That’s right, folks…

…November means that it’s National Novel Writing Month again.

 

This is my fifth time around this racetrack, and hopefully my fourth time completing the challenge of writing 50,000 words of fiction in a 30-day time frame. This year, we’re trying something a little different. Usually I have a very minutely-detailed outline that I follow pretty much down to the letter.

This year, I decided to skip that idea and instead I’m trying to write something along the lines of  a modern epic. I sketched out a couple of characters and researched the parts of an epic (it’s actually a lot more complicated than I remember), but so far, so good.

 

I’m at 5,217/50K, which puts me about 200 words ahead of schedule. That’s less of a cushion than I’d like, but I can always use part of the weekend to put more of a distance between the required number and myself.

 

Wish me luck!

Final NaNoWriMo Update…and Black Friday!

So I finished my novel last night. It was just as awesome to win as it has been in the past. I wrote about 7,500 words yesterday and crossed the finish line at about 9PM. This one ended up being about 140 pages long.

 

Now for Black Friday…we were at Toys R Us at midnight, but by the time we got into the store the wait at the checkouts was an hour and half, so we left and headed to Best Buy. My mom wanted one of the computers they had on sale there, and I wanted to get Left 4 Dead 2. We got in line about 1:30, tickets for the computer (and various other things) were given out around 3, and we got into the store a little after 5. Yes, we did wait in line for 3.5 hours, and it was worth it. I got L4D2, Fallout 3, five DVDs, a 50-pack of blank CDs, and a pair of new headphones for $100, which I was pretty proud of.

 

Then we headed over to Younkers and Kohl’s, then KMart, Shopko (woo iPod alarm clock!), Walmart, and Fleet Farm before heading home. Normally I hate shopping at Walmart, but I got 10 movies for $42, which was pretty sweet, if I do say so myself. All in all, I stayed within my $300 budget and got a lot of people crossed off of my Xmas list.

 

There will be big news coming up soon…hopefully…so check back soon!

Halloween and the Start of NaNoWriMo (a.k.a. NaNo Update 1)

This is going to be a fairly short post because I have to get back to my novel.

 

For Halloween I took Kassi and Dalton down to Scream Town in Chaska. It was quite a trek to get there (about 50 miles, in fact) and the tickets were $15 a pop, but it was completely worth it. Here’s a quick rundown of each of the 5 sections:

1. Terror in the Corn: this was the one I was most looking forward to, but it ended up being my least favorite. Pros: zombies in the corn, close to the entrance. Cons: SUPER muddy (my shoes are ruined.) and slippery. Also not particularly that scary. Final grade: C

2. Hillbilly Hotel: this ended up being awesome. Think “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” meets “Deliverance”. Pros: chainsaws!, not being able to see much, cheesy southern accents. Cons: tight spaces. Final grade: B+

3. Rabid Alley: this was 400 feet of pitch darkness. Not a lot of startling as with the others, but this ended up being my favorite. Pros: had to follow the wall, which took sharp turns…very disorienting, banging on the walls. Cons: flashing lights at a couple parts really hurt my eyes, some open spaces where you easily lose touch of the wall (which you then run into. With your face). Final grade: A

4. Creepy Carnival (not the actual name. I never saw what it was actually called): terrifyingly awesome. Pros: creepy clowns, tight spaces, fog, metal music interweaving with minor-key carnival tunes. Cons: creepy clowns. Some of them follow you VERY closely. Final grade: A

5. Oak Blood Forest: This was my second favorite of the night. It’s the longest one and takes you on a trail through the forest. Pros: very startling at some points, theme from “The Exorcist” was playing in one section. Cons: the trail was kind of slippery (not nearly as bad as the cornfield though). Final grade: A

 

Overall impression: worth the money. The corn maze was a bit of a disappointment (it wasn’t ever really a maze) but the rest were awesome. There weren’t really many people there; we only waited in line on #1 and #5 for about 10 minutes each…the rest we got right into. Overall grade: A. We’ll definitely go again next year.

 

Now for NaNoWriMo update…I stayed up with Kassi writing until 2AM (the SECOND 2AM…remember DST!). I’m at about 4100 words right now with a goal of 5K for the day.