First Week Blues

Pumpkin Soup and Goat's Cheese Bread for Bonfire Night

It's not going well. My word count as it stands is a pathetic 2,370. It should be 13,328.

I am positively screwed. 

What doesn't help is that I just so happened to get pretty much a full time week last week, which is brilliant because I can buy things... but It means I have had no time to write. I had an assessed service yesterday, which I have been dedicating any free time I have to planning. I also realised last night that I had not backed up my work, and then proceeded to leave my phone (and the only copy of my novel) in my assessor's car. I have it back now (phew) and I am backing it up as we speak. 

Oh, dear readers, things are not going well. 

But, the optimist in me wishes to say a few words. I have a much lighter week this week, and no services until New Years Day (groan), so hopefully I can at least try and catch up. I'm really struggling to let go of the quality control freak part of me, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of just getting words down and, more importantly, getting story down. At the moment the exposition feels shameless and clumsy, and the storytelling very rushed, but I will press on. 

In good news, we finally ordered a desk today, hurrah! It's more of a 'workstation', and yes, we ended up going to Rymans - Thank you Tom :) . It's narrow enough to fit into the space we have, and it had space for all my CDs too, with a lovely printer shelf on top. I think it'll do me for a while. 


We went into Game today and made another very exciting purchase. We Pre-ordered Skyrim. Oh yeah. Except the midnight launch has been cancelled. I was cross for about a second, but then remembered I have work on Friday anyway so couldn't have gone.

I also got to make my pumpkin soup and goats cheese bread for Bonfire Night which was lovely. The soup was pink. I thought it wasn't orange enough and put red food colouring in for a giggle. 

Anyway, the more time I spend here, the less my word count is climbing. How is everyone else's Nano Novel going?

P.S. Read this. Patrick Rothfuss makes me laugh. And he is now also doing NaNo. The rest of us don't stand a chance.

Succor Dice and Nano

It's been a busy few weeks, but in a good way. You see I finally started my new job, which I accepted in May. Having gone away to get married and go on Honeymoon, I missed the induction, so the process has been slow. But I started last week, and I have to say, I'm really enjoying it. I'm working for a company called 'Danny's Dream', which provides support to those with learning disabilities, encouraging social integration and providing person-centred care. 

The down-side is, of course, that I have less time. Less time to blog, less time to write, less time to do housework (shame). But here is what I propose on the blogging front; I will aim to spend my Sunday afternoons blogging, so I *should* have one every week. No promises though.

I hope nobody minds if I geek out a bit. No? Good. Here it comes.

So, I wanted to tell you about the 'latest thing Peter Brett has sent me'. What a genuinely lovely man. Sat on our doormat yesterday was this lovely envelope with a warded sender sticker I would recognise anywhere. 

Never has a customs label been so valuable... 

Anyway, I suppose you are more interested in what was inside the envelope. Even though that alone was enough to keep the geek in me happy for days. 

I opened the precious envelope (ok, I'm exaggerating) and what tumbled out was my entrant's prize for Peat's Cosplay contest. No teasing please, I said it was geeky... I had never done Cosplay before, but I am so taken with the Characters of The Demon Cycle books that I thought I'd give it a go. Because Peat is so lovely, he decided that everyone deserved a prize for their efforts, so sent every single entrant one of these little packages:

The Dice are called 'Succor Dice', which are part of a game featured in The Painted/Warded Man. It's to do with rolling three of the same wards, I think, though there are not any detailed rules for the game. 

So there you are, my latest Geek-out. How sweet is Mr.Brett? We are some very lucky fans. 

In Personal Writing news, I have decided to enter this year's NanoWriMo. Terrifying, but I think it'll be fun and rewarding too. I have another novel brewing away in my head, so I thought, seeing as I'm giving CQ a break for a while, I will have a go at getting it onto paper. 

It's going to need a lot of preparation, as it's a big project. It will eventually reach way over 50,000, I'm sure, but it's the starting that needs to be kicked into action. I'll keep you posted on how it is going.

So, anyone else entering NanoWriMo this year, and have you started planning? It's never too early.