This Past Week.

Saturday, I was supposed to work 12 to 6. I got a call at 8 that morning asking if I could come in at 10 and work until 6:30 for a full eight-hour shift, so someone could go home early. I did.

Sunday, I was supposed to work 12 to 6. I got a call, as I was driving to work, asking if I could come in at 2 instead. "Two until when?" "Close." Someone had called out. I covered.

Monday was a normal eight-hour shift.

Tuesday, BJ, Sam and I left the house at 7 in the morning, picked up our friend Raequan at 7:30, grabbed some breakfast, and headed to Chicago.

Oh my goodness, Chicago.

We went to the Brookfield Zoo first, and were there for four or five hours. We saw almost everything, and I took a million pictures of almost everything. The three best things, that had HUGE impacts on me, were the three things we paid extra for: the dolphin show, petting (de-barbed) stingrays, and the butterfly house. I was exhausted and in pain by the time we left, but I was also excited the entire time, like little-kid excited, it was AWESOME. The dolphin show almost made me cry from pure kid joy, the stingrays were so adorable and wonderful and calming, the butterfly house was a photographic dream, MAN...it was fantastic.

Next was The Chicago Diner, a vegan/vegetarian restaurant recommended to Rae by a co-worker. I want to make this co-worker cookies for suggesting it, because OH. MY. GOD. Some of the best food I have ever had. The milkshake was to die for. The atmosphere was fun and cozy. The waitress was amazing--she helped explain the menu without being pretentious or condescending, answered our questions about the food and Chicago, and even drew us a map of cool places to go within walking distance. The whole experience was...awesome.

Next was Navy Pier, which was basically just shops and restaurants that we enjoyed toodling around in. After that was Mitsuwa Marketplace, a Japanese store BJ and Sam are fond of visiting, and Woodfield Mall.

We didn't get home until past one in the morning, although that was mostly the fault of the GPS on my phone, which is, in a word, moronic. Honestly, the best parts of the trip were outside the car, because being in the car meant following directions from a phone who didn't understand the real world we were currently driving in.

But yeah. That was Tuesday, in Chicago.

Wednesday was Aurelie's birthday. The original plan had been to go to Lake Michigan, chill for most of the day, then go back to Goshen for dinner and drinking. I met up with Aurelie and Allie at Quincy's, gave her her presents, had breakfast, hung out for a bit. She changed her mind about the lake--as was her birthday girl prerogative--and decided on a movie instead.

I was fading quickly at this point, having only gotten about five hours of sleep after 14 hours in Chicago after five hours of sleep, and realized that it was either go to the movies and hang out, or go to dinner and the bar later. I chose the latter, Aurelie said it was fine, and I went home and crashed for a few hours. Sadly, crashing didn't mean sleep so much as not-moving-or-thinking, so it was only half as restful as hoped, but still.

I picked Aurelie up and took her to Buffalo Wild Wings, where a bunch of people came out for her birthday dinner. After that was The Constant Spring, which was full of a different birthday party, all of which were drunk and doing karaoke. Beatles's karaoke. While drunk. I was displeased.

Still, it was good people, good time, Aurelie had a blast. Mission accomplished. :)

Still didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night, either.

Yesterday, Thursday, was an eight-hour pre-closing shift. I started out fairly upbeat and able, went downhill to exhausted and hungry, ate, and became just plain exhausted. I was basically pathetic and whiny from four o'clock on to the end of the night.

Today, I don't go in until 4:30, and I close. I got a text from the Morning Shift asking if I could come in at 2. I might fall have if I didn't have a To Do list that literally can't be done the rest of the weekend.

And then it's four more days of my six-day work week after that. Then three days off. Whee!

There, now we're all caught up. Now if I could just get a couple of hours of time where I'm awake and don't have shit to do so I can call all my parents and not be a terrible daughter...

Money Would Have Been More Useful...

Downsides for the day:
[o] Shift cut by two hours (after last paycheck, two hours feels like a lot!)
[o] Surprise Holiday order completely filled back room and made us all cranky
[o] So tired from work--even with the shorter shift--that trying to write afterwards was just futile
[o] Winter skin is KILLING my hands, lots of bloody knuckles...
[o] Ryan stayed home sick :( Poor baby

Upsides!:
[o] Weather was pretty gorgeous
[o] Able to switch with K--she wanted Saturday off, so she's taking my Wednesday shift
[o] Got just over an hour of writing in before work, bringing me past the 14K word count!
[o] Did I mention that I have tomorrow off?

Tomorrow may not have that much writing actually. I still have to return something to Target, and Ryan's taking his day off to get his license renewed, so I'll probably tag along for that. Also, I'm exhausted, so getting up early sounds like a miserable idea, and that seems to be the best time I write, soooo....we'll see.

The new story idea is still haunting me. I keep wanting to write that when I open up my laptop, but I don't let myself. I'm not against the idea of letting my NaNo story take itself in a direction I didn't expect, or even the idea of starting late in the game...I just don't want to abandon Found. And I don't like the risk of investing precious writing time into a story that may abandon me a week later.

I want to write it, and I will. But Found comes first.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to curl up in my warm bed and poke at catalogs until dinner. Night!

Flying Through.

I am currently at 12,044 words. That's right, I not only hit the 10k mark, I swiftly kicked it in the butt and kept right on going. Today's word count was my best so far at 3,488.

However, I'm feeling frustrated with my writing. I'm getting the words out, better than I had ever hoped...but I'm not sure of the quality. I feel like I'm rushing scenes when I should be drawing them out, giving vague sketches when I should be painting in the details, and generally just mucking up a perfectly good story with my mediocre writing.

When I voiced this to Ryan, he pointed at the post-it on my laptop, and made me look him in the eye and say it out loud:

I am good at this.*

The hardest part of this, it turns out, is not getting it out, but being okay with just getting it out. Not rewriting as I go, not pausing to hem and haw over every scene, but simply churning out the words--and the story--as fast as my fingers can go.

Ryan is counseling me on my frustrations, saying that my only goal for right now is to finish the story. Fifty thousand, seventy thousand, twenty thousand, whatever: Finish the story. Then go through it, with multiple colored pens and multiple sets of eyes, and give it a good combing, finding the places to flesh it out, the places that need more of this or less of that.

He is of the opinion that, since I'm already a quarter of the way through the word count goal and a third of the way through my story, I should hit the end of the story before the end of the month. At that point I'll have the extra time to go back and fill in the parts I think I rushed through or skimmed over.

I'm just hoping he's right.

Tomorrow is back to work for the next five days. I know this was only the first week, but I've come to the conclusion that I do my best work on my days off. I don't have the fact that I have work later hanging over my head, or the exhaustion of an 8-hour shift slowing me down. I still plan to try and get in early and stay up late, pounding at it until I have to go home and eat dinner, but, in all honesty, Friday is what I'm really craving right now.

Wish me luck!

*I now have this sentiment on a post-it stuck to my laptop keyboard, on a scrap of paper by my desktop monitor, and a "sticky" on my laptop's background. I've had multiple people inquire about it, praise it, and say that they want one for themselves. I should sell t-shirts...

Tomorrow Is Another Day!

So...didn't get much story work done today. I didn't get to my store until a little after 1, and I had work at 1:45, and it took a few minutes to settle down, and Katie came and talked to me, etc etc.

I didn't get there until 1 because
I didn't get up until 11:30 because
I didn't get to bed until 3 because
Ryan, Sameh, BJ, Ali and I didn't start watching Lilo & Stitch until 1:30 because
we wanted to watch the premiere episode of The Next Iron Chef which was an hour and a half long and started at midnight, when BJ and Ali got home/arrived.

...yeah.

On the upshot, I finally got to see Lilo & Stitch. :D Such a cute movie! I really identified with Lilo, too...I was a very strange child, much like her. And yes, I almost cried a couple of times. Shut up. So would you.

I have tomorrow off, and Ryan works from 6 to 10:30 at night. The plan is to get up, do the laundry, do some minor grocery shopping with Ryan before he has to go to work, then spend the evening at my Starbucks, poking at my story. I get to be productive during the day, then busy myself while Ryan's at work. Win all around!

Wish me luck with progress tomorrow!

Liam & Jer Progress: Nov. 7th, 2009

As of yesterday, my total word count for "final" chapters (all six of them) is 9,884.

(By "final" chapters, I mean the documents/text files that will eventually evolve into final drafts. I have many, many .docs and .txts that hold pieces of Liam & Jer, but these are older drafts, some dating back to my junior year of high school. These have either been drastically changed in to new chapters, stripped for parts, or scrapped altogether.)

Anyway. A word count of under 10,000 is...kinda pathetic. If you also keep in mind that I set myself a goal of adding 50,000 words this month in honor of NaNoWriMo...*gulp* I'm actually pretty confident that I will NOT meet this goal, but that's okay. I'd be happy if I had 20,000 words, or even 15,000. Anything that meant I actually added to it.

I recently took my outline and transferred them to index cards. My plan is to take the cards and figure out the exact order of events. This would seem easy--A then B then C, right?*--except that I'm toying with the idea of a few of the chapters being flashbacks, looking at Liam's or Jer's past to get some insight as to why they're doing this or acting like that. I'm afraid that it could make it messy, complicated, confusing, etc, but I'm also concerned with what might be missing if I don't include them. I currently suck at "looking back" in the middle of a scene, although you'd think the fact that I'm writing it in present tense would help. Of course, the fact that I'm thinking of trying to fit this big, messy puzzle piece into the whole thing instead of, you know, growing as a writer and learning to fix what needs fixing in my toolbox may also say something about me. That something may start with an "l" and rhyme with "hazy."

I'm also trying to find a time to dedicate to writing. I set on the task of finding this piece of time months ago, and I even had one for, oh, two weeks, but it's gotten harder. The free time I do have has to be divvied up between school assignments, errands and chores, seeing Mom, seeing Dad, being social (HA!), and getting some quality time with Ryan. These pieces of free time are currently: Sundays and Mondays until 4, and Wednesdays and Saturdays after noon. Sunday is currently my day to catch up on Mom-home chores and see Mom, and Monday is currently my only day to sleep in, which is very precious to me. Wednesdays and Saturdays, Ry and I do one of two things: do chores and errands, or have a few hours of dedicated WoWing, basically my only WoW time the entire week. WoW might sound like something worth sacrificing to get some writing in, and maybe it should be, but it's also a great stress-reliever, and a little bit of being social (getting friendlier with the Guildies).

Keep in mind that Writing Time would more or less HAVE to be at Starbucks, where I'm disconnected from the internet, and able to just plug in to my music and my little world. Sometimes just the act of Going To/Being At Starbucks is almost enough to click in to Writing Mode. So it's not just a set time I pull out the laptop and get down to business; it's a set time that I drive to Starbucks, get myself a drink and a snack, and settle down at a table. On Mondays and Sundays, there would have to be travel time built in to get back in time for work or D&D.

So, there. My current writing status/predicament. I'll try to post something opinionated and ranty tomorrow.

*Yes, Dad, I know about time not being linear, but in this particular story, it's going to be, okay? ;)