NaNoNoNoNoNoNoNo and other distractions

OK, so I had grand hopes for my NaNoWriMo WiP for Sunday.  That did not so much pull through.  I did get above 2K for the day, but not so much for catch-up.  Then Monday I added some words but not a ton.  Then last night I added the goose egg (0).  I had places to go and things to do.

So now, I'm averaging about 700 words a day instead of 1700.  Eh, piece of cake, LOL.  Knowing that there are two out of town football games, two day-long-driving excursions, and some other distractions in my future, I think I need to jumpstart if I'm going to get 50,000 words in this month.

In other news, I have on the other hand, kept up with the November Poem A Day Challenge.  You can find my rough drafts over on the poems part of the site.  Basically, Robert Lee Brewer posts a prompt daily, and then you write a poem.  Then you pick 10 or 20 in December and edit/revise/format them all pretty-like, and then submit.  Winner announced on Groundhog Day (one of my favorite days, of course).  This is clearly easier on the wordcount than NaNoWriMo, but still requires a daily sort of commitment.

The other good news is that I had no idea how the Poem A Day challenge worked, so in fear that I would have nothing to write about, I had managed to generate twenty or thirty one word or one phrase prompts for myself.  Now that I realize that the challenge issues daily prompts of its own, I'm left with a whole pile of prompts for additional poems.  So many, in fact, that if I can be doubly-productive and write one for the challenge prompt and one for my own pre-fab prompt daily, I should have my "weekly poems" scheduled out through mid-2011.  As it currently sits, I'm scheduled a poem-a-week until the start of 2011, so you'll have something to read on Tuesdays in December.

I've also been doing lots of "writing reading" lately.  Some of it is looking for inspiration, some of it is just research, etc.  I may try to link some of it here as it sparks an idea or something that I might want to talk about.

Finally, for the week - I want to say hello and thanks to those people reading this little journal of sorts.  I have (both narcissistically and obsessively) scoped out the stats and Google Analytics that I run on the site and noticed my expected 1200+% boost from people coming over and downloading all my NaNo-spreadsheets and whatnot, but I have noticed a few people joining up in the "Followers" column (over there on the right), a few people subscribing to the RSS feeds (up top), and a few others leaving some comments behind.  Welcome everyone, and feel free to engage in discussion as you would like (via Twitter/Email if you have it/Comments).  I am learning this whole process, reveling in my small and sporadic successes, and banging my head in frustration at the expected annoyances of the task as well (rejection letters, frustrations with manuscripts, my lower-than-it-should-be desire to edit and polish, etc.), and I am interested to get the opinions of others (more advanced or going through the same head-banging-success-shouting events).  I DO TRY to post something out here on Wednesdays, though I don't always make that happen.  I'll  try to be better.  Maybe.  Perhaps I can write an entire post on the narcissism of blogging and Google Analytics.

Cheers!