On Your Mark, Get Set...

Happy Halloween, everyone. As you're bingeing on chocolate from your treat bag, let me tell you a very scary story....

It's down to a matter of hours.

Starting at midnight, I'm officially allowed to start writing my novel for NaNoWriMo. (And thank you for all of the supportive emails that I've received. Nice to know at least someone thinks I can pull this off!) Part of me is very excited and is ready to start right now, and part of me wants to crawl into bed and hide under the blankets until it's December.

I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be. I have a plot, I have characters, and many of the scenes have been preliminarily planned in my head. I've been carrying around a couple of books about how to write your first novel in my bag. (No, I haven't read them. Are you kidding? I've been too busy panicking.) I've written an outline on 3x5 cards, and placed them in the order that I think they should go at this point. My 7th grade English teacher would be thrilled.

But the nagging doubts are closing in. I'm afraid I won't be able to figure out where to begin and will spend three days struggling over the first sentence. I'm afraid I won't have time to work on writing with my job and day-to-day household duties. I'm afraid that my cat will not take kindly to being ignored and tear down the curtains in protest.

I'm afraid that I'll end up becoming a hermit, turning down all social plans to spend my nights slumped over the keyboard wrestling with plausible ways to get my characters from point A to point B.

I'm afraid that I'll spend the entire month living on Pop-Tarts, Hot Pockets, coffee, and Diet Coke. Oh, wait. I already do that, don't I?

I'm afraid that I'll not have enough time to take breaks to watch Buffy (next week is the musical episode... cannot... stop... laughing...) or go see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Or Monsters, Inc. Why are all the movies that I have waited for all year coming out now?

I'm afraid that Roger Mexico will arrive in town for the Thanksgiving holidays to find me a raving lunatic living in an apartment not fit for human residence, and will run away screaming from the scary woman in the bathrobe muttering about word count and denouements. I'm afraid he'll decide to spend his entire vacation sleeping on Andy's couch.

I'm afraid that I will stay up countless nights toiling over my creation, only to have my computer crash moments before the deadline.

I'm afraid that I'll finish the damn thing, think it's actually pretty good, and let other people read it. I'm afraid that they will think it's a big steaming pile of poo, but will tell me how great it is just to placate me.

But most of all, I'm afraid that I'll give up by November 5th and go drown my failures in too many pints of Bass Ale.

I'm sure that everyone that signed up for this month of insanity is having similar bouts of paranoia. I guess that's why the folks that are running the contest recommended signing up with a buddy. Things always seem easier when you've got someone who can relate to your situation, right?

At least I've got a few partners to share my frustration. Besides my friend at work, Musashi from Destroy All Monsters and Paisley in New Orleans have decided to share in the fun. Or what I'm hoping will be fun, at least. And we've all decided that this is a sure sign that we've all lost our minds. Oh well, I suppose it will keep us out of trouble for a while.

At least until December 1st. And then there'll be a whole months worth of mischief to catch up on.

The clockwatching continues, and the butterflies in my stomach have obviously been doing crystal meth.

NaNoWriMo Who in the What Now?

It's finally happened. I'm certifiably insane.

I can't think of any other way to explain what I've just decided to do, unless my daily plethora of vitamins, herbal supplements and antihistimines has combined to make me more loopy than usual.

I'm going to try to write a novel. In one month. Yeah, that's right. 50,000 words in 30 days.

It's a contest of sorts. Back in June 1999, this guy in California decided he could probably write a novel in one month if he got other people to try as well, and asked a few of his friends to attempt it with him. 21 people started the project, and 6 actually finished. The following year 140 or so signed up, and 29 of them made it to the 50,000 word count. This year over 2000 people have signed up, including me.

Granted, I have no idea what I'm going to write about. Plot? Characters? Setting? Beats me. I'll figure it out before Thursday. I hope. Right now, I'm still trying to convince myself that this is an attainable goal, and that I'm not going to sputter out around word #24,872. 50,000 words in 30 days breaks down to 1667 words a day, and if anyone can babble nonsensically for 2000 words a day, it's me. The question is whether I can babble nonsensically for 30 days solid and cobble it into a workable story.

And yeah, I know the story's gonna be crap. I don't expect to be writing the greatest work of fiction the world has seen since Ulysses. But then again, Kerouac supposedly wrote The Subterraneans in three days and nights (with the help of a lot of Benzedrine).

Personally, I think I'll just stick to the coffee, thanks.

I'm not alone in my insanity. One of my co-workers has also signed up, and she hasn't got a clue what to write about either. And I'm trying to get a couple more folks to play with me. Maybe if I get a few more people to suffer along with me, I won't feel like I've just done the dumbest thing ever by signing up for this.

It's not like I didn't have enough to do with my free time. Between work, getting the apartment cleaned and presentable for houseguests (Roger Mexico is visiting over Thanksgiving), keeping Ma Huang from tearing down the new curtains, occasionally making time for social events, and sporadically writing here I don't have a lot of open spots on my dance card. And Christmas is right around the corner. Guess I'll be doing that last minute shopping, just like I do every year.

I suppose this means I'm going to have to budget my time more efficiently. I may have to tape all of the TV shows I watch on a regular basis and save them all for December. I may have to hide my Blockbuster card from myself for a few weeks. I may actually perfect those powers of invisibility that I've been working on for the past few years.

And I will probably end up drinking all of the coffee in the Greater Cincinnati area. Yikes.

So just a forewarning. I may not be the most prolific blogger over the next month (yeah, like I am now), but I'll be popping in from time to time to keep everyone updated on my progress (or lack thereof). The entries will probably be much shorter than usual, so I'll most likely change the settings to show more than one post at a time. I'd really hate to have my readers scroll down for 5 minutes so they can read one lousy paragraph (which will probably read, "AAARRRRRGGGGHHHH! I am soooo stuck. I can't do this. What kind of crack was I smoking when I signed up for this bizarre form of torture?")

I just want to see if I can actually do this. I've been rehashing the same plot for over ten years now, and at times I feel like I'm never going to accomplish anything. Maybe if I start fresh and turn off my inner editor, I can pull this off and be able to say I finished something. Maybe this small accomplishement will give me an extra boost of pride and determination, and I'll actually feel like I can get somewhere on the "real" novel. And by announcing my participation in this fiasco, I'm obligated to at least give it the old college try.

So if you see me stumbling around next month mumbling things about word count and plot points to myself, you'll know why. Kindly give me a cup of coffee and point me in the direction of my home. And if you see me on December 1 yelling, "I DID IT! I DID IT!" then buy me a beer and give me a hearty pat on the back.

And for those of you who'd like to join me in the insanity, go sign up. The deadline is Monday. C'mon. It'll be fun. Agonizing, yes. Frustrating, yes. But when it's all over, we'll be able to look back and laugh - probably from how bad our finished products are. What have you got to lose besides a month of sleep?

C'mon. I dare you.

The New Roommate

I really had no intentions of being gone for so long. A few days turned into a few weeks without me even realizing it. Somewhere I got it into my head that my next post was going to be on my computer (now that I finally moved it out of Zappagirl's hallway), but it took longer than I expected to actually get online and up and running.

Now that my computer is a few feet away from my futon, I have no excuse to not post on a regular basis. Well, except writer's block, lack of motivation, and the ever popular "I had a really bad day and I was freaking exhausted and all I wanted to do was drink some Sleepytime tea and go to bed."

But not tonight. I'll let the Sleepytime steep while I tell you about the other new addition to my household besides the computer: I have a new kitty.

Waaaaay back when, some of you may recall that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's cat had kittens. A litter of six. One black male, one black female, one grey female, and three males with seal point Siamese markings. We all set about claiming our kittens for when they were ready to leave their mother. Hsu Lin, the black female, went to a relative of Rosencrantz's. Roger Mexico took one of the seal points and named him Bowie. A former DJ friend of ours took another of the seal points, but had to give him up when he moved. (His cat has found a new home with Tammy and her family.) JohnnyB is giving serious thought to taking John the Baptist, the black male (so named because he was the first to venture into the wilderness, and he meowed at everything new he encountered; it was decided that he was testifying to the bookcase...and the computer desk...and the litter box...). And Epiphany, the grey female, will be staying with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

The third seal point? He was mine.

By conventional senses, he's not a normal cat. Due to a neurological disorder (probably resulting from a large litter and a very small mother carrying them), he has difficulties with his back legs and stumbles rather than walking with a cat-like grace. He has a slight tremor when standing still. Upon first meeting him, I remarked that he looked like he'd had too much caffeine. ("What, like you?" Roger Mexico added while Bowie dozed in his lap.)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern took him to the vet to see if there was anything physically wrong with him, and he came back with a clean bill of health (aside from the unsteadiness). I immediately claimed him and named him Ma Huang (after the herbal stimulant).

But then Elvis passed away in January, I wasn't sure if I was ready to bring a new cat into my life. I was still in grieving mode for the cat that had been a part of my life for six and a half years, and a very small part of me felt responsible for his escape into the hallway that resulted in his untimely trip to the SPCA. What made me think I could do any better with another cat?

(These thoughts were during the time when I was going slightly insane, and was blaming myself for everything. But sometimes letting go is a lot harder than you think.)

But I finally decided I was ready, and paid a visit to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's, cat carrier in hand. Getting him into the carrier wasn't a problem. Listening to him yowl all the way back to my house wasn't a problem. (Funny, I'd never heard him make a sound before the night I came to pick him up.)

Getting him out of the cat carrier? Now that was a problem. I would have figured that with all his complaining, he'd be anxious to get out of the big plastic box, right?

Think again, hotshot.

I opened the door and waited for him to come out. And waited. And waited. I put food in front of the carrier. Toys. Anything I could think of to coax him into his new environment. Given the fact that he was making a big adjustment in moving from a two story house with eight other cats to an apartment with no other cats (but probably the lingering scent of the previous feline resident), I didn't want to traumatize him by forcing him out of the carrier when he wasn't ready.

After five hours of waiting, I gave up and took off the top portion of the carrier. He stepped out, sniffed about for a few seconds, and cowered in my lap.

Great. He's finally home, and he's terrified.

He eventually went to explore the bathroom, discovered the litter box, and promptly hid in it for the rest of the night. The following morning, I coaxed him out of the litter box, only to have him hide under the couch for the entire afternoon. Zappagirl came over to watch him while I went to a play with my mother, and she didn't even see him until I got home and we started moving furniture.

After about 24 hours of playing hide and seek, thought, he decided the apartment wasn't so bad after all, and decided to explore his surroundings and eat all of his toys. Yes, you read that correctly. You know those wand toys with the feathers and ribbons at the end of the string? Apparently the ribbons taste pretty yummy, because he managed to pull them off within a day. And I guess the tail on the little fake mousie tasted good too, because that was missing as well when I left for work the next day. Needless to say, all edible toys have been taken away and replaced by jingly plastic balls. Hartz is making a fortune off me.

A week later, and things are going much better. Most of my furniture is low enough for him to jump onto, he doesn't dive under the bed anymore when someone comes down the hall outside my door, and the change in diet (IAMS rather than Science Diet, because Kroger's carries the former) doesn't seem to have confused him all that much. He seems to have gotten used to the idea of being a solitary kitty, because that just means he can monopolize more of my time. The only problem I can see is that he's extremely jealous of the computer, since every second I spend on the internet is time I could be petting him.

Well, that and he's fallen asleep on my robe in the middle of my bed, and I don't want to wake him. Awwwww.

Guess we know who's boss around here, huh?