The Scariest Part of Halloween

AHHHH IT'S HALLOWEEN!!

I love Halloween. Scary movies, jack-o-lanterns, candy, trick or treaters. Everything. One thing I don't love?

NANOWRIMO STARTS TOMORROW.

In context, I'm not freaking out as much as I would if, say I was being chased through an abandoned house by Michael Myers.

This Michael Myers would be just as scary.

So Good Luck to everyone attempting NaNo this year! Here's a list of things I did to hopefully gain me a win. I'll let you know if any of them actually help:

1. Subscribed to my Region on nanowrimo.org.  They had a Kickoff party yesterday that I had to miss because I was trapped in the frozen wasteland that was Connecticut (no offense to anyone who lives there but that place was AWFUL during the storm). I'm planning on attending at least one Write-In either this week or next week. If it's helpful I'll go back. I've never written with other people involved so it'll be a new experience.

2. Bookmarked writeordie.com. I'm considering buying the desktop edition, but I want to see how much it actually helps me for the first week before making the whole $10 plunge. Stay tuned for updates.

3. Plotted out my time in a nifty little chart based around what TV shows I would be sad to miss and which ones I can do without. Sorry, Sunday nights. The Walking Dead gets an hour.

4. Fully charged my computer so I can write on my 40 minute each way commute. I took this morning off to nap, but once tomorrow comes there'll be none of that.

5. Finished writing Arieties. Scenes are done. Handing it off to my critique group for comments. 

So I'm as prepared as I am going to be. I was going to write an outline of my story but let's face it, I'm a pantser. It doesn't work. I might write up a page about the characters I already have in my mind but even that seems like a lot of planning for me.

I now have less than 24 hours before NaNo begins. What have you done to prepare?

A Halloween Writing Prompt

Halloween. Zombies, vampires, witches, ghosts. Any one of them could take up residence here:

From www.lovethesepics.com

Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans and it was never rebuilt. A photographer and his friend took pictures of the decaying park and it is really something. Granted, they had to trespass to get in, but I'm definitely putting this on my list of places I want to see in person. The cheesy subtitles don't take away from the creepiness in most of these pictures and, as they reference several times, it is the perfect setting for a horror story. If they don't clean it up a tiny bit to make it safe  and make a haunted attraction out of it, then whoever owns this park is really lacking in imagination.
 
More pics from this collection

Before I get into my post, I just want to give an update on my new blog schedule. This is especially helpful since I forget what my old blog schedule was.

I'm going to write 2-3 times a week. 
Monday: Writing-related post
Wednesday: General Post. If I skip a day it will be Wednesday
Friday: Picture Prompt

Okay, now that that's out of the way. Onto the post!

I work in New York City and as a result tend to see some odd things when I leave my office. The other day I was running an errand when I stumbled across this:

 

That is four cats, three guinea pigs and a puppy. Just chillin on the sidewalk. And just so you know, the woman next to me as I took this was on the phone with the ASPCA to see if this was kosher (I'm going to assume no). The man petting the guinea pigs seemed like he was just a bystander. I didn't see any person that looked like they were caring for the animals, although they all looked pretty well fed and were way too calm around people to  not be domesticated. Especially the cats. My cat, Shadow, would have been sitting behind the box hissing at everything before she probably had a heart attack.

Who says cats, rodents and dogs can't cohabitate?

NaNoWriMo

I've taken the plunge and signed up for NaNoWriMo.

For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and it is super scary. Basically the premise is that you, as a writer, complete a novel in one month. If that doesn't scare you, then I'm not sure what will. I've never done it before so I'm kind of excited to see if I can do it. I'm also cheating, so that helps.

My goal is to have at least 20,000 to 30,000 words done on my current WIP before NaNo starts so I can finish it in the allotted time. I think there's a goal of 50,000 words for NaNo, but I'm shooting for 80,000 so I'm really just leveling the playing field. Plus, I'm still going to be editing Arieties so that will take up a little bit of my time. I ended up revamping the ending (again) so I'm hoping to have it ready for my critique group in the next week. I haven't done the math, but that would put it ready for beta reading (again) by the end of NaNo. Then the scary part. I want to start working on querying in January (eeek!).

Is anyone else giving NaNo a shot this year?

Can't we all just get along?

I take public transportation to and from work every day. It's about an hour and a half commute, which provides plenty of time for one of my favorite activities: People Watching.

I first developed my hobby when I studied abroad in Madrid, Spain and let me tell you, crazy NYC street fashion has NOTHING on those Spaniards. I am not exaggerating at all when I say that the number one fashion trend at the time (this was only 2 years ago, mind you) was MC Hammer pants. I'm sure they had another name, but they were basically this:

via Chicagonow.com

Of course, there were different colors, fabrics and patterns. We're talking everything from snake print to denim here, folks. I'm sure there was some reason that they were popular but I was too busy eating tortilla and croquetas to notice.

That being said, back in America there is some crazy fashion (especially in NYC), but the trains and PATH aren't as exciting as I'd hoped. So I eavesdrop.

Don't look at me like that. You do it, too. And if someone doesn't want me hearing their conversation, then maybe they should wait until they are in a private space to have it.

Anyway, the point. This morning I overheard a girl talking about a Pokemon/Baptist camp she went on (both subjects were covered on the 20 minute PATH ride so I'm going to assume it was a combination). Apparently on the bus she took, in addition to gospel songs and trading cards, there was a conversation about the accents of the different people on the bus. This girl, who talked like I do and thus does not have an accent, was apparently the only one from NJ/NY/The northeastern US/anywhere that has television because she described how everyone kept asking her why she "talked so weird." When she explained that she was from New Jersey, they were shocked because she was... well normal I guess.

This girl explained at length how shocked these obvious aliens were. I'm going to guess all of their information came from that show, you know the one that I'm talking about. Apparently they asked her a bajillion questions (she was like 15) about New Jersey like it was a separate country. Seriously, people? New Jersey. It's a state. One of the original 13 colonies. Home to Thomas Edison and Woodrow Wilson and Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi. Not to mention Anne Hathaway, Queen Latifah and (for a brief amount of time) Mr. T. Queen Latifah, The Boss and Mr. T would not put up with Jersey Shore-like nonsense flooding the state like a contagious and incurable disease.

As I was playing this rant out in my head, I realized the conversation switched to the correct pronunciation of Pokemon and I wanted to slap her for the 10 remaining minutes on the train. At that point I remembered that the group on the bus were at a Pokemon camp and Pokemon's popularity died out with the Beanie Babies. And eventually the Jersey bashing will die out, too.

What an adorable pile of worthless toys!

I think I may be falling in Love

I fall in love a lot. Not Love, which is reserved for very special people/things like my family, Boyfriend and my cat. No, I fall in love all of the time.

Seriously, I fall in love with ideas, shoes, characters, people and then I fall out of love with them just as quickly. The time that I spend in love with these things varies. For example, I was in love with the idea of buying myself a motorcycle for about three hours on Saturday. Seriously, I was on the verge of doing all of my research when I fell in love with the idea of building furniture and then with painting furniture (which I actually did, but did not love). I was in love with Eminem for about 15 minutes the other day.

Well hello there.

It passed.

Now I am in love with a new story that I've just begun. I'm still editing Arieties and I've developed a little system where I edit in the morning and write in the evening that seems to be working for me. Except for when this new story starts taking over. I am in love with my MC and her story, though her world still needs some fleshing out. I've gone through a lot of ideas in the past few years that haven't panned out into full length stories, even though I loved them. 

This is the second story in two years that I feel like I might commit myself totally and completely to. I'm falling in Love with it. The other story? Arieties. Finished. Still being edited, but finished. That excites me more than anything I can even think to describe. Honestly, I've got that feeling where if I do this right, it could be really great. I Love Arieties and I cannot wait until I hit the point where I Love Skye and her story, too. Right now I think I Love it already, but I don't want to put a ring on it just yet. I mean, this new story already beat out Eminem, furniture building and motorcycles, so that's a start. If I'm still working on it in a few weeks I'll have to compare it against my ultimate love (who would become Love if he was real and in front of me).

Oh, how I love you