Come One, Come All, To DecNoEdMo!

Mmm, I don't have a scanner that works. We did have one attached to a printer, but the printer died.

Eh, I guess I'll type the story myself.

In other news... I did a lot of thinking last night. I can't get through the whole trilogy over break, it's just way too much stress. I need to relax a bit before going back to Uni. This semester taught me that.

So what do I do with my trilogy? I had 2 options - finish book 2, and put 1 and 2 up now, then book 3 next year. OR release book 1 in February (right before I go back to Uni), book 2 in August, and then the projected finish time for book 3, February 2014, will make it a 6-month-apart release schedule for the trilogy.

So I decided on the latter. Now, this means that while I still want to finish writing book 2 over the break, I will have several months to edit it into shape, as well as a 3-week break between semesters to really pull it into shape. Naturally, this takes a lot of pressure off of me! Phew!

But I then thought about another book. I want to have 2 books out making me money, and in a sense, having 2 different-style books out at the same time might give me an indication of which one works better.

Now, I know I don't have time to write a new book - but I have one that just needs a heavy edit, like the one I've been editing so far.

So I'm going to try to edit this book as well over the break.

New goals:

1. Edit WIP#1.
2. Finish writing WIP#2.
3. Edit WIP#4
4. Type grandad's story.
5. Read.

Ah, now we're getting somewhere! That looks a lot more doable for 2.5 months!

So yeah, that's my new plan. For December, I'm just going to edit WIP#1 and type grandad's story.

That's it? *feels pressure slipping away*

Yes, I think I made the right decision.

Wow, page 80? That's awesome!

I think I'm on page 50. But I'm past the halfway mark, which is good.

And Vamp, yeah, I was fairly happy with the decision last night. But when I typed out that post this morning I knew I'd made the right decision. These goals are something I *can* do, without pushing myself too hard.

Hope you get better soon!

Okay... Plan for the day. I'll type a bunch of grandad's story, then see what I feel like doing after that. Might take the day off editing WIP#1... Going out later, not sure what time, and editing a single chapter takes a lot of time for me. So yeah, don't want to get halfway through a chapter then have to leave.

I can't edit on paper... It's just so much easier to go through the Word doc for me. But to each their own. (Part of it is that I'm a terribly slow and messy handwriter.)

ETA: Been making notes for the Christmas Creeper short. It's starting to come together. Now I guess I really have to type on grandad's story, at least for a while...

ETA2: Typed up 2 pages of grandad's story. 9 done, 18 to go... It'd seem like I'm 1/3 of the way there, but I typed 4.5 pages long before this month... So I'm more like 1/5 of the way to finishing this month's marathon. Going to try to type up some more later, but for now I think I'll read some of my book. 3/4 through it, so I'm hoping to knock the rest of it out today or tonight after I get back from the grandparents' place.

I never cooked until about 3 years ago. I found I actually really enjoy it though.

So okay, I don't use fresh food, I use frozen food... But a few of the meals in my repertoire require combining the basic ingredients into a kick-arse meal. That's the part I really enjoy.

One of these days I'm going to learn how to make pizza from scratch. Mmm... Custom-made pizza... NOM!

ETA: Forgot what I came in here for! So yeah, I'm up to page 11 of grandad's story now. 10 down, 17 to go. I just might get this done in time for Christmas...

Thanks.

The key to enjoying cooking is that when you finally make a good meal yourself, suddenly you're like, "OMG I can eat good foods whenever I want!"

In other news, 11 pages down, 16 to go. The next few pages, I just noticed, happen to be short ones for some reason. So hopefully they won't take anywhere near as long.

Will be leaving the house in about 3 hours... Not sure if I should work on editing now that I know I have time, or what. I'm making good progress with grandad's story today, and the sooner it's out of the way the better, but my back is kind of sore from leaning over a piece of paper ever so slightly to read what was written.

Might read for a little while now and think it over.

ETA: Those 11 pages total just under 10k. So nearly 1k per page... Small font!

ETA2: 12 down, 15 to go. Slowly getting there, but I can only do 1 page at a time, because my back gets sore. I've now written about 4k today on grandad's story... If only I was so productive with my own writing!

Mmm, dishes are evil.

In other news, 13 pages down, 14 to go. I've written close to 5k today! Done nothing of my own work, except plot a bit more of the Christmas Creeper short.

But that's it - no more of grandad's story today!

I was talking to mum about how my back was getting sore leaning over the papers, and she found a little stand thing that can prop up whatever you're typing up. My back was still a little sore after that last page, but nowhere near as much. Hooray!

ETA: Just realised I've typed 6 pages of his life story today... Whoa! That's a LOT. I now have 15 days to get 14 pages typed up. If I have another couple of days like today, it'll be no problem at all. Of course, I need to get back to my own stuff soon. They too have a deadline...

Speaking of electric kettles, I recently saw one with about 6 different start buttons - each button causes the kettle to warm the water to a different temperature. I think that's marvellous.

In other news, I tried typing another page of grandad's story, but then the power had to be shut off. Mum's having solar panels put up... The power's back on now, so I'll get back to it soon, but yeah - kind of interrupted my work for about an hour.

ETA: Finished typing that page. Might read for a while.

Hooray for As!

Okay, so I'm up to page 16 of grandad's story. 15 down, 12 to go... Only, I had written 4.5 before this month. So I've written 11.5 in the past week, 12 to go. OMG I'm basically halfway there!

ETA: 18 down, 9 to go. Don't get excited - I only did 1 page, not 3. But it seems grandad got rather confused... There were 3 pages that technically amounted to 1 page because of repetition.

And a previous page was also in the wrong order (he numbered them after printing, not in the actual Word doc) so I spent about 15 minutes figuring out where that actually was meant to go...

Typed about 2.5k today so far.

ETA2: 19 pages down, 8 to go... The end is in sight! I've typed I think 4 pages today, plus getting rid of those superfluous pages, so I think another 2 days will see this finished. Going to focus on my own work for the rest of today and tomorrow, I think. Oh, also very close to finishing reading a book. I'd hoped to finish it last night, but it wasn't happening. So it'll be a day late... Close enough.

Finished reading that book. So that makes about 750 pages read in 8 days (2 books). Might try to get some editing done before starting on the next book.

Although I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll make a list of my TBR pile and put it in yet another spreadsheet... I'm loving how organised I've been this past week, and part of that is the spreadsheets. Keeping track of my WIPs so far, but I think having a proper list of my (quite large) TBR pile would be useful too.

I haven't felt this organised in months, maybe years. It's good for some clarity.

Well, it took me an hour, but I now have a spreadsheet for my TBR pile... Which I really needed, actually. I have *drumroll* 38 books in my collection that I have yet to read!

I've read 3 so far this break, and I also listed 4 books I intend on re-reading, but those aren't part of the 38.

A sizable chunk of them are NF, which explains some of it. They're a lot more time-consuming to get through. And I have 7 that I've begun reading in the past few years, but never finished (nearly all NF).

Unfortunately, I also have 6 books that I *can't* read yet. They're parts of series, where I'm missing the first (or second) book in the series, but have the later ones unread. And I'm anal, so I won't read them till I can collect the others. *stern face*

But just wow... That's a big collection of books to get through! No way will I finish all of those over this break, especially as I'm putting in a lot of time on my writing.