Tag: NaNoWriMo

My 100th day

by Karen, posted in health, no fear, yoga

IMG_0933Today is my 100th consecutive day of meditating.

One hundredth. Consecutive. Day.

I know, right?

Prior to this, my meditation practice never lasted more than a few moments, if it occurred to me to do it at all, and then sometimes it consisted only of the thought,”Gee, I really should meditate,” or even better (or worse), “Meditate”.

But this time I really did it. Every day.

What I learned:

  1. There really are benefits to a daily meditation practice.
  2. I notice myself taking long, deep, full breaths now throughout the day, autonomically, not purposefully.
  3. I can be calmer during (some) storms-during an awful situation recently, I had the very clear thought: “Even though this is happening all around me right now, I am okay.” Of course, at first I was annoyed that I couldn’t remember what the circumstances were but now I see that this forgetting is the gift. Remembering that I knew that I was still OKAY, THAT is the lesson. The upsetting events don’t matter in the end.
  4. Like I learned with NaNoWriMo, I am a gal that needs structure. The structure of giveit100.com.
  5. My blood pressure prior to the 100 days was hovering around 180/110. Midway through it had dropped to 118/76. Hello? Can you say NORMAL? For the first time in years?

My yoga teacher and friend, Kristen, told me that meditation would be good for me and that I should make it a regular part of my yoga practice. Seven years ago.

Who says I’m slow to change?

Oh yeah, my husband. So, shhh.

 

 

 

Perfect day

by Karen, posted in author, NaNoWriMo2014, teens, writing
IMG_9927My daughter has this interesting project at school. As I understand it, these are the rules:
  • Part 1: They have to write their perfect day, if money was no object, from the time they get up until the time they go to bed.
  • Part 2: They have to write what they think their day would be like if they had a baby while they are in high school.
Wow, right?
So that got me thinking: it might be fun to do the something similar myself. The Part 1 would be fairly easily accomplished, I think. But Part 2 would need to be changed up since, you know, I’ve already had two kids so I know exactly what those days are like…but I digress.
Since I am steeped in NaNos right now, I’m thinking my Part 2 could be writing what my day would be like when I finish NaNoWriMo this year, publish my book, and become a bestselling author.
🙂

Does this NaNoWriMo make my butt look fat?

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, NaNoWriMo, writing

MMAs a NaNoWriMo participant, I keep odd ours. Maybe you can relate? I am writing when and where I find time, or beg, borrow or steal time.  This requires a larger expenditure of energy, ergo, I need to eat more often. Quick sugar foods are often at hand and fill the bill.

So far this month I have been hitting the peanut M+M’s pretty hard. Also Sweet Chili Pistachio nuts have my name all over them (hmmmm….maybe I should rephrase that….). Did I mention that I also have a jar of dark chocolate Hershey’s Kisses on my desk (dark chocolate equals health-ier, right?)?

Well, since I don’t want to be saying, “HEL-lo, five shiny new pounds,” on December 1 (after all, who has time to weigh themselves in November during NaNoWriMo?), I am rethinking my go-to snacks.

I shall keep you posted.

What do you guys eat to keep you going while you’re writing?
NB: A nod must be given here to the book by Peter Walsh that inspired the title of this blog post. 🙂

 

NaNoWriMo 2014

by Karen, posted in books, writing

IMG_9738So it’s November, and you (may) know what that means: time to write a novel. This year my novel is having an identity crisis. I’ve renamed it three times since I began November 1. Yes, that’s three new titles in three days. This is the first time I’ve had this issue with my project.

I am taking it as a good sign.

This could be the year that I publish what I write for NaNoWriMo! Maybe the principle of ‘third time’s the charm’ could apply here!

The first title was: The Bobs. The second title was: A Tale of Two Sisters. The third title, the title du jour, is: One Brave Thing. 

I am also reminded of the book, Do One Thing Different by Bill O’Hanlon, which I highly recommend. Anyway, I have that covered already for this year (reference above title changes) but I am thinking of designing a cover for my book to make it more real as I am writing it.

It must be said that I am not an artist, but I am a writer, so it follows that I am creative.

I am interested to see what I come up with.

Leisure time: top 10 activities

by Karen, posted in books, local fun, movies, NaNoWriMo, the beach, writing, yoga

IMG_9607I have the next few days off and am thinking of fun ways to spend it:

  1. Go bowling
  2. Go to the movies:  I want to see St Vincent, The Judge, and that Steve Carell movie about the terrible, very bad day.
  3. Get up early and go to yoga
  4. Go see the ocean!
  5. Check out the Craft Show at the JHS
  6. Work on my plan for NaNoWriMo beginning 11/1
  7. Attend a memoir writing class (if I can just get in my registration under the wire….)
  8. Start my next knitting project
  9. Read one of the hundred or so books I have in piles waiting for me
  10. Go to the Health and Wellness Expo in Portland

Of course, I may just lay on the couch and watch The Pioneer Woman on the Food Network.

 

 

Finishing my (first) book

by Karen, posted in books, education, my one word, no fear, writing

My One Word (aka New Year’s Resolution) for 2011 was to finish my book.

Instead, I wrote a second one.

What’s that about? Well, what I told myself at the time was that I was following a strategy that Stephen King advocated in On Writing, where you put your “finished” manuscript into a drawer and basically ignore it for a few months.

My gut tells me that it was really about procrastination.

So there I was, in December of 2011, and I had only reached Chapter 2 (of 50+) chapters in my book since I’ve been editing the typos and such out of it. My husband, once again, took pity on me. He suggested that I get a room with a view to work on my edits, freer from housework, mail, mommy (and wife!) roles, and other distractions, since this had been so effective (I’m ashamed to admit this) almost one year ago, when I was getting the printed out copy ready to become a proof copy.

And so I did. I got about one-third of the way through the proof that day. I set a goal to reach page 100, which I accomplished. I estimate the book is a little over 300 pages at this point (since I neglected to add them in the proof copy, I don’t know for sure!) so that’s not a bad day’s work.

The good news is that the manuscript for the second book is much less of a mess than was/is the first. I figured out that I needed to put in the chapter breaks and blank pages as I go, because they do not magically appear at the end when you finish, as I had previously thought. I also know how to paginate the darn thing, which I didn’t know for manuscript #1.

Maybe it was really all part of the writing process?

Here’s hopin’.

What I didn’t do today

by Karen, posted in books, writing

These are all of the things I didn’t do today on my day off from nursing, wife-ing, and  mothering.

  1. Read. Well, okay I did read a little, but only the local newspaper, briefly, while I was eating my minestrone soup, with a cup of coffee and a gingerbread muffin chaser.
  2. Knit. I have a hat that’s 3/4 of the way finished, calling to me from the jumble of bags in the Sterlite storage bucket in the entry.
  3. Visit the ocean. I didn’t go. I wanted to go, but every time the thought presented itself, I had to push it away, and concentrate on what I was doing.
  4. Bake. I have a perfectly good recipe for whoopie pies right there on my kitchen island; I can see it from where I’m sitting. “No! Focus! You can bake later!!”
  5. Shop. I have a (large) pile of newspaper clippings, coupons, flyers, and circulars for amazing, limited time only sales on the presents that I need for upcoming birthdays, not to mention Christmas. 

What did I do instead? I wrote 2,243 more words of my book.

(Okay, full disclosure: I didn’t have the day off from houseworking. Does anyone, ever? I did four loads of wash, made butternut squash soup and baked a loaf of bread to go with it, took care of the chickens, and boiled potatoes for home fries).

My book in progress!

Last year, I read about National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano) coming up in November, and thought, What a great idea! Maybe I’ll do that! Of course, I did not. Instead, I thought, next year…I’ll do it next year. Well, next year is now this year.

Oh-oh. Time to walk the talk. If I was going to do this, I needed a plan. NaNoWriMo waits for no woman. The premise is that you write a 50,000 word book during the month of November, beginning at 12:00AM November 1 and ending at 12 midnight on November 30. Somewhere in the world, the writing powers that be decided that 50,000 is the minimum number of words in a book for it to be considered a novel.

I figured out that if I wrote at least 2.000 words every day, I would finish my novel by month’s end (or at least 50,000 words of it). November would come and go either way. Last November came and went and I had no book to show for it.

This year will be different.

As of right this minute, I have written 42,139 words of my 50,000. I can see the finish line.

Since I’ve hit my 2,000 words for today already, hmmmm…maybe I’ll do a little shopping after all… 🙂