Complain and moan time! What's eating you?

/begin bitch

What part of "I can't talk now, I am writing" is unclear. Just because I'm physically at home does not mean I'm flush with free time. We didn't visit for the whole of October! Why must you call "just to chat" every freakin' hour! Any other time of the year I would be happy to waste hours on the phone with you but I AM BUSY. Writing involves more than just pushing buttons on the keyboard. You may think anyone can do it, but it requires a lot of my blood, sweat and tears, so please leave me be!

/end bitch

Wow, I feel a lot better. Now back to the keyboard, I think there's a piece of my soul still in one piece.

"Preach! Write! Act! Do anything save to lay down and die!" -Hawthorne

Here is my bitch and moan of the week:

GAAAAHHHHHH! My mother has decided that my endeavor is stupid. And whenever I say, "Mom, I need to write." She goes off on how this is unimportant and its going to be bad anyway. Well she doesn't actually say the second part, but thats what it feels like! I want this. And I'm already having trouble with my writing drive. And the fact that I have no support at home IS NOT HELPING!!! I kinda just want to scream!!
AHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay I feel a little better.

I am going to be 5,000 words behind by the time Friday rolls around. My goal is 2500 words per day, but I had school, driver's ed, and then work today- and the same schedule tomorrow. I have no time to write! D=

Besides the fact that I'm a notorious procrastinator?

This year I'm apparently completely incapable to stick to one language. I'm a German native speaker, but I've been reading in Englisch a lot over the last six years, almost exclusively at times. Last year I wrote my first nano novel in German, with the occasional (or not so occasional) English word or phrase or paragraph thrown in in squared brackets when the only German ones I could come up with just wouldn't do.
No big deal, happens in all my first drafts, no matter in which language I write them, I deal with it when it's time to edit.

But this year, my novel just can't decide... I started with 250 words in English switched to Germen for the next 1.5K, got stuck and wrote 600 more in English again, all with lots of brackets with the respective other languages sprinkled in of course.
It's not a bad way for me to write, but I know that this will make editing so much more of a huge pain in the ass...

I'm behind in word count! I didn't write yesterday and I don't feel like it today! My full time job crushes my soul! I just want to sit here and eat brownies and watch Top Chef, but if I do that I'll be TWO WHOLE DAYS BEHIND.

I'm pissed that I don't feel like writing !!! :-O :-O

I have to make sure I write before work on weekdays.

I am behind on my word count because I can't seem to find a whole lot of time. There was nothing to do in Oct but now that it is Nov. my time has suddenly become unbelievably limited. Plus my characters have decided that they don't want to do what I want them to do! My hero is becoming my villain and my villain is becoming the hero. Don't they understand they aren't supposed to do that!!

Thanks for listening!

I feel hungover. Too much NaNo at once has given me a huge headache and backlog of work that's due tomorrow. And I do. not. understand. AP Chemistry. This is all culminating in really crappy writing and slapdash scenes that a 4 year old could throw together. I feel like garbage.
Oh, and the NaNo site keeps crapping out on me. Ugh.

November '08 - Windwhyst (102,318)
November '09 - Sagas and Supermarkets (83,873) / The Empyreal Hunt

I would say, talk to your mom and tell her it's upsetting and crippling to your writing drive that she doesn't support you. Tell her what it means for you to do this, and that you want to make it to the finish line so you have this novel under your belt. I know it's hard to talk to moms, I have a difficult one sometimes too. But I think that if you talk to her, maybe she'll understand? If not, try not to think about what she says. OR let it out in your novel. Anyways, I hoped this helped. I'm sure your novel isn't shit. Everyone is their own worst critic, thats what my friend tells me when I am down about writing.

You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"

[begin whine]
I've only just started today and so I am behind as usual.... I only came up with the idea yesterday so there are a lot of missing pieces--- like a plot. I wrote a horrible, horrible beginning that must die. And I keep asking myself: does the world really need a Christian steampunk novel that is full of circus freaks and explicit Catholicism?

The only thing keeping me from throwing the whole beginning out is that then I'd be even further behind..... I just feel stupid, stupid, stupid.....

[end whine]

2009 - The Aether Key: Christian steampunk
2005 - Viridians: Alien invasion story (didn't win)
blog: http://linalamont.blogspot.com
facebook profile: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/nissa.amas.katoj?ref=profile
occupation: crazy cat lady

I was supposed to hit 8000 words yesterday but I didn't because I had no drive and I was supposed to be studying for an exam today. Today is here, I've studied and I still have no drive! The two miserable sentences I managed to squeeze out are contradicting what I wrote last night at 1 in the morning. I can't remember my thought process either so if I had some brilliant idea about where it was supposed to go, it's flown out of my head. Gah.

ARRRFGGGHH!!!
Where'd my muse go?!!! I need more inspiriation! I'm only at 5600! I wrote a really good piece yesterday but today I can't make anything decent! Waaaahhh!!
Maybe I'll try and find a writing prompt. *goes off on desperate search*

I'm getting frustrated, I have never written anything this long before, only short stories, poems, and maybe a few chapters, but I very rarely finish any of them. I don't know how to move my story along without making it boring, I don't want to go on a day by day recount of their life, bleh! Maybe I will break it up into chapters and skip a head to a more significant part of the story...

I have a good idea. Actually, I have two. That's part of the problem. I've written parts of two and can't pick which to move forward on. And what I'm writing isn't doing justice to either idea. And I don't like one of the protagonists--but I like that plot better. And neither of them is rolling along.

And what I actually WANT to write is my work in progress from BEFORE NaNo that's a bit more than half-done! But I don't want to cheat! I need a real NaNo!

*sigh*

I think I need to outline a bit both of my NaNos and just MAKE a choice and stick to it no matter what.

Let's go, Evansville! :)

Keep going, everyone! Life does get in the way of Nano---I had a mouse in my office closet at home that peed everywhere-and am still trying to get the smell out. Office smells yeeeky. Mad about carpet, whole situation. Just a mouse, but it sure did interrupt my zen nano time! But onward I must go........Yikes! It is like the little bugger knew it was Nano and there ya go.
Good luck, everyone!

"The miracle isn't that I finished; the miracle is that I had the courage to start."
-John "the penguin" Goodham

I think all my professors somehow found out I was doing this, and got together to conspire to give me as much homework as they possibly could. I swear, I have never been this busy in a semester before! If only I didn't care about my grades...

Between writing two novels for NaNo and trying to get ready for a convention the weekend before (American) Thanksgiving, you'd THINK that maybe the people in my house would be trying to help out around here. There's 4 adults living here, two of which don't care if the kitchen counter is piled with dishes because they can just order out for food. The other one aside from me is my hubby, and he goes to work (my writing and art is my work), so when he comes home he sits on his butt and doesn't do anything because "I worked all day!" Yeah, well so did I, and I can't just leave my work and come home because my work is all AT HOME. I'd love some time off but I can't have any! Everyone else gets to play video games and watch TV while I'm tearing my hair out!

I'm absolutely frothing with rage right now. Good thing I'm writing a fight scene in my story. Or at least, I would be if I hadn't had to stop to go take out the trash and load the dishwasher.

Okay... rant/vent over... now maybe I can concentrate...

I don't have Plot Bunnies so much as I have Plot Bunniculas... Mine go for blood.

I've got dry skin on my hands at the moment (and ezcema but that's another moan) and the skin on the side of my thumb near by nail has just split! And guess what? It's on the EXACT spot where I strike the spacebar with it. Just brilliant.

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality

Ugh, this is so me! Never in my life have I written anything long, nor have I ever written for so long... Getting the words out isn't my problem, but giving them any sort of story advancing abilities, not for the life of me. Hopefully it will get better as the month goes on, but I seriously doubt it.

musilitar.wordpress.com
My blog for creative recycling and philosophic murmuring

I don't even know where to start, frankly. My husband has a job, but it isn't enough for us to live on. I can't work full-time because I don't make enough to pay for daycare, and it seems that everyone around here is looking for a second or third part-time job to supplement their income, so there isn't a lot of part-time evening positions to go around. I don't have any familial support in the immediate area, but the in-laws do send fresh veggies from their garden when it's in season, and thank goodness for that; vegetables are expensive. We've stopped buying meat because it's expensive, my son can't tolerate any dairy, so we're effectively vegan, and I am sick to death of dry beans and rice (pretty much the cheapest meal around, and one we have five times a week). We've reduced to one car, the bare minimum on our cellphones/internet service (which my husband must have to do his job, as he is on-call), and we still can't pay our bills. I even cut their hair myself! But do we qualify for assistance of any sort? Nope. And God forbid any of us get sick; we may have medical insurance, but only after paying off the $5k deductible, which doesn't include any of the required co-pays.

And all this has been going on for over a year. I'm tired. I'm tired of it never being enough, of being embarrassed when we can't go out with friends because we don't have enough gas and they want to go out for dinner. Of feeling like a failure when we can't pay all our bills every month. Of looking at the checking account and seeing that one wrong move will bring on a cascade of overdraft fees we can't afford, of wondering how to stretch what's in the cabinets until next payday with a growing toddler in the house, of getting SO CLOSE to a brand-new job that will pay my husband enough to JUST make ends meet, only for the company to retract the posting or hire someone from within after weeks of stringing us along. I'm tired of getting my hopes up and watching it crumble, no matter what we we do. I don't even want to think about Christmas.

I'm no stranger to hardship, and I'm accustomed to doing what I have to do in order to keep things going. In the past, writing has been my escape, my stress relief, the thing I did to try and turn my fortune around. It was my secret salvation. This year...I can't bring myself to care any longer. I think my store of emotional investment has run dry.

But, I type. It's contrived, it's simplistic, it's too dark for any mainstream audience, but I type it out anyway. Maybe I can make something out of it later. At this moment, it's all I have.

I know, intellectually, that I should be thankful my husband still HAS a job, that we have a roof over our heads, and that we can usually at least pay the electric bill, that we're relatively healthy and I'm not staring a high-risk pregnancy in the face. There are so many people who have it so much worse than I do, and some days I can keep my perspective in place. Today...this week..just hasn't been one of them.

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally." -- Flannery O'Connor

I just had my third nosebleed in the last three days. Seriously, life? Now you had to throw this at me? Not, like, in any other month but November? And because of accidentally swallowing a lot of blood, I now have a serious stomachache. Said stomachache convinced me to skip dinner last night, which was my own fault but still wasn't such a great idea. And my friends have pretty much completely withdrawn any support they ever had for me, both personally and with my novel. Great job, guys.

Not even NaNo is fun any more.

There are some tales of woe here that make my issues seem tiny...

But right now I am juggling my main job with a second job in the evenings to pull in some extra cash; my boyf is working all hours as well, so the few times we're in the house at the same time he wants us to spend quality time together (must admit, so do I); I do field hockey on Saturdays and on free evenings I go ballroom dancing or to my diet club. I want to start horse riding now I've lost some weight as well.

So WHERE DO I FIND THE TIME TO WRITE???? At the moment I am getting by by scribbling things down during my main work lunchbreaks but, honestly, sometimes the muse just isn't playing ball at those times.

*sigh*

On top of all that, I can't decide if Robert (one of my MMCs) should be nice or a complete sh!t. I keep trying to make him nasty, so that Beth won't want to be with him anymore, but she keeps remembering the good times and wants to give it all another go. What a sap!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Dark Willow: You called me a rank, arrogant amateur. Well buckle up, Rupert... 'Cause I've turned pro.

Between reading Fahrenheit 451 and Slaughterhouse Five, my muse has become a wreck. I have to read both for school, one in increments, one quickly because I have a paper due on it the 14th, I believe. Between that and every other class I'm taking that I have to do things for (I've had two calculus tests in the past four days), I can't think straight. Not only that, but I have to write for other things as well. I need sleep, badly, because I haven't gotten enough with everything I'm doing and whenever I sit down to write, I can't find anything to write or the attention span to attempt it.

Oh! A thread where I can whine without being judged.

Well, here we go. It's very hard to get and stay inspired when the job you work in literally sucks the joy and life out of you for 7.5 hours a day. I'm glad I'm not writing about my own industry this year, because I would actually be on the point of jumping off a cliff by now.

By the time I get home, all I want to do is sit on my backside, stuff my face and surf random s*** on the internet for a few hours before bed. I hate that all my creativity is being destroyed by this job. And I mean *all* of it. I have lost everything that ever brought me any joy in life, and I'm left with this shitty job in this shitty company in this horrible city. And it's not even like this is a job with prospects - I've been here two years and I'm getting bloody nowhere.

Oh, that's overly dramatic, but that's just how I feel today.

And everything I do write is drivel. Utter uninspired drivel just to up the word count and keep going. Blah. Or should I say bleurgh? Gah.

Plus, I don't have the support of my best friend, because I can't tell her I'm even doing with without her getting all 'wtf' on me. She doesn't get it. Plus she'd want to read it, and that's never going to happen.

Ah. I'm going before I dig myself any deeper a hole.

[IMG]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a315/fc2001/threewordseightlettersnano2009.jpg[/IMG]
2007: Return To Sender (fail - 32,560)
2008: What Goes Around Comes Around (win!)
2009: Three Words, Eight Letters

I'm procrastinating through the same stupid little meleodrama that I play out in my brain at the beginning of every month -

Delicate Damsel: "I just can't face paying the bills. There are too many, and they up suck the money up like a bunch of vampire piranhas. It would be bad enough just to have to watch, but to wring the stone of my checking account dry and then serve up the blood myself? ... I can't make myself do it."

Mustachioed Villian: "But you must pay the bills."

Delicate Damsel: "But I can't face the bills."

(Extra interlude for November)
NaNo Imp (tugging at my earlobe): "Writing. You're supposed to be writing. Right now, we should both be writing."

Me: "Oh, c'mon. I shouldn't be messing around writing and stuff until I get these damned bills done and in the mail."

D. Damsel: "But I can't face the bills."

M. Villian: "But you must pay the bills."

This dialogue repeats, ad infinitum, until the Handsome Hero arrives.

Handsome Hero (flourishing a cup of hot coffee and a fresh sheet of postage stamps): "I'll pay the bills."

D. Damsel (swooning gracefully): "My Hero!!!"

(Extra fun-fillip ending for November)
NaNo Imp (dancing joyfully): "We write, now, right? ...Write, right? ...Write, Right! ...Write! Right!"
.....

It's no wonder I can't seem to get anything done, what with all *that* going on in my head. :)

NaNo Rebel, With a Many A Subordinate Clause

It's day five. I have under 5000 words. I have realized that my main character doesn't have a name. It took me five days to realize this. That can't be a good sign. What's an even worse sign is that I can't desribe any of her personality traits other than "longwinded." What's even worse than that?

I don't have a plot.

It's not that I hate my plot, or that I have an uneven tone or whatever. I don't have a plot. And I know the tagline is "no plot no problem" but dude, it's a problem. I can't write 50000 words of nothing. I mean, I can, but I don't really want to and now my drive to write has fizzled out and died.

Loooose.

I just want to curl up somewhere and not write anything. I've hit 98 prompts between July 25th and Nov 1st. My Muse is insisting that should be enough. But then I demand this sort of thing. I want 50k out of a story I don't care about, that has no direction, and absolutely nothing if interest to me any more.

I thought it would be easy. But the Character that's supposed to be driving this isn't interested. She's happier sorting out things outside of the writing that can't be included because it's a crazy mess of being OOC things and not IC things. So, here I am, with a story I don't want to write, with no plot direction, and even less of an idea of what to do about it.

I want to start over. I had a vaguely good idea that had resulted from a prompt I'd written some time ago. And it's insisting, now, that it's a much better idea than the blather of shit I have now. I'm starting to believe it. Because what I have now is a collection of nonsensical scenes that don't even go together. >_<

/rant

No one can fathom the will of gods and angels as they shape mortal lives.

What's the point of having forums if everyone on them is unsupportive? (Overexaggeration, no one reading this take offense >.>;;)

The fantasy forum is driving me out of my head. Every time I post anything on there for critiques, the critiques that come back are harsh and muse-killing. Just because I'm not writing yet another Twilight novel, my story is crap?! Or must everything be perfectionistic, every-detail-correct steampunk for it to be considered "good"?

Or is it bias against fanfiction? What's WRONG with fanfiction? It's not like I'm writing this as an exercise in fanwankery, I'm trying to create a real story in a setting I love, what's so wrong with that? Is it not fantasy because I haven't invented elves for the fifteenth (million) time?

That's it: if I ever hop genres over into fantasy, the title of my first such novel will be "Inventing Elves." :)

(And what (What? WHAT?!) is the big fat hairy deal about steampunk anyway?)

NaNo Rebel, With a Many A Subordinate Clause

I haven't written anything for two days. You know what I just did for an hour? Surfed the ads on craigslist.

jsbndjbfjb fcbcf!!!!!!! I'm gonna have a nervous breakdown soon.

WHY DID I THINK I COULD DO THIS.
I should've made an outline. Maybe then I would have, you know, a plot.

Also, whenever I read my so-called novel, I want to smash my fist through the laptop screen.
And I love my laptop.
It's ME that is having procrastination and poor writing issues, but I blame everything else.

/curls up into a ball of angst

I know *exactly* how you feel, work is the suck.