"Befoe the story, there was what happened...before the story."

Nanowrimo is drawing to a close and I’ve got about 3k left to go. Not too much to worry about, especially with a relatively empty night before me. However, it is a bit daunting to see so many of my nano buddies crossing the line now…of course I would like to blame getting sick TWICE this month (first with a kidney infection, then a cold, of all things) for not being done by now, but there you have it. I am confident I will finish, but it’s just a matter of doing it within the next 24 hours.

Of course, something rather silly happened over Thanksgiving break that is writing related, and I thought this would be a good chance to share it.

While watching a movie with my family I suddenly came up with a great idea for a possible prologue in CROSS//Rebirth, and also the very first thing meant to be read in the series by any reader. (The prequel novel does not count, as it’s meant to be read at least halfway through the series). I then proceeded to write it in a little less than two hours. I find it hilarious that this inspiration comes to me when the first draft itself is almost complete…considering I always write chronologically. And yet prologues are almost always an exception, usually because they take place so much earlier than the rest of my story, so it’s like writing an entirely different short story altogether. I’ve noticed this trend especially in the modern novels I write…it seems that I can’t come up with an actual prologue for first novels in a series until about at least halfway through that draft. Maybe it’s because until then I haven’t come up with the entire feel of the story. Maybe it’s because I’m just mentally and creatively lazy like that.

So to those of you who were/are doing nano…did you finish? If you did, was it your first time or just one of many in an awesome streak? If you didn’t, are you sad or did you expect to not finish? I’m curious, so share. <3

"Who's the puppet, who's the master?"

First of all, I feel that I should comment on NaNoWriMo thus far. Currently I am a couple thousand words ahead and expect to finish with some time to spare. Getting sick for a weak though put me a little behind, but don’t fear, I shall prevail! =)

With that, moving on.

In said novel I have a character who does some pretty heinous things, even if you have a pretty loose definition of morality. Stealing, killing, raping, torturing, doing drugs, blowing up planets…pretty much nothing is sacred to her. Naturally I wouldn’t condone most of these actions in the real world and am not exactly proud of this character for having the actions she does…but I have run into the notion a couple of times that, as the author, I should be able to control this character. To not make her do these things. To make her hold back, to make her not have the thoughts and desires to do those things at all.

Here’s a hint: it doesn’t work that way.

Not to say that I, as an author, don’t have any control at all. After all, I did create the little hellion. Technically. Actually, said character never even existed in the original outline drafts. It wasn’t until I started writing the first draft that she just appeared and asserted herself as one of the main antagonists. Oh joy. Who was this person? And what did she want with my novel? I went with it. She ended up coloring things for sure, but to what extent? She was doing things I never originally planned, things I never originally saw occurring in this novel. And yet there she was, raping and pillaging like it was in the script all along.

This opens the can of worms of how much responsibility we authors have over our characters. We like to think we know them. Everything. We make huge profiles of our characters and write extensive biographical histories for them. And then they pull some crazy stunt that leaves you sitting there at your keyboard going “OH HELL WHAT?!”. And yet it works, and it fits them perfectly in some weird and perverted way.

I somewhat akin it to like raising a child. We want our characters to do the right thing, the grow and become their own unique people. But they rarely turn out the way we expect them to, and even rarely parrot back our own opinions and moralities we instilled into them. And yet we have to love them, because they are ours. We may not be proud of them, we may not agree with what they do, but we see what their necessity is to these worlds and are thankful that they are there.

On one hand I can say I do not totally control my characters, but on the other, they certainly do not necessarily control me. At the end of the day I can edit some acts I deem unneeded out. They still did them, they’re still there, but I can ultimately silence them. Like putting them in time-out.

I just hope that when retirement comes they put me in a nice home.

Countodown to Chaos.

Hey kids, guess what…only one more week before NaNoWriMo ’09 begins!

Now I’m not exactly the most…level person when it comes to NaNoWriMo. In fact, I unsympathetically joined the ranks of the rebels long ago when I first started participating in NaNoWriMo in 2007. The rules stipulate something about starting a story from scratch or some nonsense. Hogwash. I do Works in Progress and I happily proclaim so!

You see, this is my life: writing is pretty much the only medium I’ve clung to throughout my years, even when I was barely bigger than a toddler. I’m always working on something, not just in November. For me NaNoWriMo is about the personal challenge of forcing yourself to exude 50,000 words in the span of 30 days. And if I do it (which I have every year) then I validate. Some people who also work on WiP don’t like to validate, but whatever. I wrote 50k words in the span of 30 days, give me my damn certificate! I don’t see how I’m too much different than from those who start from “scratch”, when that means they spent all of October creating the most detailed outline on earth that can simply be strung together with connecting words, and voila, writer has 15k already the first day. Bwahaha.

But all charades aside, I am mostly prepared for this year’s NaNo, school time permitting. I’ve compiled what I have so far of Rebirth (what I’ve worked on during NaNo the past two years) into one document, and it currently stands at 304 pages and 183,446 words. That’s like…almost 4 NaNos right there. Hoping beyond hope that this will be the last NaNo for Rebirth since I would quite like to finish it this year.

So, now to pass it onto you, dear reader…what are you plans for this year’s NaNoWriMo, if you are doing anything at all? Are you a rebel or straight edge? Go ahead, surprise me, you’re not going to get any criticism from this corner of the internet. =)

"I saw it in a dream."

So it’s no secret that I have crazy, wild, and totally inappropriate dreams. These dreams in themselves are amazing story fodder: I know, when I was in fifth grade I wrote a compilation of all the interesting dreams I had up until that time. I even had sex dreams starting back when I was eleven or so. (Such an early bloomer I was.) However, my dreams never quite impacted my writing life so much as they did back in spring 2007 when I went to sleep and dreamed what would become the entire plot outline for the first CROSS// installment. The dream itself wasn’t so engrossing: I dreamed that I was watching it like a movie that my family rented. However, I was entirely unable to get the dream out of my head for a whole day, like it was haunting me, and finally I ended up drawing out a book outline and, after testing out a first scene, put it on the backburner until that following November when I decided to use CROSS// as my first NaNoWriMo experiment. It worked, and now I have a series I am very proud of.

…And now here comes the segue.

I had another dream last night. Particularly about one of my novels, that takes place where I am writing it right now. I really liked what the dream insinuated…basically a very bashful first kiss between two prominent characters. IT was very lovely and I could very well find a way to fit it into the story, but the problem is…would it really be necessary? Without giving too much away, having those characters kiss NOW would be detrimental to their relationship in subsequent plots. This is where I have to make a decision: either use it as is, or get SUPER CREATIVE and find a way to make it work with an insignificant kiss.

Dreams do that to you, though. While one may argue that dreams are a reflection of your subconscious, I would also argue that dreaming is a creative outlet. How many stories would not exist today without dreams? I’ve even had people come up to me and share their dreams with me because they think it would make an interesting story and they don’t want to write it…not that I have yet to do anything like that, but I always find it interesting that other people have dreams too that they absolutely feel need to be told to everyone as a novel. Maybe it’s our mind telling us “Here, you have this amazing idea, but you’re too daft to see it yourself: now get it on it.”

And with that, I’m off to use the remainder of my evening trying to fit and impromptu “first kiss” into my novel. Wish me luck?

Technology still hates me.

Since being back at school, I’ve had to take extreme measures to make sure I’m still writing. Well, not completely extreme, but you must get what I mean. I’m trying at the very least to chug through at least one page a day on Nagnomei, and two on CROSS// (or however much I can do since the latter is an easier writing style and is first draft). Of course, the usual rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t FORCE yourself to write anything. And that’s pretty good advice. However, it’s not that I have to FORCE things to come out of my head and through my fingers…it’s purely a time issue. My homework load this semester is already obscene and I barely have time to sleep and not go insane. In fact, me updating this writing blog is me taking a break from reading homework before I lose my mind.

Perhaps you may also remember a post I made a while ago about my challenges with getting files off old floppy drives. Today I decided to take advantage of the free computer lab on campus since I heard tales that they had floppy drives.

The first issue was getting out the floppies in question from my cupboard. When I pulled out the last of them, something quite curious was on board with them.

A magnet. Hitching a ride.

Now I have no idea if any damage has been done, but after detaching the lovebirds I walked across campus to scope things out.

Nope. No floppy drives, and nobody was in at the help desk (Labor Day and all) to see if they had any to check out. Oh well, for another day I suppose. It’s not like those files are OMG MUST GET NOW but some of the I would surely like to have. I have lots of old song lyrics on there I would like to rework as well. Oh well.

And now I look at the time and realize that I have more homework to do. I promise to write something more substantial and thought provoking soon enough, but until then, I’m off to try and squeeze in some pages where I can! Wish me luck!

"I'm trading in my novels for textbooks."

Well, not really, but I do have to apologize for being so quiet lately because I moved back to school…twice. Long story. Has nothing to do with writing. Really.

But yes, now I am back at school. Senior year, it be. That means more lovely places to write but hardly the time to do so. Never fear, for I will still attempt my weekly musings here (and other places) for sometimes just simply writing ABOUT writing gets my rear in gear to actually…write. And when I write, I have things to write about here. It’s win/win. No, really!

For now my days are filled with classes, socializing, some homework, and the nights…filled with still unpacking and organizing. Once this mess is over I will get back to writing at nights. I just can’t write in a messy room, you know? It nags at me.

Of course, reading research continues for Nagnomei in particular. I’m always picking up books on religions to read for said series, and it gets the juices flowing, so hopefully I will get added inspiration from that as well.

Until then, I am being heralded, so writing will have to wait for later. Ta-ta!

Yeah, well, you know what? Your face is cliche.

(Note, this entry was originally meant to be longer and slightly more convoluted, but due to time constraints I must cut it short. Feel free to engage me in the comments, though.)

I write fantasy novels. Working on two series right now. One is high fantasy and the other could probably be best explained as urban fantasy.

You know what that means.

I write cliches.

Fantasy gets a lot of bad rap when it comes to cliches, because, you know, we’re all ripping off Tolkien. (Never mind that Tolkien was heavily inspired by works that came before him as well.) And to credit, a lot of fantasy novels do make use of “tired” cliches: group quest, save the world, etc. etc. Hell I freely admit to using cliches in my works, because that’s just how a character’s life plays out Farmboy becomes swordsman: check. Beautiful, powerful sorceress: check. “Feisty” tomboy: check. Intellectual member of a royal family: check. (And to come, race of all female warriors.) Oh my, I do have my work cut out for me when it comes to making my story not so painful to read.

However, I think people put way too much hate into tiresome cliches. And yes, I am biased. I’ve been reading fantasy since I was five years old. I bathe in horrible 80′s fantasy movies. (Krull ftw kthnx). I, as aforementioned, write fantasy. And yes, there are definitely some instances in which cliches are just horrible and need to go find a proverbial fire to die in. It’s always fairly obvious when an author hasn’t taken their given list of cliches to work with and hasn’t done much of anything with them…aside from just using them. What’s great about fantasy is that it lets us take what’s been done before and inject our own personalities and world views into what we think such a fantasy world would be like. When we read fantasy novels, the goal is to walk away knowing how the author made the world their own. If we walk away saying “Huh. That author’s world told me nothing more than other author’s story did”, then, to quote the internet, they did it wrong.

Searching for “fantasy cliches” in Google gets one a lot of results. From humorous lists to serious forum discussions, everyone has an opinion on ye olde cliches. What’s hilarious, though, is how many lists go on for pages and pages (from one person, no less), and implying that any author that utilizes any of them needs to stop writing right now. These lists include all the classics, of course, but then you can’t help but start laughing because they tend to also include things like “slaves”, “character with long hair”, “character with short hair”, “character with two arms”…well, you get the point. Pretty much every type of character and every plot point conceivable these days is considered to be cliche, and heaven forbid if you do use a few cliches and try to imbrue them with your own thoughts.

On that note, you know what? Life is cliche. Seriously. I don’t know how many people around me do the same thing. (Go to school, go to college, get jobs, get married, procreate, die, yadda yadda). It’s tiring and predictable. But you know what else? Most of those people are doing those same things in their own way and style. Sure, some follow the “life script”, but it’s the same way that some authors follow the “fantasy script”. Annoying? Yes. But we move on to more interesting things.

For as many fantasy stories as there are now…it seems nearly impossible to come up with something “original”. But what is original? And what’s more annoying? Somebody writing with cliches or somebody trying to avoid cliches so hard that their story makes no damn sense?

Now excuse me, I’m going to go write about my farmboy and sorceress meeting for the first time. It’s probably cliche.

I hang out with John and Joanne at the library.

By some swing of the cosmos I made it to a public library today. (Okay, so I had to go get a haircut and this is where I wait for my ride to get off work.) Everytime I come to a library I feel very nostalgic, since when I was a child I practically read my life away and the library was a source of most of those books. And since then I have worked for a library and seen my mother work for a library, thereby stripping away most romantic images of them to nothing more than another place where workers squabble with each other and have to deal with the notorious public. Oh yeah, and there’s books there. People still read those in physical form now?

I once read an exercise for aspiring authors to do whenever they are in a bookstore/library. You go to the shelf in the section of where your works would supposedly end up, based on whatever name you’re publishing by. Obviously this would be in the “B”s for me, and I often do this exercise when I am bored. I head over to the fantasy section and, as the exercise describes, create a space where my first novel would go. The idea is to see what a shelf would look like with your book in it…I guess you’re supposed to imagine that a space is there because some enthralled reader has either bought or checked out your book. You know, I’m delusional, but not THAT delusional.

What is it about libraries – or bookstores – that make you want to just buckle down and write? Oh, right, books. But seriously, I always get a recharge walking into libraries and seeing people check out books, talk about books…use the internet (like me right now!), get pissy with each other, let their children run around screaming…

What was I talking about?

Oh, right. It’s at these moments, of imagining yourself amongst the ranks of the best that you feel an attainable goal is within your reach. Oh, I know what you’re thinking: “But Hildred! These are famous people! How is it attainable to get my book next to one of them?!“ Fear not, gentle reader. Do the exercise with me. Since I am here I went over the fantasy section just around the corner from me and figured out where I would go. Currently my novel would go between the authors, “Joanne Bertman” and “John Birmingham”. I’ve never heard of either of them! And guess what, neither of them have heard of me! We’re even! (Seriously, who are these people?) Then again the only fantasy author I know off the top of my head whose name starts with a “B” is Peter S. Beagle. Hm. Unicorns.

Point is, odds are you haven’t heard of most of the authors on any given bookshelf. Sure, you may be somebody who would end up next to Stephen King or J.K.Rowling. But think of this as free publicity as opposed to being intidmiating. It’s not like their book is going to beat up your book on the shelf. Or maybe it is. It’s not like we know what books do while we’re away, other than randomly appearing on the tops of people’s heads for balance practice or underneath glasses as coasters. (See, I knew I’d find a use for Atlas Shrugged.)

I just have one problem with this. Why am I always on the bottom shelf? I am such a lazy person, I don’t want books on the bottom shelf. I’d rather just have somebody grab a book for little ol’ short me from the top shelf. Especially during allergy season when perusing the bottom shelf makes gravity turn allergies into a fact of physics. One of those times that I don’t even think a splendiferous cover would catch somebody’s attention down there. I blame Asimov for this. He’s got like fifty books taking up shelf space above me. Come on, we could just watch any of the movies, thereby eliminating about 25 books. I move up a whole two rows! I would look there!

Of course I jest. Kinda. I really am that lazy.

Now as I part from this really strange ramble I am going to show just how applicable my blog title is. I just spent like…two hours writing this. Constantly getting sidetracked. I mused for two hours. And didn’t get any actual writing done…aside from about two paragraphs.

I need to stop procrastinating.

…except John and Joanne just invited me to a party for the bottom shelf. We’re gonna go hang out with Mercedes Lackey and some Star Wars books. At least I’ve met them before.

Technology: It hates your novel more than you do.

Without technology I definitely would not be as effective of a writer. Oh, sure, before my family had its first computer I wrote everything out by hand. But once the keyboard was in my hands I suddenly wrote everything faster (and because of all the writing I did, I can churn out, not kididng, about 120 wpm) and now juts CRINGE at the idea of writing just about anything long-hand. Heck, let’s face it kids, if it weren’t for LJ/bloggers in general I wouldn’t even keep a diary.

Suffice to say, I do all my writing, save for random notes I sometimes actually feel compelled to write when I have no electronics around, on the computer. It all started when I was in middle school and we got our first computer. It was a clunker, a total piece of work from the early 90s (and back when Unisys was a company making monitors, apparently, because that’s what he had) but it was our first ever, and I put it to awesome use. Computer guy pointed out to me the ever shiny “Wordpad” that comes with Windows and the rest was history.

Back then I was a very, very prolific writer. I wrote about a new novel every couple of months. Much of this was thanks to having not many other responsbilities in my life, and less distractions such as the internet…I would come home from school everyday and sit in front of the computer: writing.

That computer sucked, and was so behind that it couldn’t even play CDs (let alone burn them) and this was before there was such a thing as USB. After my family bought a brand new computer (and brought internet along with…oh boy, dial up!) the old clunker was moved into my room. Now I could write in my room! Which I did, for many years, all through high school.

It was on that computer (that I never named unlike my computers I have now) that I wrote the first drafts for Nagnomei: The Key of Nixey and The Scrolls of Europa. I also wrote quite a few shorts stories and novellas, as well as song lyrics and poems that rested on that harddrive for many years After I graduated high school my parents bought me a big, shiny laptop. Transferring files was easy…kind of. Since the only way to move files off the Clunker was via the archaic A-drive (floppies!) and my laptop (that I still have and am typing this on now) I had to use my family’s computer as the go-between: put the floppy into Clunker, transfer files to Desktop, put files onto USB, transfer files to Laptop. Problem solved.

The Clunker stayed in my room for another couple of years while I went off to do college things. As you can probably guess, now with a handy laptop I do all my writing from it. (And my other tinier laptop, but that’s for on trips). Finally, this past winter, I decided it was time for the Clunker to leave. It was taking up valuable desk space in my room, I never used it, and I wanted the space to be able to put my laptop down when I wanted to use it in my room while at home. I decided that it was best to backup everything, even old files I never touched since middle school. I took out a bunch of old, clean floppies and saved all my files on them before saying goodbye to Clunker as it went off to the dump.

The floppies went in a pile on my desk, never to be touched until I wanted them. Well, this past week, I wanted them.

You see, during my last major rewrite of The Key of Nixey here, I realized I needed to research something I originally said in a deleted scene in an old draft that I didn’t have on my laptop. Well, that meant taking the appropriate floppy over to the family computer, transferring it to USB, and bringing it back to my laptop.

There was just one problem: I couldn’t access the files.

My family bought a new computer (from the old one I originally used to transfer files) sometime ago, and even though this one had a floppy drive, the computer itself refused to acknowledge anything was in there. Fearing that it may be a corrupted floppy, I tried inserting other ones, even a clean one, and still the machine refused to tell me that anything was in there. I asked my family if they ever used the floppy drive before, and they said no…maybe it’s just dirty, but no matter how I looked at it I just couldn’t help but feel betrayed by technology.

I really, really want those files now. As the kids say today, “fml”.

"X" marks the failure.

Some authors can come up with plots like it’s no big deal. *coughstephenkingcough* And some others take a few years to even get a plot point that they think is worth going with. I kinda fall in between…sometimes I have a flash of brilliance and write down the plot idea in my little orange notebook, and other times I go through dry spells that leave me staring at those pages like they’re gold or something.

But wherever you fall on the spectrum…it still really, really sucks to find out later that one of your ideas has already been done! (Reminds me of “Simpsons Did It!”) This happened to me recently. A few years ago I came up with a pretty good plot idea, I thought. It wasn’t a story I would work on write away, maybe towards mid-life, but I kept it in the back of my mind and expanded on it when I had the time.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, I discovered that it had ALREADY BEEN DONE. Almost ver-batim. And was a best selling novel. And a movie classic. (No, I won’t share which one it was, it’s that embarrassing.)

But regardless, it’s a horrible feeling. On one hand it’s nice to know that the idea would’ve been very well received granted it was never done before…but on the other you kinda have to wonder why you had to be born about thirty years too late.

Nothing quite so painful as opening up that orange notebook and putting a big “X” through that particular plot page. =(

Exposure: When it's totally legal.

Chances are you are reading this from any of three current sources, for now “Musings of a Procrastinating Author” is being broadcasted to three different channels. Two are WordPress related and one is a Livejournal account. I will provide all three links below…if you have an LJ account you can friend the LJ blog and get the updates loaded to your friend list every time I post something…or you could just add the WordPress blog to your blogroll if you have an account there, or frequent the blog attached to my official site…it’s all up to you!

http://www.hildred-billings.com/blog <—official site blog

http://hbillings.wordpress.com <—Wordpress blog, can be added to Blogrolls.

http://hildred.livejournal.com <—Livejournal blog, can be friended to your account.

And now…for the real update.

If you’ve been following this at all, you may notice that I’ve been MIA for the past, oh, seven months. Truth is I’ve been abroad in Japan since late winter, with very little internet access. The upside to this though is that I got a lot of writing done which makes me quite happy! Now I’m back Stateside and it’s time to get back to my old wind and grind. Hmm.

My writing schedule as of late seems to comprise of two sets of time: Nagnomei in the afternoon/evening when I am my most lucid, and CROSS// late at night when typos and incoherent plot holes are a-ok! Between these two times I pretty much just play Sims 3. And trust me, the next update will be about Sims 3.

Because I…tend to recreate novels in the Sims? And I have no life. Both apply.

Dang, does it feel good to be back!

Playing favorites with your "babies".

It’s no secret about me that I’m not interested in ever having human babies. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have my “babies”. All my cats aside, my novels are pretty much the closest things to babies I will ever have.

Following this metaphor, Nagnomei is now eight years old. It’s a stellar oldest child, if I do say so myself. It’s sophisticated, smart, and will kick your ass at chess. I’ve doted on it for years with the understanding that it would be the first to be published come hell or sunshine.

Then a year and a half ago CROSS// was conceived, only later to be given birth to in one NaNo November in 2007. It was a cute little baby. I shared it with everyone, it garbled for a while, and then took a long nap until the next November when it came back, a year older and suddenly able to walk. And walk it did. It went right over to its older sibling and kicked Nagnomei right in the shins.

I was so dang proud.

It’s a spectacular day when your youngest goes over to your oldest and just shows it who’s boss – even if it’s only temporary. You know, like cats. They constantly bicker over who gets to be boss, and it seems like who reigns supreme changes from day to day, week to week.

But enough about babies and cats. (Kittens?) When you’re a parent (…of anything) people warn you about playing favorites. Don’t wanna favor one over the other, right? One might get sad. And then the other just knows they’re awesome, and that’s dangerous.

That whole thing segues into what I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ve always accepted that Nagnomei would be the one I focused on the most, and whatever other series I developed would come in second. But then CROSS// grew balls. Suddenly it was all I wanted to work on, and Nagnomei just kinda hung out in the back, the final rewrite screaming “Mommy, pay attention to me!” (I’m pretty sure it will have to visit the school councilor soon.) Even though I had given myself a rather strict regimen in regards to working on Nagnomei, all I could focus my creative juices on was CROSS//, and after a while it just sort of took a toll on me. It bothered me to a point that I couldn’t really work on either series because I was either bored with the one or feeling guilty about the other. It was like I knew I had to take the oldest to soccer practice but the youngest was just…way too cute to not pay attention to. =(

Compounded with other factors in my life right now, and I was having quite the time this week figuring myself out. I finally realized the obvious: just work on what comes naturally.

….

Oh yeah, I should totally leave it there. And what? Kick myself later for writing the most trite thing of the evening? Oi Vey. Here’s an ending, inspirational line for you:

ReDeads suck. And other…things…not suitable for a PG setting.

Props if you get the reference. ;)

Why?

“Why?” is a great question, whether you are living or writing. When we are living, “why” means “Why am I here? Why did I eat that? Why is that creepy guy starting at me?” “Why” is very existential. “Why” means something is happening to us. We don’t have to take responsibility for it. “Why” is the outside affecting us.

You know, when we’re living.

In writing, “why” is something totally different. “Why” is “Why did I just do that to my character? Why is my muse leaving me? Why am I procrastinating?”

Ah, procrastinating. Good job, Hildred. You may have noticed that it’s been over two months since I last wrote here. Because I’ve been procrastinating. That’s because I had homework out my wazzoo. Now time is all mine…but I still don’t want to write. Of course I want to write. It’s my passion. It’s how I work though my own problems, how I make sense of the world. But you know what, “why” in writing is your own fault. If something doesn’t get done, it’s because you didn’t do it. Or because your brain is whacking out. Or because you really are channeling some weird universe eons away and their history is being written while you channel.

Point being, I can’t cry about my novel(s) not getting done if I’m not…doing anything. “Why” is answered with “me”. Of course, if I’m dying in the hospital, I can’t be too sad about it. But what am I going to do come 12/12/12, when the world is ending and I haven’t even finished the final draft of my first novel? =( Oh, sad, sad day.

So what does this all mean? I suppose I’m nipping myself in the bud. Starting tonight I am shooting for 1600 words (Nano style, baby) in CROSS// and…well, how about a page in Nagnomei, since that one requires more thought since I have to sound t3h smartz.

Why? Because I have to do it and get it done. =)