My novel is done. At least the first draft of it. Who knows if there will be a second to render the piece worth trying to publish, but regardless I’m rather proud of myself for finishing.

In other happy news,

I am sending out my Holiday Swap person’s stuff tomorrow.

I won the Tegan and Sara album from Kate at La Petite Choue They accompanied me to the finish line of my novel.
(I should find something to give away to y’all. Your chances of winning would probably be pretty good too, since out of however many of you read the blog about one of you comment )

I spent Thanksgiving at home;

the weather was beautiful

and I got to hang out with some of my fab and crazy friends (who take fab and crazy pics with my camera haha).

via  roboppy

One extremely negative part of not living in France is the tragic lack of boulangeries & patisseries.
Sure, there are some. There’s even one fairly accessible to me.
But it is entirely in the other direction than that which I will travel to go to work in an hour or so.
And I have been craving pain au chocolat since I went to bed. By which I don’t mean there was a respite while I slept. Oh no. I dreamt about it.
You can imagine my bowl of cereal was especially soggy and tasteless this morning.

There really is no solution to this dilemma. Google can find me no bakeries on my route to work that look promising – not even thinking of pain au chocolat, but simply a pastry that I would want. Not to say there aren’t any, but Google doesn’t have that knowledge.

Espresso would be nice too. By which I do mean of the Italian variety, swallowed at the bar.
Yes, I complained about it before, and I think that while Seattle is a breeding grounds (get it, grounds…haha) for coffee connoisseurs, that thirst (…) for perfection has yet to reach the east-side (don’t get confused…there are two “east-sides” in Washington…one is the east side of the state, and the other is the east side of the large area that just about anyone else includes in “Seattle” but isn’t actually Seattle…).
Digression aside, suffice it to say I don’t have enough confidence in what I will receive to be the weird person who asks the barista for a straight shot.
So I think I’ll opt for a random drive-up and see what happens when I’m given a double short latte.

And then I’ll drive away (because yes, I get to use my roommate’s car today) and imagine how amazing that would taste with a flaky pain au chocolat.

If I’m blogging about writing a novel in a month, you can probably safely say I am procrastinating writing said novel.
At this point in the process, I am some 2/3 of the way there. Woohoo. Note the lack of exclamation point.

You see, I hit my stride somewhere in the middle of last week, when things were coming together. Of course I don’t really remember what I wrote then or when – but that’s irrelevant anyway. The problem now is that I know. I know what, barring a sudden tornado out of Seattle, is going to happen. I know where the story is going and where it ends (…generally and hypothetically speaking at least).

This is problematic for several reasons.

1. I have lost interest in writing it. My brain has gotten into this rut where it seems to interpret my knowing the story as being as good as my writing the story. Unfortunately my brain does not come with a transcript, so the story is solved but not written.
2. I know that the beginning and middle do not lead up to the end adequately. It’s like everything that I’ve written to this point was just pre-writing getting me to where I could come to the conclusion that x was the point. And then I’m supposed to write the story.

But who am I kidding – this whole thing is pre-writing. I go through phases of opinion on whether or not I’ll attempt a re-write to make this piece of work actually readable. All I have to do is finish. Which, in light of what I have accomplished so far (almost 34,000 words), doesn’t seem so daunting (at least 16,000). Except that it is because I don’t want to write those words. And I’ve managed to make the end quite difficult to reach by having this deeply ingrained fear of not hitting the 50k mark which has caused the pace of the story to be quite slow indeed. Barely four days have passed in the initial 34k words, and I need to cover at least a week by the end.

Maybe it’s time to  forego chronology and write the end. Then I will go back and fill in the middle as necessary. And if it comes to it, there will be a drastic style or plot change and the end will appear like the Witch of the West (actually I don’t know which direction Glinda came from – oops). Or not now that I think of it, since she arrived slowly in a bubble. I’m imagining more the magicians poof of smoke.

Okay, enough procrastinating. Let’s get this train to its destination.

• a random text wishing you a great day
• seeing a (distant) light at the end of the tunnel that is writing your novel
• expecting to spend Thanksgiving with your family after spending the holiday uncelebrated in Europe last year
• chocolate
• finding music that makes you smile (OneRepublic! new album: tomorrow!)
• being asked
• not having to make dinner because you have Thai leftovers
• the bus arriving just in time so you don’t have to wait in the rain
• candles and twinkle lights
• communicating in French
• a package in the mail
• squeeing over an event in fandom (which is emphatically NOT New Moon, which I have no intention of seeing until I can get it for free from the library. I will not support you, Stephenie Meyers.)
• Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

Although I woke up to the sun this morning, it has since grown overcast. Oh late autumn as it falls into winter.

This last week as I paged through hundreds of blog posts, I took note of some of my faves to share with you.

ooh la la…Notre Dame at sunset on little brown pen

a shadowbox gift on my turtleneck

the discovery of bite (or two) sized kiwis (one of my favorite fruits!) on tea & cookies
(I think these used to grow in my parents’ back yard, actually, but were eventually replaced by grapes. I am now distraught.)

Chicago (interestingly, the predominant setting of my Nanowrimo novel) at dusk on experience parisenne

a series on coffee at not without salt

more of Paris with the Eiffel Tower’s new look at paris daily photo

a wonderful inspire:lovely post from oh, hello friend

One rather significant downside to the rushed writing of an un-planned novel is the inevitable effect one’s own mood and life will have on the writing. Certainly by using my own experiences and emotions to guide the writing makes the process easier for me, and when 50,000 words are to be penned in something of a coherent fashion in 30 days, easy is forgiveable, if not downright recommended.

I have written 1,003 words tonight, leaving 1,210 before I hit my personal goal for the day. Yes, I’ve set my mark higher than the minimum 1667 to stay on track to finish on the 30th because I know days will come that simply refuse to produce whether for lack of inspiration or for busyness. And I occasionally have the sinking feeling that it won’t be done at 50,000 words. ANd I must finish by the 30th.

Being somewhere around 3/10 of the way through, my plot is aching to emerge. However, this gives me much pause and reason to resist. Once I commit to a plot, there’s no going back and changing my mind until December. I have to finish the story that I’ve started. Not to say that I can’t change it, but I would rather like to avoid the unexpected introduction of aliens in the 20th chapter. Certain characters are becoming more and less important – which I’d rather realize now than later, I suppose – but disposing of ones who had thought themselves indispensible a few days ago is something of a pain.

So today I am allowing my character to revert to stream-of-consciousness, which is a beautiful thing as it allows me to just write and write, yet does nothing to move the plot along except develop the characters and perhaps provide some background.

This is certainly a learning process – not only about writing but also about myself. Granted, I am rather prone to the deep and profoundly revelatory, but I think this exercise does lend itself nicely to certain epiphanies about oneself and one’s writing.