there was no stopping it. Sure, you can talk to a lot of people, and you can slow them down, but they will still forget or think it's okay to do the wrong thing a little bit. They'll do the wrong things again and again until they give up doing the right thing and just do what they want. Thing is, they're used to memorizing information more than their meanings.
It starts in school. They memorize information in their minds for tests, but they don't memorize the importance in their hearts.
...Okay. That was a coincidence. Just now, my mom told me she was going to have a "tiny bit" of sweet potato. She can't eat it because she's going to have a colonoscopy on Tuesday. I told her what I wrote two paragraphs ago, and she argued that it was "just a tiny bit" and that she didn't think it would affect the procedure. Another reason why I don't believe I can change the world. I can't even change one person. Although my mom is a very stubborn person, other people can be stubborn in some way, too.
Anyway, after school, people live as adults and work at their jobs. Information changes all the time, some more than others, but there is always new information and new things to learn. Taxes, laws, money, paperwork, rules, etc. And when people are busy enough, running errands and otherwise living life at a fast pace enough to not have time to care for anything outside their own lives and what concerns them and those they know, eventually they lose their inner sight of the meaning of things. There may be moments where they will wonder what is the meaning of life.
My answer: The meaning of life is meaning, not information. People are so used to information, they expect the answer to the meaning of that kind of question is information, but they will not find it that way. The answer is meaning, and they will find it in themselves. What they feel, what they will understand inside their hearts when they see the world as a whole as I did.
The meaning of life can not be put into words, it can only be understood.
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November 24th: 18,272
It's 2:04 AM, Friday, November 25th. The book is now joined. O__o
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Last night (or rather, 2:04 this morning), I was going to finish spreading out the G4:O files (because the majority of the writing was in one file, and it takes a long time for a large file to load), but my laptop was having charging issues. It happens a lot. I'll be using the laptop while it's charging, and then the lights will start blinking on and off. Then a notification pops up saying I have only a certain percentage of power left, as though it wasn't charging, even though the charger is plugged in. Some odd months ago, I had that problem, only worse. It wasn't charging at all. I called customer service, and they said it was either the battery or the charger or both. I followed their steps and did a hard refresh, which killed the battery completely. I bought a new one, but ever since I bought it, I have still had trouble charging it, so it might be the charger. *sighs*
Anyway, I shut the lid last night and charged it, keeping it asleep because I decided to keep myself logged in more often, rather than log off every night. It doesn't make sense to do that anyway because nobody else uses my laptop, and I rarely take it places outside home.
So, that's why the 2:04 AM post left you hanging wondering what in the world I was talking about.
Now for the great news: I finished joining the documents together. The writing part (weaving together the frayed ends) and the dividing of the documents. Each document has approximately 100 pages, depending on where the end of a chapter is.
They are as follows:
Document 1:
97 pages, 53,275 words
Document 2:
99 pages, 62,715 words
Document 3:
102 pages, 59,561 words
Document 4:
54 pages, 32,586 words
Total page count: 352 pages
Total word count: 208,137 words
Since Document 4 isn't full at 100 pages, I'll be calculating the first 3 documents + Document 4 = total word count from now on. Oh, and what am I going to do with NaNoWriMo, you wonder? Well, I won't be authenticating my word count, but what I will do is just subtract 208,137 or an individual document word count from the total word count I'll be doing each day up until the very end of November (one minute before midnight).
However, on November 29th and 30th, I'll be busy taking care of my mom after her colonoscopy. I don't know what the doctors will find in her colon, so I don't know how busy I'll be (a.k.a. I don't know if I'll be writing at all during those days). I'm hoping it isn't anything bad like a large polyp or a tumor, where she'll need surgery or anything more than a colonoscopy. Since her dad had colon cancer, and she seems to have no muscle tone down there (she doesn't have to push to go "number 2". Everything just comes out on its own, often leading her to have an accident.), it's worrisome. So, please keep her in your hopes and prayers. Thank you.
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November 25th: Document 1: 53,796
NaNoWriMo word count: 20,013
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November 26th: Document 1: 53,883
NaNoWriMo word count: 21,335
Onto Document 2! ...Yeah, I got carried away reading and couldn't stop afterwards. I've taken note of all I need to fix and add in (the missing scenes) later on. I might even do that tomorrow. Not sure. Right now, I feel unpredictable. I might any day force myself to stop reading (and editing a little here and there while I read), and fix those spots, but for now it looks like I'm reading onward. Oh well! *shrugs*
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November 27th: Document 2: *Eh?
NaNoWriMo word count: 23,464
*Yeah, I got myself confused with the two word counts. I wrote this down on a piece of paper. I'll figure it out later:
Doc 2:
62,715
63,662
63,700
64,836
64,864
64,957 (last night's earlimorn of this day, which is not over yet, 11/29/16)
Several of these were in one day, so that's why I have to figure it out later.
The NaNoWriMo word count is already recorded, so I'll use those to help me figure out my math problem.
November 28th: Document 2: jkgw9e8r6397er3wo689fije64g (gibberish for now)
NaNoWriMo word count: 23,475
At least I can trust NaNoWriMo with my word count. Hahaha. But it's a pity I can't use it year long. Once the end of the NaNoWriMo challenge comes, then I'm not able to add to my word count and see their wonderful graphs. 😞
I'm a visual kind of person. I like seeing projects from different perspectives when I'm working on them. It makes me feel like I'm actually doing something. And when I see not much has been written, I give myself a push and bump up the wordcount to see how far up it will go. Take a look for yourself!
Up, level, up, level, up, level, up, level. The graph looks like stairs. I guess that's how I write. It's cool to see it, and that's why I love NaNoWriMo. I've tried doing my word count on Plotly, but I can only have one graph. If I want to make more, I have to pay money. Nobody likes paying a bunch of bills, so I'm not paying to make more. What I could do is make one graph, download or make a screenshot of it, delete it and make a new one. But I won't pay for anything I don't professionally need for a job. A writer's life is like a hobby until you get published. I like thinking a writer is someone who just writes and isn't published, and an author is someone who writes and is published. It just doesn't feel right calling myself an author. I'm just a writer. I'm not ready to publish. I just write, so I'm a writer.
Anyway, if any of you happen to know of a good website you can make graphs on that doesn't cost anything, feel free to comment below. I'd love to try it out.
Oh, and about my mom's colonoscopy? She had an allergic reaction to the laxative, so she has to reschedule the operation. She drank two glasses of the laxative last night, but then an itchy rash appeared underneath her ear and an itchy bump underneath her armpit, an itchy bump on her head, and a small feeling of tightness in her throat. Since the pharmacy label said to call the doctor if those signs of allergic reaction appear, she stopped drinking it and called the doctor. She cancelled the appointment, and she plans on doing a home colonoscopy test the clinic can send her in the mail instead. And if the test says she has something in her colon, she wants to have a colonoscopy in the summer. I don't like the prospect of her waiting that long, but I'll try to convince her to do it earlier than that.
I can understand why she wants to wait, though. Our weather gets nasty in the winter. Always rainy, cold (It's mild here compared to other places, but it feels cold to us when it hits the lower 50s.), and constantly cloudy.
She's feeling better now, but she didn't have much sleep all last night. She finally stopped having accidents at 6 AM. I slept through all of it, having been used her getting ready to work at 5 AM.
I lost my train of thought at the moment. My mom and sister are talking (they have loud voices), and I often get distracted. Time to put on headphones and listen to music! (My writing music playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqOSidSfqbI&list=PLF07Q8clXG4QwU-dVaKRxG_ZeIP1PKryn)
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Okay, I figured it out, now. Seems I got the numbers wrong when I was calculating the two word counts, just as I thought.
Corrections:
November 27th: Document 2: 63,700
NaNoWriMo word count: 24,449
November 28th: Document 2: 64,864
NaNoWriMo word count: 25,613
November 29th: Document 2: 65,415
NaNoWriMo word count: 26,164
Although November 29th is not over yet, I'm putting it here anyway because I just got done with Document 2. Onto Document 3! 😃
I'm better at figuring out math problems on paper and calculator. And those weird zig-zag marks are my way of adding or subtracting numbers together without taking up space on paper and "showing my work". I just wanted to make lists right where I want them and yet make something that will remind me how I came up with those numbers, so I made this method in high school. It wasn't what my teachers wanted me to do, but it worked for me. I'm not good at math, yet I come up with my own system. Whatever works, right?
So, what you see here in 2. is me subracting 62,715 with everything below it, because that's the word count that Document 2 was originally. The bigger numbers below it were the times/days I was writing and editing/writing more to it. After subracting, each resulting number was then added to 23,464, which was the word count before I started working on Document 1. Now that I've finished Document 2, the same method can be done while I'm writing Document 3. ...At least, until the end of tomorrow. NaNoWriMo officially ends at 11:59 PM on November 30th, so after that's over, I don't have to worry about calculating two word counts. NaNoWriMo is just a challenge to see how much I can write in a month. So far, I've only missed two days of writing (If I don't write a single word tomorrow, that will make 3 days, but I'll try to keep that from happening by writing a little past midnight tonight.).
Oh, and I must not forget the corrected NaNoWriMo graph:
NOW, onto Document 3!
...Here's the total word count of Document 3 on November 29th:
November 29th: Document 3: 59,610
NaNoWriMo word count: 26,213
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November 30th: Document 3: 60,309
NaNoWriMo word count (final): 26,912
Woohoo! I did it! ...I mean, I didn't make it to 50,000 words, but I made it past halfway, which was my personal goal. I didn't want to share it with you in case I humiliated myself by writing well-below 25,000 words. After I hit 25,000, I forgot to mention it to you because time was running out, I forgot, and I wanted to see how far I'd get in the end. But I wasn't seriously planning on sharing it with you, knowing I'd still be happy anyway.
Of course, I'm not cheating the targeted word count by counting what I've already written, so I made a separate document containing only what I've written in November.
In case you don't know what NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's basically a challenge for anyone who's ever thought of writing a novel. From 12 AM November 1st until 11:59 PM on November 30th, you write as many words as you can. The challenge is 50,000 words, but you don't have to make it. Last year, I didn't. It's just a way to see how far you get.
For me, the fun part was updating my word count and watching the column chart grow. I don't know why, I just like graphs and charts. They make things look fun, and they're easier and faster to understand by a quick glance, too.
Last year, I tried writing a side story (not related to the G series) for NaNoWriMo, but I made the mistake of forcing myself to do what I didn't want to do. I kept feeling like writing G4:O. It was pure torture not writing it for an entire month. That's why I missed so many days.
But this time is different. I figured out how to write G4:O without cheating. I had a writing buddy who told me that she was using a story she already started, and her word count was ginormous.
Personally, I don't like cheating, lying, being fake, or anything like that. I got lied to when I was a kid by adults too many times, and kids hardly ever played fair games with me, so I've grown sensitive to it and conscious of myself. But it's not a bad thing. Most people have a bad habit of lying a lot, and they either have difficulty breaking it, or they give themselves the notion that it's totally okay to lie.
But anyway, I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. It's not too late for you to join. You can even be my writing buddy. My username is SlugDiaper. http://nanowrimo.org/
Oh yeah, and on October 29th, I took a train for the first time. 65 miles from home to stay the weekend with some cousins. My cousin Sara got married on Halloween, so most people were in costumes of their choice. I wore a dress and a horse head mask, my cousin wore a wedding dress handmade with 100% pure silk by her grandma-in-law, and her husband was the 13th doctor from Doctor Who. It was fun. Later, at the after party, we played a Mario Kart game and a hilarious (though, rather inappropriate) card game of Superfight. Everybody else but me drank mixtures of hard liquor, mostly vodka and juice.
I'm not a fan of hard liquor. I've never been drunk, and never plan on it, either. I'm more of a red wine or ginger beer kind of simple gal. And I rarely drink, especially now that I'm on allergy medicine twice a day.
Other than that, nothing much new other than a little bit of health problems. A week before I went I on my train trip, I had a sinus infection. I got better just in time for the trip, but I had a little bit of allergies during and afterwards because both places were a bit dusty. And since I didn't have much sleep (3 1/2 hours of sleep on the first train trip), my body's resistance went down, so now I think I have a cold, passed over to me from my 2-year old cousin. It doesn't feel like a sinus infection, so I'm sure it's a cold. I've been feeling crummy for the past few days, and my nose has felt like it's been stuffed with a wet sock. Fortunately, today I'm starting to feel better, thanks to chicken noodle soup and a few drops of oregano oil in a high vitamin C juice mixture.
Usually when I have a cold, I feel too fatigued and miserable to write, but thankfully that's not the case this time.
You can keep track of my word count each day (or hour, especially in the evening and night when I usually write, as I like updating it frequently) via the NaNoWriMo website or on here.
*November 2nd: 166 words total
November 3rd: 1,330 words total
November 4th: 1,484 words total
November 5th: 3,714 words total
26,094 (very beginning) + 163,586 (body of story) = 189,680 + 3,714 (NaNoWriMo total) = 193,394 (absolute total)
Maybe to give me more time to write, I'll do these calculations in threes. Which means less blogging. I'd hate to do that, but it would make it more fun to see in threes. Unless you like seeing math problems all the time. Lol. If you want to see more updated, daily word count totals, you can see them here: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/slugdiaper/novels/g4-o-title-abbreviated-i-can-t-reveal-it-on-nanowrimo-spoilers-this-is-the-4th-book-in-an-unpublished-series/stats
P.S. Here's a selfie of me wearing the mask at the wedding:
And the Doctor Who themed wedding cake:
And my cat this morning:
I was starting to make the bed and was about to pull back the brown blanket when I saw this! She was underneath it! I let her sleep. Minutes later, she was still asleep when my mom got home, despite the noise. Only when my mom went in the bedroom to reset my sister's clock for daylight savings time did she finally wake up. Here's a video I took. Oh, and my voice sounds weird and nasally because I have a cold, as you may remember: https://youtu.be/8xDzIOacc4I
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*Edit: At first, I couldn't find the place on the NaNoWriMo website where I wrote on November 2nd. I could have sworn I did write on that day, but for some reason the graph wasn't showing it. I later found it.
I can't remember the original reason why I delayed posting here, but it's mainly because I've been too tired and didn't feel like posting here. It just takes extra time to type here. But really, I don't *have* to say much of anything here. I just feel obligated to. It's a blog after all. Aren't blogs supposed to be fun to read?
...Wait. I remember why! I can't believe I forgot to mention it here. I've been running errands lately because my mom had some blood and mucous, along with lower abdominal cramping, went to the ER and found out she has cysts on her right ovaries and "likely polyps" in her colon. They highly suggested her to have a colonoscopy, so she's going to have one on November 29th. Due to her pain, she had to stay home with a heating pad while I ran errands. I don't have a drivers' license due to my own health issues, as you already know, so grocery shopping involved pushing a cart home (one of the times was with our own plastic shopping cart, but one of the double wheels broke off a long time ago. I was sore for a few days after I tried not lift that side up all the way home (to reduce the change of breaking the last wheel in that corner), while pushing it home.
So, yeah. And then it was worrying about my mom, because it's the fear that she has colon cancer. Her dad, my grandpa, died from colon cancer. Well, he had a heart attack and died, but he also had untreated colon cancer, so it could have been caused by the cancer. He didn't want to tell his family. He didn't want to treat it and leave his family with having to pay huge bills after his death. And my mom likely will want to follow his footsteps. She thinks that low of herself. She's said she'd rather live on the street than live in a retirement center, and she's not saving any money for retirement. It's a huge frustration on my part, because she's lived through some serious stuff, and I don't like seeing bad things happen to people. I'm sensitive to that thanks to watching her get physically abused and seeing other bad things happen. It's things kids should never, ever see.
Anyway, I don't want to talk anymore about it. It's too dark. It's too stressful. I don't want you to worry about it. This is why I've been loathe to go on here and blog to you guys.
It's where I open my mind and don't have to worry about my family and friends commenting on it on Facebook. But I'm not asking for anybody's help. Nobody can help me. People's comments of "I'm sorry hon" and words of encouragement are just words. I read it, and it doesn't improve my situation. They're words meant to hamper fear, but since they're not words that give solutions, I feel more fear because it means I'm alone. Since I was a kid, I learned the hard thing about life: Those who say "everything's okay" is not feeling okay. Those who say "I'm sorry" for your bad situation is distancing themselves from you and basically saying "don't ask me for advice, I'm not going to do anything because that's your life and this one's mine".
Adults couldn't be trusted to tell me the truth when I was a kid. But they didn't realize that I always saw something and heard something there: I saw the clues that something was wrong. And the fear of not knowing was the worst thing. The fear of the unknown is like being afraid of the dark when you hear scary noises, because there could be something there, but you can't see what it is.
I'm stopping here. I need to write, and I'm just in a depressed mood at the moment. Later I'll be in a better mood, read all this, and regret it. My cat has even sensed my heavy heart, as she's sitting on the table in between me and my laptop right now (black cat on the right):
She's a sweetheart.
Anyway, here's what I've been writing. I've made it a goal to write at least one word each day, just as long as I'm writing every day.
Month, Day: Total
November 6th: 5,477
November 7th: 6,461
November 8th: 7,417
November 9th: 7,434
November 10th: 7,474
November 11th: 7,475
November 12th: 7,504
November 13th: 11,695
November 14th: 13,311
November 15th: 13,669
November 16th: 13,741
November 17th: 14,044
November 18th: 14,048
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November 19th: 16,482
November 20th: 17,737
I've been getting myself confused here. I forgot to add a couple of scenes. Minor, but important. But yeah, I foresaw this. Getting confused. I knew I'd get to this point about a month or two ago. It's just because I've reached that point where I have to join two pieces of writing together, which were written over a year apart.
It's like holding two long tiny chains in each hand as though wanting to join them together. But! knowing you have some individual links that fell off the longest link a long time ago, due to being lazy and doing a sloppy job in the beginning, you look up and sigh as you put down the two links, not ready for a delicate challenge. Unfortunately, since you were impatient and didn't feel ready to do some hard work again, your sigh blew away a couple of links. You look down and suddenly realize with dread that you lost some and didn't know where they went because you weren't paying attention, so you look around until you find them. Once they're all together, you try to be more careful with your work and focus harder so you don't mess up again.
Remembering what is supposed to happen both is and isn't the problem. It isn't, because I basically already wrote the scenes and events that are to follow. It is, because when I get nervous or panic (or both), I have difficulty thinking and have trouble with my memory. (I was especially that way when I was being abused, but we won't focus on that.) And when I was getting out of writing the simple, incomplete sentence summary part, I was starting to make slightly more complete sentences in addition to skipping over some scenes, as well as vice versa. And the parts where I didn't quite make complete sentences, I now have to make them make more sense.
I'm not sure if you understood my metaphor about the chains and links, but that's what's happening with me and my writing. From now on, there probably won't be much of a word count.
To put it in a different way from the chains and links bit, I need to sew rags together to join two halves of blankets together. ...Uh, I don't know why I need rags to do that! Hahahaha! Maybe the blanket halves are crooked and I don't want to cut the excess fabric on them because it'd make the entire blanket smaller than it's supposed to be. There we go! Now it's making more sense! Though, you're probably reading this with a funny face right now. My family doesn't understand me either. That's why I write. Also why I've made a few characters talk this way. Because they're somehow able to explain themselves better to others than me. Or that others don't judge them and think they're weird.
If you still don't understand my meaning, I'm sorry. In real life, I'm a worse communicator than this. I'm bad at talking because I have difficulty thinking. I have difficulty thinking because my brain is literally slow at processing thoughts. Even simple thoughts. I used to be much slower when I was a kid. I was called a retard by kids all the time. I was so stupid back then (4th - 6th grade), I didn't even know what retard meant! I just thought "retard" meant "stupid, hyper weirdo" or something. And the thing about my thoughts that makes me even slower is when I, most all the time, pressure myself to think as fast as I can. It works when I'm working and making sure I get things done and not forget things, but when I'm talking to coworkers, friends, and family? (Especially those I know.) I'm often overwhelmed by how quickly others think and talk, that I'm left out in the cold waiting for an opportunity to speak.
There aren't many pauses or gaps in people's conversations, let me tell you. And I'm not one to interrupt people. I don't like seeming rude and brusque. I want to be seen as polite and automatically deserving respect, just as anybody should be treated: Fairly.
From time to time, I do interrupt people, and it makes me feel bad, but it's usually when I feel that what I want to say is important and should be heard. Sometimes it's just a phase, when I'm tired of being interrupted and talked over and ignored all the time. No gaps in people's conversations when I really want to talk frustrates me. Sometimes, that frustration leads into impatience and turns me into a rhino with a long horn (interrupting tongue). Oh, did my horn push you to the side? Sorry. I can't help I exist. (I have to be heard, too, right? We all deserve a chance to speak. I'm not a robot.) Sometimes I've done that to more important people. I've wondered why I do that, and I think on a psychological standpoint, I guess it's because I'm afraid of being treated like I'm just a slave. Just their robot. Just a peasant who shouldn't be respected just because of their low status. I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'm afraid of being treated like poop. I was abused by adults (the important people, compared to me, a kid at the time), and they treated me like I was a useless animal. And seeing how my mom has been treated by previous bosses, employers, managers, higher-status coworkers, etc., I want to make sure that doesn't happen to me, too. Because I'm afraid of letting others go too far and get comfortable and then think they can get mad at me and try to beat me down when I least expect it.
My aunt, being a bipolar (P.S. I'm friends with two people with bipolar disorder, so I have nothing against those suffering from it) nurse who worked in an adult psych ward in various hospitals for several years, was strange in that she'd get angry for even the littlest things, especially when I let my guard down. If I wasn't silent or if I was having any sort of fun, she'd find ways to shut me up and make me shut down.
I don't want to think of any examples. I just want to move on and forget it all happened.
I have to take a quick shower and get to bed now. I could spend all night talking to you, but it's 3:18 AM, and I have work tomorrow. I did alright getting 8 hours of sleep this weekend, but tonight I'll have approximately 4. *sighs* I originally wanted to make this post short, but maybe you'll appreciate the information I spilled out on you. I was feeling too restless and uncomfortable to get ready yet, anyhow. But then, that's often been my excuse for getting very little sleep, and I need to fix it by forcing myself to get off the computer and do what I need to do.
Stupid anxiety, taking over my life. I need to pick up my sword and start fighting it for once.
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November 21st: 17,743
It's not midnight yet, but I'm heading to bed early. Last night, after showering, it took me hours to fall asleep. It's happened to me a few times before, but it was still agonizing. I was desperate almost to the point of crying to fall asleep, but my body just wasn't listening to me. My mom's alarm clock went off at 5:00 AM, so it was another hour or so until I finally fell asleep. My cat, Sweetie, wasn't faring well with it either. She's in heat (Yes, once I save enough money, I'll have her spayed), so it was bad for her, too. She waits for me to go to bed to go to bed because I'm her bed. (Say that ten times fast!) She sleeps on my legs, and she won't sleep long knowing I'm still awake. Poor little girl. I can always tell when she is super tired. She doesn't get bags under her eyes, but her eyes get slightly droopy and the outlines of her eyelids get tight, especially her lower eyelids. Just a few minutes ago, she was having difficulty staying awake in my lap, and she looked like this (I took these pictures a few minutes ago):
I look as bad, but not as cute, so I'm not sharing you my ugly selfies. No. Really. I have an acne problem right now. I recently saw a dermatologist, so I've been trying out a cream to help bring down the acne. It's two different kinds of acne, so I need to use two different kinds of cream. For some reason, my local store pharmacy didn't have the other one until today.
My face will hopefully improve in two months. I'm tired of looking like the surface of Io. ...No, that moon looks worse (and gross). Maybe that should be labelled as zombie skin.
Whatever. I need to stop writing and get to bed before Sweetie releases a death rattle on me.
😖 <-- Oh! I didn't know I could make these on this blog! Cool! 😃
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November 23: 17,941
Yeah, I broke that daily writing streak. Sorry. I just couldn't write on November 22nd. I was going through a short bit of anxiety that day. No doubt it was mostly because I only had 2 hours of sleep, but I also couldn't get my thoughts together as to what to do next.
I was stuck with a hard decision: What to do first? Go back and write the missing scenes, or continue and carefully incorporate (partially write, partially keep what was already written, and partially rewrite whatever scenes don't work out [while being careful not to do that too much]) where I just left off?
Anyway, I'm getting a better and more sure idea of what to do first: I'll keep going until the two frayed ends are woven together, then I'll go back and write those missing scenes. Because I see it now: I became indecisive when I realized I missed those scenes. The guilt of leaving those friends behind (figuratively speaking) made me screech to a halt and spin out in all directions. I've started to reorient myself, so once I get back in the right direction again, I'll be heading on my way.
Unless November 23rd was going into progress? I can't remember much of yesterday. I had a little less sleep last night because I went to bed at [I think?] 2 AM, and got up for about 15 minutes this morning at 6 AM to watch the Thanksgiving parade (Yep, that's today. Happy Thanksgiving! Even though some of you don't live in the United States, I wish you a happy and safe day/weekend/rest-of-your-life. <-- I didn't want to keep it just to one day, then I didn't want it to be just a weekend. Hahaha!
I also have some difficulty remembering yesterday because I had a long, complex, realistic dream this morning before I woke up. I was having some kind of family reunion, and I was meeting distant cousins for the first time. Although I can not exactly remember much of the dream now, it had to do with me seeing a threat and giving warning to one of my cousins, saving his life several times. In return, when I was in danger, he rescued me. Even though he was such a distant cousin, there was something that I still didn't want to do, just because he was family: It was hard not to be attracted to him and fall in love with him. I kept thinking of his personality and personal qualities, and how he was... um... hot. I've never felt this way about a family member, so this was very strange to me. And I don't normally think this type of thing (guys, relationships, etc.), let alone use that word, believe me. I've barely been attracted to any guy.
Since I went through traumatic things when I was a kid (abusive men), I have had trust issues. It started with me being afraid of men for many years. Boys I wasn't afraid of at all. I can't say I acted normally around them, though. I used to freak them out by being hyper and weird all the time (It was fun giggling and snorting on purpose as I chased them around at recess and in between classrooms in Elementary school. Their reactions and faces were funny when they ran away from me, and that's why it took me so long for me to learn the meaning of "retard". I thought the word meant something like "hyper weirdo".). Anyway, after I grew out of my fear of men, I still didn't trust them. With good reason, too: I hear of men cheating on women all the time. Sure, it's often the other way around, but I used to watch a lot of Divorce Court (a TV show that had a divorce judge finding out why one or both in a couple wanted to divorce), and the majority was that men couldn't keep their thing in their pants and their eyes away from other women. Then, in high school and beyond, I've had so many friends who've broken up, and I shake my head at the thought and say, "No, I can't risk going through that. I have a sensitive heart, easy to hurt, and I've already been hurt by adults when I was a kid. I'm a one-time love. A swan mates for life: If its partner dies or goes away, that's it. It's done. The swan never finds another mate ever again. Therefore, I am a swan. But a scared swan. If I ever feel loved, if I ever learn the feeling of the opposite of alone, I would never be myself again. A part of me would be torn out of me. I want to be whole. I want to be preserved. I want to be left alone. I'd rather make myself feel happy and find satisfaction in life in what I do rather than depend on others. Like some needy puppy. I already had to watch my pathetic mom not be able to stand it anymore, seeking for a mate again like an animal in heat. I already had to watch my mom look lost and confused by herself. Like she lost something but can't remember what it was and where to look for it. She never was able to find it. She tried several times. She still has hope of finding it one day, but I have a strong gut feeling that she never will find it again. I'm relieved she isn't actively seeking, being too busy for a relationship, and being more careful than she was before. But yeah, I've never actively sought for a relationship, myself. I'm never planning on it, either. I'm staying in my comfort zone, and it only takes a look and a short sentence to make a man afraid of me and grow silent. I'm glad I'm ugly, too. You can't convince me from saying I'm not a hot chick, as I don't feel very bad about it. Sure, I wish my acne wasn't so bad and that my smile didn't look so much like I'm baring my teeth, but overall I'm happy with my looks. Many women are so uncomfortable with themselves these days, they compare themselves to others and strive for being thin, hiding their face with caked-on heavy makeup, and wearing clothes from the latest fashions. That's because they can't find satisfaction within themselves. Until they do, they will forever be in that vicious circle of changing their looks, constantly seeking to be perfect enough to be noticed by others and loved. No one likes to be invisible. No one does. I wish I could hug all of them and say they are beautiful and that I care about them, even though I've never met them, nor heard of them.
*wipes away tears* Pardon, I got side-tracked. ...But I suppose some of you need an explanation to my sign of emotion. Needless to say... I once felt invisible to the entire world. Nobody should ever have gone through constant isolation like I did in my bedroom at my aunt's house, but the one thing I had to do to comfort myself out of my depression and extend my sanity was to open my mind to the entire world.
Doing that was scary and overwhelming, like a sort of spiritual meditation, I suppose. I imagined myself surrounded by billions of people living their lives around me, oblivious to what I was going through. Although that gave me a deeper sense of loneliness and helplessness at first, my personal emotions quickly turned off and it was silent where I was, while the rest of the world, wherever there was a person, there were emotions, thoughts, and voices. And everywhere there were people, there were also situations. Some were okay and safe. Others were afraid and in various terrible situations: Witnessing terrifying things, car accidents, people or animals getting hurt. Them being so scared, they're all screaming, crying, or both. Then there were lonely people, angry people, sad people, even people in similar situations as me. It was then I realized I was not alone. I was never alone. Someone out there is still living in isolation and abuse, and I'm simply having my turn of peace. Whatever peace is. The world is an ever-moving, flowing, unpredictable ocean. Anything can happen anytime, anywhere, anyway, anyhow. There are all kinds of possibilities in everything that happens. And when things don't happen, other things are always happening.
When I became conscious of the screams and crying and other terrible things happening all around me, all around the world, I realized the world was a terrible place. You hear all the time of bad things happening in the news, and there are far more things that are not reported. If the news was on 24/7 with no commercial and just reported bad things happening, not even all the channels on TV would cover everything. The world has always been bad, but the more people there are, the more bad things happen. It's just due to hardship from the constant competition of daily life. City people in traffic are more compulsive and competitive than people on empty roads in small towns. And when people can't stand it anymore, they break and don't make good decisions. It's just the way it is. When I realized that, only then did I finally calm down. Because at first, I was overwhelmed and was so dismayed at seeing the world so corrupt, I thought it was close to the end of the world. Thing is, we don't know when the end is, and neither should we. Can you imagine how much worse the world would act if everybody knew when the world would end?
Once I was calm, I finally looked at the entire world as just an ever-moving, flowing, unpredictable ocean.
The world was the world. It was what it was. I was just one person. I can't change the world. The world would be the world the way it wanted, and there was no stopping it. Sure, you can talk to a lot of people, and you can slow them down, but they will still forget or think it's okay to do the wrong thing a little bit. They'll do the wrong things again and again until they give up doing the right thing and just do what they want. Thing is, they're used to memorizing information more than their meanings.
It starts in school. They memorize information in their minds for tests, but they don't memorize the importance in their hearts.
...Okay. That was a coincidence. Just now, my mom told me she was going to have a "tiny bit" of sweet potato. She can't eat it because she's going to have a colonoscopy on Tuesday. I told her what I wrote two paragraphs ago, and she argued that it was "just a tiny bit" and that she didn't think it would affect the procedure. Another reason why I don't believe I can change the world. I can't even change one person. Although my mom is a very stubborn person, other people can be stubborn in some way, too.
Anyway, after school, people live as adults and work at their jobs. Information changes all the time, some more than others, but there is always new information and new things to learn. Taxes, laws, money, paperwork, rules, etc. And when people are busy enough, running errands and otherwise living life at a fast pace enough to not have time to care for anything outside their own lives and what concerns them and those they know, eventually they lose their inner sight of the meaning of things. There may be moments where they will wonder what is the meaning of life.
My answer: The meaning of life is meaning, not information. People are so used to information, they expect the answer to the meaning of that kind of question is information, but they will not find it that way. The answer is meaning, and they will find it in themselves. What they feel, what they will understand inside their hearts when they see the world as a whole as I did.
The meaning of life can not be put into words, it can only be understood.
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November 24th: 18,272
It's 2:04 AM, Friday, November 25th. The book is now joined. O__o
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Last night (or rather, 2:04 this morning), I was going to finish spreading out the G4:O files (because the majority of the writing was in one file, and it takes a long time for a large file to load), but my laptop was having charging issues. It happens a lot. I'll be using the laptop while it's charging, and then the lights will start blinking on and off. Then a notification pops up saying I have only a certain percentage of power left, as though it wasn't charging, even though the charger is plugged in. Some odd months ago, I had that problem, only worse. It wasn't charging at all. I called customer service, and they said it was either the battery or the charger or both. I followed their steps and did a hard refresh, which killed the battery completely. I bought a new one, but ever since I bought it, I have still had trouble charging it, so it might be the charger. *sighs*
Anyway, I shut the lid last night and charged it, keeping it asleep because I decided to keep myself logged in more often, rather than log off every night. It doesn't make sense to do that anyway because nobody else uses my laptop, and I rarely take it places outside home.
So, that's why the 2:04 AM post left you hanging wondering what in the world I was talking about.
Now for the great news: I finished joining the documents together. The writing part (weaving together the frayed ends) and the dividing of the documents. Each document has approximately 100 pages, depending on where the end of a chapter is.
They are as follows:
Document 1:
97 pages, 53,275 words
Document 2:
99 pages, 62,715 words
Document 3:
102 pages, 59,561 words
Document 4:
54 pages, 32,586 words
Total page count: 352 pages
Total word count: 208,137 words
Since Document 4 isn't full at 100 pages, I'll be calculating the first 3 documents + Document 4 = total word count from now on. Oh, and what am I going to do with NaNoWriMo, you wonder? Well, I won't be authenticating my word count, but what I will do is just subtract 208,137 or an individual document word count from the total word count I'll be doing each day up until the very end of November (one minute before midnight).
However, on November 29th and 30th, I'll be busy taking care of my mom after her colonoscopy. I don't know what the doctors will find in her colon, so I don't know how busy I'll be (a.k.a. I don't know if I'll be writing at all during those days). I'm hoping it isn't anything bad like a large polyp or a tumor, where she'll need surgery or anything more than a colonoscopy. Since her dad had colon cancer, and she seems to have no muscle tone down there (she doesn't have to push to go "number 2". Everything just comes out on its own, often leading her to have an accident.), it's worrisome. So, please keep her in your hopes and prayers. Thank you.
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November 25th: Document 1: 53,796
NaNoWriMo word count: 20,013
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November 26th: Document 1: 53,883
NaNoWriMo word count: 21,335
Onto Document 2! ...Yeah, I got carried away reading and couldn't stop afterwards. I've taken note of all I need to fix and add in (the missing scenes) later on. I might even do that tomorrow. Not sure. Right now, I feel unpredictable. I might any day force myself to stop reading (and editing a little here and there while I read), and fix those spots, but for now it looks like I'm reading onward. Oh well! *shrugs*
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November 27th: Document 2: *Eh?
NaNoWriMo word count: 23,464
*Yeah, I got myself confused with the two word counts. I wrote this down on a piece of paper. I'll figure it out later:
Doc 2:
62,715
63,662
63,700
64,836
64,864
64,957 (last night's earlimorn of this day, which is not over yet, 11/29/16)
Several of these were in one day, so that's why I have to figure it out later.
The NaNoWriMo word count is already recorded, so I'll use those to help me figure out my math problem.
November 28th: Document 2: jkgw9e8r6397er3wo689fije64g (gibberish for now)
NaNoWriMo word count: 23,475
At least I can trust NaNoWriMo with my word count. Hahaha. But it's a pity I can't use it year long. Once the end of the NaNoWriMo challenge comes, then I'm not able to add to my word count and see their wonderful graphs. 😞
I'm a visual kind of person. I like seeing projects from different perspectives when I'm working on them. It makes me feel like I'm actually doing something. And when I see not much has been written, I give myself a push and bump up the wordcount to see how far up it will go. Take a look for yourself!
Up, level, up, level, up, level, up, level. The graph looks like stairs. I guess that's how I write. It's cool to see it, and that's why I love NaNoWriMo. I've tried doing my word count on Plotly, but I can only have one graph. If I want to make more, I have to pay money. Nobody likes paying a bunch of bills, so I'm not paying to make more. What I could do is make one graph, download or make a screenshot of it, delete it and make a new one. But I won't pay for anything I don't professionally need for a job. A writer's life is like a hobby until you get published. I like thinking a writer is someone who just writes and isn't published, and an author is someone who writes and is published. It just doesn't feel right calling myself an author. I'm just a writer. I'm not ready to publish. I just write, so I'm a writer.
Anyway, if any of you happen to know of a good website you can make graphs on that doesn't cost anything, feel free to comment below. I'd love to try it out.
Oh, and about my mom's colonoscopy? She had an allergic reaction to the laxative, so she has to reschedule the operation. She drank two glasses of the laxative last night, but then an itchy rash appeared underneath her ear and an itchy bump underneath her armpit, an itchy bump on her head, and a small feeling of tightness in her throat. Since the pharmacy label said to call the doctor if those signs of allergic reaction appear, she stopped drinking it and called the doctor. She cancelled the appointment, and she plans on doing a home colonoscopy test the clinic can send her in the mail instead. And if the test says she has something in her colon, she wants to have a colonoscopy in the summer. I don't like the prospect of her waiting that long, but I'll try to convince her to do it earlier than that.
I can understand why she wants to wait, though. Our weather gets nasty in the winter. Always rainy, cold (It's mild here compared to other places, but it feels cold to us when it hits the lower 50s.), and constantly cloudy.
She's feeling better now, but she didn't have much sleep all last night. She finally stopped having accidents at 6 AM. I slept through all of it, having been used her getting ready to work at 5 AM.
I lost my train of thought at the moment. My mom and sister are talking (they have loud voices), and I often get distracted. Time to put on headphones and listen to music! (My writing music playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqOSidSfqbI&list=PLF07Q8clXG4QwU-dVaKRxG_ZeIP1PKryn)
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Okay, I figured it out, now. Seems I got the numbers wrong when I was calculating the two word counts, just as I thought.
Corrections:
November 27th: Document 2: 63,700
NaNoWriMo word count: 24,449
November 28th: Document 2: 64,864
NaNoWriMo word count: 25,613
November 29th: Document 2: 65,415
NaNoWriMo word count: 26,164
Although November 29th is not over yet, I'm putting it here anyway because I just got done with Document 2. Onto Document 3! 😃
1.
2.
I'm better at figuring out math problems on paper and calculator. And those weird zig-zag marks are my way of adding or subtracting numbers together without taking up space on paper and "showing my work". I just wanted to make lists right where I want them and yet make something that will remind me how I came up with those numbers, so I made this method in high school. It wasn't what my teachers wanted me to do, but it worked for me. I'm not good at math, yet I come up with my own system. Whatever works, right?
So, what you see here in 2. is me subracting 62,715 with everything below it, because that's the word count that Document 2 was originally. The bigger numbers below it were the times/days I was writing and editing/writing more to it. After subracting, each resulting number was then added to 23,464, which was the word count before I started working on Document 1. Now that I've finished Document 2, the same method can be done while I'm writing Document 3. ...At least, until the end of tomorrow. NaNoWriMo officially ends at 11:59 PM on November 30th, so after that's over, I don't have to worry about calculating two word counts. NaNoWriMo is just a challenge to see how much I can write in a month. So far, I've only missed two days of writing (If I don't write a single word tomorrow, that will make 3 days, but I'll try to keep that from happening by writing a little past midnight tonight.).
Oh, and I must not forget the corrected NaNoWriMo graph:
...Here's the total word count of Document 3 on November 29th:
November 29th: Document 3: 59,610
NaNoWriMo word count: 26,213
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November 30th: Document 3: 60,309
NaNoWriMo word count (final): 26,912
Woohoo! I did it! ...I mean, I didn't make it to 50,000 words, but I made it past halfway, which was my personal goal. I didn't want to share it with you in case I humiliated myself by writing well-below 25,000 words. After I hit 25,000, I forgot to mention it to you because time was running out, I forgot, and I wanted to see how far I'd get in the end. But I wasn't seriously planning on sharing it with you, knowing I'd still be happy anyway.
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