A tale of two Waffle-paloozas

Well, National Novel Writing Month ended on a random but fun note here in the Greater Hamilton area, which is certainly appropriate. For a few years we’ve been doing ‘Waffle-palooza’ on the last night of November – an occasion to gather together at a Williams Coffee location, type madly to reach 50k or whatever other end-of-the-month goals we have in our sights, and then celebrate by ordering Belgian waffles.

This year, since there was a regular Friday write-in at the Burlington Power Center Williams, it was agreed that this should be the venue for Waffle-palooza 2012. It was next door to a dessert joint called Demetre’s that also had great Belgian waffles. And since my Co-ML is out of town, Waffle-palooza was all on my watch.

The weather forecast said scattered flurries throughout the day. Yesterday afternoon it began to really snow – not a ferocious blizzard, but more than flurries. More than anybody was prepared for.

I left work just before 5 pm, crawled the two and a half kilometers through crazy traffic, and tried to take a shortcut between one Power Center parking lot and another that was much too steep and slippery to drive up. Back out onto the main road the wrong way, an illegal U-turn to get going north, (well, okay, more of a three-point turn, but it worked out alright,) and I finally got to Williams around six-twenty, to find one of the Burlington write-in regulars and two of his friends, who had just gotten there by bus a few minutes earlier.

Blogging live from a write-in

The write-in is starting to wrap up at this point, actually – somebody is packing up to go. But it was a great session this afternoon at the Williams Coffee Pub at the Power Center in Burlington.

There were six wrimos in attendance, including me, and all of us reached our write-in goals. I wrote over 3000 words in two hours and a bit, and somebody actually reached 4k. We had a ten-minute word war, and I gave out stickers and prizes from the goody bag, and there was good food and beverages and raffle tickets and many descriptions of crazy, fun plots.

I’m already looking forward to the next write-in, Sunday afternoon.

And my word count is up past 26k, Whoo-hoo!

NaNoWriMo Day 1

It’s started!

I just passed my first 1000 words, (1145) thanks to 2 morning sprints and an afternoon sprint. Soon I’ll be heading down to a write-in at Williams Coffee on the Pier. Whoo-hoo!

It’s so great to be in the crazy excitement of Nano again, and to be doing my best to lead such a great region. Hopefully I can get up to 2778 words for today – that’s my daily quota to reach 50k by November 18th. I’d feel like I was letting myself down if I didn’t ring the bell at the Night of Writing Dangerously in San Francisco again.

How’s November treating you so far?

It’s shredder-licious!

I bought a home shredder a few weeks ago, at the closing sale of the local Zellers store. I’d been talking about getting rid of old papers with Elizabeth Twist on a Sunday afternoon at Williams coffee shop, and she recommended getting one.

It’s definitely kinda fun. I took a little while getting it set up and figuring out how to work it, but the first batch of shredded paper filings went out in the recycling blue box this afternoon, and I shredded some years-old Visa statements this evening – only ones that were mostly empty, because I kinda wanted to keep ahold of anything that had plenty of details of what I was spending money on, years ago. It’s cool to see it sitting there, ready and waiting to cut anything that I want to get rid of into lots and lots of tiny pieces.

Mental note – need to find someplace that sells shredder oil pretty soon, so that it doesn’t start jamming up on me. 🙂

Camp Day 7 check-in

Well, it’s the morning of June the seventh, and I thought I’d run down how I’m doing on my rebel ‘Summer of Shorts’ project. To recap – I’m participating in Camp Nanowrimo, but I’m not setting my goal at the fifty thousand word novel manuscript. Instead, I wanted to get some short stories written, ideally in the 2000-3000 word range, and somewhat out of the air I picked eight stories as a workable goal. I wrote three shorts in May, and finished one in two days, while the other two stretched over four. I thought that if I could turn out a short every three days in June, I’d be nearly finished the eighth when I have to leave for Kansas on June 24th, and find a little time to finish it at the workshop.

So, how am I doing so far? Three stories complete in six days! That’s how I’m doing. 🙂

Story one – ‘A New Look’. This is based on a prompt from ‘Off the Beaten Plan‘ that I saved back in March. My main character is a shy boy in school who goes down to the local genetic cosmetician to become the dream boy of his crush – complete with green eyes. But when the cosmetologist tells him that he’s allergic to the green eye formula, he has to figure out how far he’s prepared to go.
I started this on Friday morning, June 1st, and finished sometime Saturday afternoon, June 2nd.

Story two – “I will return for you.” Started on Saturday evening, June 2nd, and finished at a write-in with Elizabeth Twist, sunday afternoon, June 3rd. This was an idea that was based on the song ‘Christmas Day’, by Dido. I have a peasant heroine, who meets a young nobleman that falls in love with her and promises to come back and take her to his family estate to be married – but he doesn’t come back. The girl, Cassandra, borrows a fast horse, follows her lover’s trail far enough to figure out that he’s not all he seemed, and then goes back to the family estate to find out what’s really going on.

Story three – “My Perfect World,” took a bit longer. I’m not quite sure where this idea came from – a few references I ran into talking about realistic immersive VR or holodeck-type technology being the end of human civilization, and combining that with those old standbys, the four Laws of Robotics. I started this Monday evening on a twitter word sprint, got lots written Tuesday on the bus, and finally finished it last night after all kinds of things had come up to distract me.

So – I’m doing well so far, and if I can manage to keep up this pace I should be able to get to eleven stories at least! On the other hand, the going may get tougher through the month, as I need to either brainstorm new ideas, or work with ideas that don’t excite me quite as much as the first ones I tackle. But we’ll see. I’m loving Camp so far, and will be meeting up with the other Hamilton Campers at Williams tonight. Whoo-hoo!

Nanowrimo Day 1 – It begins…

Word count: 1432

Writing sessions: 3 (as of 5pm)

Doing fairly well. Got some words written before I left for work, and on the bus both way. Managed to forget my office key-card, and as I’m usually the first to flex-time in, ended up walking around the neighborhood listening to Storywonk podcasts, eating my apple and drinking my strawberry milk, until 9am. If only there had been a nice comfy place to write open that early.

I’m starting to wonder if I’ll run out of outlined plot before 50k. However, with Star Patrol that shouldn’t be much of a problem, as I’m also well familiar with the second adventure of these intrepid space adventurers – the Imperion Confrontation. So if I need to, I can just jump right into that storyline!

Write-in tonight at Williams coffee on the pier. Whoo-hoo!

So how’s your nano going?