NaNoWriMo: A sad, sad update

I lack something.

The common folk call it "stick-to-it-ivness"

I call it that too, but I like to say "the common folk"

I really do have none. My husband and I never did finish The Love Dare, I didn't finish the RIPV Challenge in October, I've never finished a Nest book challenge. Look at my "100 books in 2010" list. I'm at 96 and completely stalled out. And now, it's looking like NaNoWriMo will be the next thing tossed into my "Yea, I was going to do that once" basket.

I have a good reason though.

I started off strong.

I wrote well.

Then I realized...

I detest the characters I wrote.

DETEST.

As in hate with an almighty passion.

I very nearly just had her throw herself off a cliff because she's so darn annoying.

So I have scrapped that story. But I refuse to give up!

In a burst of determination, I went back to the drawing board and started over with an entirely new idea. It's going well, but I'm only about 500 words in, so we'll see.

Things That Bother Me About Harry Potter #2: How have Fred and George never been called in to a disciplinary hearing about underage magic outside school? Haven't they been developing Puking Pastilles and whatnot for ages?

NaNoWriMo

As I have mentioned, I am an aspiring writer, which basically means that I like to write, but don't have the wherewithal to actually finish anything so it can be published. I'm also incredibly critical, and can't manage to get through a few pages of prose without going back and hyper-editing everything.

The buck stops here, darn it.

For the month of November, despite the fact that I have never completed an internet challenge ever, I am participating in National Novel Writer's Month. The challenge, basically, is to write a 50,000 page novel in a one-month time-span. They make a point of informing you that what you produce will probably be beautiful, lovable crap, because instead of editing and trashing, you are supposed to just throw criticism to the wind and write with nary a thought to commas splices and plot holes.

I'm nervous, because you actually have to submit your novel, which means that people are going to read it, which is something I have never allowed. Ever. My husband, who I love with all my hart, has never read a word that I have written. Except when he was cleaning our bedroom and found my old journal from eleventh and twelfth grade. He read that. And laughed at me. Out of love, I'm sure.

The point is, I'm writing a novel. I'm doing it, and you can't stop me.

Shuggling

I am an aspiring writer.

And by "aspiring" I mean that, while the baby I take care of sleeps and I am supposed to be doing laundry, I plug in my portable hard drive and type.

It's a glamorous life.

Anyway, one of the tribulations joys of writing is that the characters and such don't always do as you tell them. Take Levi, for instance. He is my protagonist, and one of my favorite characters. His story is supposed to be written in the third person, but he will insist on telling it himself. I have finally given in, and in the process of going back over the last 15 or so pages and switching the "him"s to "me"s, I came across this sentence:

"He bent and began shuggling my papers into a pile"

"Shuggling"? What on earth is "shuggling"? Did I mean juggling? shrugging? Was I trying to be presumptions and make up a word? What does it mean?

I can only assume that I meant "shuffling", which makes sense, and that my finger slipped over to the G by mistake.

The moral of this story, children, is always proofread your work. If you don't, you may find that you've shuggled it all up.