Sheila Rambles

NaNoWriMo comes with some lovely stats pages so you can see where you are and where you should be by now in your wordcount.  But I realized that I'd forgotten my own personal tracking method which works as a surprisingly good motivator.  I figured I'd share it here (nearly halfway through the month--go figure) in case anybody else might benefit from it. My amazing high-tech word count indicator and motivation device consists of a sheet of graph paper from a pad I picked up somewhere for cheap and still haven't used up.  There are fifty lines to a sheet and forty-one squares to a line.  I mark off a block of forty-by-fifty and notch it at intervals of four along the top and intervals of ten along the side.  Each time my wordcount advances by twenty-five words, I put an X in one of the squares.  Four boxes adds up to one hundred words and each line of forty adds up to a thousand. Twenty five words isn't much.  Twenty five words can be something a...

So today, the crazy folks at NaNoLanta have organized the Mad Authorial Rampage Through Atlanta (M.A.R.T.A.) Write-In . I've decided to sign up. I'll be tweeting when I can ( @wonderbink ) with the hashtag #NaNoMARTA and if I can get to a WiFi signal, I'll be updating this entry on the fly. It starts near Lindbergh Station and ends near Dunwoody Station, which means I can catch the 5 there and catch it back home as well. Too perfect to pass up. I'd better start by packing up the laptop I'm typing this on, so . . .

The first, of course, being the beginning of National Novel Writing Month , my favorite November pastime.  I have again submitted myself to the process and I'm about five thousand words into a novel called Dave the Wanderer and the Circle of the Sun.  Dave's a character who showed up in a notebook of mine about fifteen years ago.  Just now I'm getting to write about him.  He's a hell of a lot snarkier than I expected him to be. The second being the official publication (or maybe just the first day I was able to be sure it existed, I'm not sure) of Catbooks and Other Methods on the iTunes Bookstore.  I've been a bit bad about getting the word out, but I guess I'll have to become That Gal Who Won't Shut Up About Her Book On The Interweebs.  Apologies in advance for that. I'm about a day behind on my NaNo efforts since I've done very little in the way of wordcount what with grocery shopping and laundry and taking advantage of early voting.  How...