Stitching versus Reading Time

Well, it's happened already this year.  Two stitching projects need to be done ASAP and I want to read.  I also decided to take on the Temperature Scarf, which will take me until next January to finish.  I figured a scarf would be better since I'm using the high and the low of each day, not just the temperature at a certain time.  Also, stitching a five foot row of single stitches is not my idea of fun.  I just need to buy one more skein of yarn, a medium green for temperatures from 51 to 60 degrees.  Add to that my renewed membership on Ancestry (made some real connections with the obscure family members, Wahoo!) and I've started tapering off in my reading time.

I have been trying to listen to Emma, by Jane Austen, as an audiobook as I stitch, but I don't think I'm really getting all of it.  One of the ways my ADD works for me is that if I'm listening to something while at my handiwork, my focus is on the work and I process the audio in the background.  That's why I'll tend to do that with movies I've memorized or just plain music.  I don't miss anything then and I do think I've been missing some of Emma.  I kind of hope I have anyway, because she's not a very likable character thus far.

Between writing, stitching, genealogy, and the reading I feel like I'm too busy to sleep, but I shall do my level best to regain my high status as lazy slugabed.  Starting with right now.  I have work at 4 AM and I need at least five hours sleep.  Good night.

NaNoWriMo has consumed me, as usual

Well, I'm significantly behind on my NaNoWriMo, but I've made a lot of progress in the last two days.  I'm on a break from writing at the moment because I've written 6314 words in the last two days.  I found a word crawl in the Word Wars, Prompts, and Sprints section of the NaNo forums, Extreme Harry Potter Writing Crawl that's been helping me.  The writer has done the first three years, but I'm not done with the first year yet.  I've tagged a few others to do after these three.

There aren't any for Star Trek, Stargate, Star Wars, or the classic movie monsters, so after I've won NaNoWriMo this year, I do believe I will have to create some for those.  I'm thinking the two for Star Trek would be TOS and TNG.  Stargate would need two: one for SG1 and one for Atlantis.  Star Wars would be from the original trilogy.  The movie monster one would have to include my favorite, of course, The Creature From the Black Lagoon.  I'm starting a list to work on after I make my 50,000.

As for the real progress on my story, I haven't the foggiest where this story is going.  I know I said I would end up doing a few short stories, but they've gone places I absolutely didn't expect.  I think I've watched too much with Peter Dinklage lately because I've actually added a pixie with dwarfism.  They're already only a friggin' foot high.  What the hell?  Mariel has topped out at eight inches.  And now her father is the old, grumpy leader of a council that refused to call for help when a colony of rats was attacking their village.  Where these people came from I have no clue.  So, I now have story lines that range from my original teenage pixies wanting to start a jazz band with the help of a couple of humans, the court of Queen Mab, and to the Elite Guard of the pixies and a village being attacked by a colony of rats driven out of there former homes by human habitation.  Yeesh.

NaNoWriMo

Well, I've signed up for NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words between November 1st and November 3oth. It doesn't particularly matter if the writing is good or not (whew!) as long as you write a large novella of at least 50,000 words. I have been doing something I never do: outlining. Which might be why I never finish a real story, actually. I think this one has a good idea behind it.

You know how everyone says to write what you know, well right now the thing I know best is caregiving, so that will have a major element in my story. For scenes with my heroine's grandmother I probably won't even have to stretch my imagination too much. I can vividly recall arguments and conversations with Grandma now, so I can just recreate some of them. Although, I think my heroine's grandmother might be slightly nicer. After all, noone would believe the truth, would they?

Anyway, I'm at the U right now, polishing up the outline and updating my NaNoWriMo page with title and such (and wasting time blogging). Mom says she's taking Grandma out for a spin today. Oh! I have to call her and tell her to go to the Alpine Inn and get some KinderEggs since she's going towards Honesdale anyway.

She said maybe, maybe not. Now she's not sure she's going at all since Grandma is still sleeping. I swear, the woman needs to get out of the house. Actually, both of them do. I told Mom she should call her friend to go out tonight, but she blew me off since Sinspired and I might possibly go somewhere, even though I told her Sinspired is busy tonight and we're not going anywhere tonight for certain. Jeez, you'd think the woman actually doesn't want a night off.

Oh, I'll probably be using Shadow's Words to update the WriMo, if anyone is interested.