oops.

On Friday, I had an idea for a story while I was at work and wanted to go ahead and get it on a Word document before I forgot it. It was less than a page, but I still wanted to email it to myself so I could add on to it over the weekend.

All well and good, right?

Well, it would be, but I sent it as an attachment to my Hotmail account, which begins with the letter 'c' and is saved in my email contacts on Thunderbird.

I also have the department head's email saved in my contacts. Her email also begins with the letter 'c'.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

I went to my Hotmail account today to download the page I wrote.

It's not there.

Fuck.

I haven't heard from the department head about this so maybe it just got stuck somewhere in the internet. That happens, right? Please, for the love of God, tell me it does. I do NOT want to have a conversation with the department head about this on Monday.

The only thing that really gets my mind off of this is watching the following video with the speakers on.

writing and drinking, goes together like a horse and carriage

It's been so long since I began writing a novel that I have forgotten how to.

Oh, sure. I have bits and pieces to five stories and one self-help book jotted down in notebooks and saved to Word files, but I don't have an actual start to any of them. And I started writing Always the Last to Know over two years ago.

My God, did I really spend over two years writing a book? I have GOT to get a boyfriend.

I'm a writer and I don't even know my own writing process! Do other people who write have this problem? I thought that my writing process was writing little snippets then throwing it all together later (which, admittedly, isn't much of a process) but, as it turns out, all I'm able to do is write snippets, freak out over the fact that I don't know how to turn them into a story, and then take to my blog that, like, five people read (please, God, tell me at least five people read this... if not, I'm going to the next step of writing and down those jell-o shots in the fridge this instant).

The story in question is the sequel to Always the Last to Know. I would really love to start writing my NaNoWriMo since I already have the first chapter outlined so in-depth that it's practically cheating, but since I can't start that until November 1, and since I haven't figured out what paranormal angle to take for another story or two, couple with the fact that the self-help book is a collaborative project that was started ages ago by people who still don't know that they're contributing chapters, but I refuse to give up on the idea, and the other story may fall apart since I don't even know if police can do that.

I probably wouldn't freak out about this as much if I had just read On Writing and Bird by Bird like I was supposed to for one of my undergrad classes. The purpose of those reading assignments is clear, now that I want to drown my woes in congealed liquor.

Oh well, at least I have my songwriting career to fall back on. Expect to hear "The Boy at the Peddler's Mall" on the radio next month. Until then, enjoy this little ditty by She & Him entitled "I Was Made for You":

o canada, we stand on guard for thee... as long as you give me a book deal

I sent out my very first query letter today.

It kind of made me want to throw up a little bit. And, until I get a reply (read: rejection), every time I see that little envelope at the bottom of my work computer, it's going to feel like someone's punched me in the gut.

After I get that email, which I'm going to assume will be a rejection because, really, what are the odds of me sending out only one query letter and getting a positive response back? Not to mention that I sent the letter to my dream publishing company. Yeah, once I get that rejection back, then I'm going to mass email/mail query letters to every publishing company in the United States. And maybe Canada.

I think they would like me in Canada. I mean, I like maple syrup and I know some of their national anthem, thanks largely in part to that episode of That 70's Show where the boys are trying to bring a Vista Cruiser's worth of beer into the US and get stopped by the Mounties.

Now no one can say that me watching hours of mind-numbing TV has never taught me anything or not done me any favors. It may very well indeed get me a book deal in Canada.

Fez: just wish that there was someplace in the world where prejudice didn't exist.
Kelso: Well, that's Canada... Yup, good ol' Canada. They don't make generalizations about people because they're too busy playin' hockey or gettin' drunk or puttin' maple syrup on their ham.
- That 70's Show

Remind me that, if I get a book deal with a Canadian publisher, it would be a good idea to delete this blog entry.

NaNoWriMo

A few years ago, Shawna introduced me to National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, or, as I get progressively lazier throughout this entry, NaNo. I think Shawna told me about this... didn't you, Shawna?

Okay, so I don't remember how I heard about it, but I do know that Shawna and I both attempted to write a 50,000 word novel during November. That's what NaNoWriMo is. From November 1-30, you write your ass off. You turn off the phone (unplugging the phone is a thing of the past), you put a stop on your social life (since I don't have one, this doesn't present a problem for me), and you just write and curse and write some more and maybe get a little drunk once you've reached the point where you're absolutely certain you can write no more. Or, that you can write, but you are so sure that you'll never get 50,000 words cranked out during 30 days or that you will never be the next Jane Austen/Stephen King/I can't believe I just compared those two/and so on and so forth.

It's actually a pretty good time.

I didn't complete NaNo that year. I don't remember if Shawna did or not, but I do know that she won last year.

And what do you win if you complete NaNoWriMo, you ask?

Well, you win nothing. You just gain the satisfaction of writing a novel. And, sure, it may be absolute crap or not really finished, you just have the first 50,000 words, but, by God, you stuck with that story for a month. And isn't that nice feeling of not giving up better than any sort of monetary gain?

I'm going to take that silence as a 'yes'.

I'm doing NaNo again this year. This is really the first year I don't have an excuse not to. I'm not in school anymore (have I mentioned that I still haven't told my dad that I quit grad school? I'm a dead woman), I have no real social life, and, most importantly, I HAVE AN IDEA ALREADY.

Plus, Shawna is doing NaNo again and Trista said she is "thinking about it" which, to me, may as well be a signed, dated, and notarized written contract. I think it's best to have friends also doing NaNo so that you don't totally lose your mind.

And, since I'm horrible at planning and organizing stories before I start writing them, this NaNo should be an interesting one.

Seriously, I'm a fairly organized person when it comes to plans and activities and places that aren't my room (my bookshelf is excluded from this; it's damn near immaculate in its tidiness), you would think that outlining stories would be no big deal.

Wrong-o.

I fully blame my seventh grade Social Studies teacher for my hatred of outlines. She had us write detailed outlines for each chapter in our textbook. I mean, some of these outlines were six, seven, ten pages long. I do believe I had an eleven-page one at some point that year.

And perhaps I didn't say that this happened in the SEVENTH-GRADE? I didn't do that much work in 400-level college courses, for Pete's sake!

That probably should say something about my college education, huh?

If you're reading this Western, you're a great school and I love working for you. Please don't fire me for questioning the education I got there and will be paying for over the next five-thousand years.

Right, back to the point. I don't do well with outlines. I feel too constricted using them when it comes to actually writing. The only notes I have for my NaNo are what I've emailed to Shawna and Trista. In one of those email conversations Trista says that she has a six-page detailed outline done for the story she's thinking about.

I hate her a little bit.

Okay, I don't hate her. I'm just insanely jealous that she can write outlines and not be completely stifled by them. I need to be able to just write and not have any sort of agenda. Like right now, I'm just writing. I couldn't tell you what this entry is actually about...

I'll never be a 'Blog of Note' on Blogger if I keep up with these entries that make absolutely no sense, will I?

That's probably my own little cue to wrap this puppy up and come full-circle.

For more information on NaNo and how you can join the madness with me, Shawna, Trista, and many others, check out NaNoWriMo.org.

Kay: I went out... to buy cigarettes and I figured out how to kill Harold Crick.

Penny: Buying cigarettes?
Kay: As I was... when I came out of the store I... it came to me.
Penny: How?
Kay: Well, Penny, like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method.
- Stranger Than Fiction