Thanksgiving

Right now, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, is when I feel thankful.

Thanksgiving Day? Not so much. I've been suffering through an uncharacteristically strong cold lately. Usually when I get sick it doesn't last long, but this one took a good week to slowly build up in my chest, and then my head, peaking in the days right before Thanksgiving. I'm sure there were several people at Thanksgiving dinner who would have been more comfortable had my violent cough and I stayed home for the day, or at least were happy for the peace and quiet that followed whenever we left the room. So even though dinner was great, Thanksgiving Day was not full of enjoyment for me this year. Still I was thankful it was only a bad cold, and I was still able to make it for dinner and spend the day with my family.

The Friday after was better. I spent the morning and afternoon switching between editing the new manuscript and taking power naps, one of which lasted a blessed three hours. I felt worlds better waking up from that one, and made it to the Friday Post-Thanksgiving party at my sister's house without having to show up as Scary Coughing Guy again. Tons more food, most of the same people, different dogs, shorter drive home for me. Instead of board games to keep the non-television watchers busy, one of my cousins and nephew #1 pooled their musical equipment in the basement for what has become a traditional open jam session of sorts. Not a lot of actual improvisational jamming going on (though Nephew #1 and I did have a quick bit of some cool guitar / drums 12 bar blues going), but just shuffling through the sheet music my cousin has collected during the 35 odd years of keeping his band together in some form. During the night we rotated through at least three guitarists, one bass player, three keyboardists, three drummers, and I think at least nine singers for what I think was close to three hours of playing music. It was a good time, even if it got really hot in the corner of the basement where the drumset was stashed. I think I sweated through my shirt and the shirts of the two people next to me. Friday I was thankful to be part of such a large an unusually close family.

Which brings us to Saturday. Today I sat here at the Mac and perused the rest of the manuscript, looking for any obvious edits and revisions that were needed. And even though the thing runs just over 200 pages in its final version (according to Microsoft Word), I managed to meet my ultimate goal: To write an entire book, from the first word of the story to the a solid clean-up revision, in less than a month. The whole thing took 28 days. Four weeks from beginning to end. And the thing of it is, after reading through it I can say that I'm very proud of how it turned out. So today I'm thankful that I completed that goal. Even if I almost feel like it doesn't really count since it happened so quickly. But it was a story I needed to tell, which is probably why it happened the way it did.

So having said that -- anyone who wants to read it, just give me a holler. Send me an e-mail if you have my address, or drop a note in my Facebook Inbox, now that I'm back on there occasionally (though I don't care as much about Bejeweled Blitz anymore, which is really for the best). If you're local and you want to wait for a printed copy to find its way to you, let me know so I can get your name on the list. If you'd rather I just sent you a PDF, I can do that too.

No One Can Call Me A Loser Ever Again

Yep. That says it all right there.

The Big Five-Oh

Yesterday afternoon I forced myself to finish off surpassing the National Novel Writing Month goal of completing 50,000 words -- I actually ended for the day at 50,003. I'd feel more excitement about it if that meant that the book was going to be done, but there's still some clean-up to do before I'm ready to say I have a complete draft. I think I mentioned here once before that I don't write chronologically. The best analogy I can think of to explain where I am right now is this: Imagine you had just spent a lot of very focused time trying to complete an enormous and detailed jigsaw puzzle by a deadline. And you got all of the pieces together, but only then realized that the puzzle was a little bigger than it said it would be on a box, and for some reason the pieces that you need to finish it have been scattered throughout the room, and you have to go look for them before you can put them all together. Does that make sense?

I don't feel any more pressure. I've reached the goal, and as soon as I can get my word count verified I'll be able to upload my scrambled manuscript and will be awarded with my downloadable PDF certificate. Yay. But I'd still really like to get the rest of what I have to do knocked off in a month. But since I only have school on two of the next seven days, I think I'll have the time I need. It's kind of superficial, but my self-imposed goal at this point in the game is to have this finished so someone will eventually read it and say something like "You wrote THIS? In a MONTH?!"

It won't be an easy read. There's a little darkness in there, some pretty raw emotion, and it will make some people uncomfortable. Not because they'll recognize themselves because even if I did begin some characters with specific people in mind as models, the characters evolved along the way, and I think some became the most fully-realized characters I've ever come up with. Not that this is saying a whole bunch. But still. I'm happy with how it's turned out. Or how I know it will turn out by the time I'm done.