I'm Cleaning! (Ahem, studying)

At the moment, I am totally cleaning my room. Because later today, Pippa and Dad are delivering my curtains! Can't wait! Pictures when that happens....

I thought that while I was procrastinating studying and doing what I am supposed to do I'd share with you my semiannual study plans, as well as a few other pictures.


And look! My scarf! (It is super, super warm! And so worth knitting.)


And look! I made marmalade! (Albeit, it is a little runny. But it's delicious. I know - I've tried it.)

Also in this picture (in the smaller jars) is the orange syrup that is the result of the candied orange peels. I made these last year, and this year they're even better!


I can't help but keep snacking, because these are seriously addicting!

I do need more sugar... because between the orange peels and the marmalade I used two entire bags of it! I am baking cookies sometime today or Tuesday (probably tuesday) because I'm going to a cookie exchange at a friends.

Wonder what I'll be baking? I am thinking gingerbread cookies, but I also kind of want to make yummy peanut butter cookies. Suggestions?

Hodge Podge

Things that have happened in November and so far in December that I haven't blogged about. Because believe it or not, I had a life outside of nanowrimo... just no time to write about it!

1) I got initiated into Alpha Phi Omega. Ceremony and everything. (Sunday, November 22)

2) I played capture the flag on the Capitol lawn with APO. (Saturday, November 7)

3) APO gave me the "Most likely to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days" pledge award at our banquet. (Sunday, November 22) My reponse: "Crap! Now I have to!"

4) I went out to dinner and Dad and Pippa gave me nice presents! A lovely and fancy box for pens as well as some really unusual book ends for my bookshelf! Love you guys! (Thursday, November 19)

5) I went to the midnight showing of New Moon with my friends, and ended up liking the movie a lot more than I had expected. (Thursday, November 19)

6) Tom came and ran the flag with APO at the last home game. He loved it! (Saturday, November 21)

7) And on Monday, since he had no school because of thanksgiving break, he came with me to two of my classes and he really enjoyed himself. He says that college is a lot more interesting than middle school. And then he watched Twilight while I took a nap... Afterwards, we went to see New Moon (he really enjoyed it too, though he enjoyed it for the werewolves and I enjoyed it for... other reasons. Hello, Taylor Lautner's abs!) (Monday, November 23)

8) At a nanowrimo write-in at La Madeline, I made a friend whose name is also Stefanie. (Wednesday, November 25)

9) Today is the last day of classes. (!!!) I am currently (not) studying for a politics test I have in an hour and a half. I needed to write this blog, though... and as soon as it is posted I'll get back to the studying. (Friday, December 4) (My friend Karynna just tweeted: "Dear politics test, you are extremely inconvenient. Dear clouds, make it snow more than 2 flakes. Dear ground, don't melt the more than 2 flakes." Amen, sister.)

10) Today, it is supposed to snow. However, snow is nowhere to be found. It is freaking freezing outside, though. (Friday, December 4)

11) Yesterday, we made ice cream with liquid nitrogen and then made thunder with it too in our chemistry class. (Thursday, December 3)

12) I won Nanowrimo - did you hear? (Sunday, November 29)

13) We marched in the annual Chuy's parade again. Pictures on facebook. Mike made his comeback as The Carrot! (Saturday, November 28)

14) I finished the scarf that never ends! It's lovely - I'm sure I'll show it to yall with a picture sometime. Just in time for this freaking freezing weather, too! (Tuesday, December 1)

15) Did I mention that I joined the Green family in APO and my big is a girl named Lindsey? I can't remember if I did or not... (Sunday, November 1)

Right, I've run out of things to remember. Hope that sums up the last five weeks of my life, nicely!

Now, enough about the past!

The next few weeks are filled with final exams, the studying that goes along with said final exams, and a whole lot of sleeping. I'll post my finals to-do list again, though maybe in a bit of a different format this time.

On the sixteenth (I don't believe I've mentioned this yet?) I'm off to England to spend Christmas with the family across the pond, hang out in London for a week with Siobhan, and go to cousin Marcus' wedding! But at the moment I can't even think that far ahead with the beast that is final exams looming in my immediate future.

Right... I have to go back to studying for that test now!

NaNoWriMo Update #8 - THE WIN

So right now, I am floating on a ridiculously high cloud of AWESOME.


I always knew I had it in me, but I never knew it would feel so good! And I even finished a DAY EARLY!

Counts		Document
Words:		50139
Characters (no spaces):		208676
Characters (with spaces):		258845
Paragraphs:		1788
Sentences:		5224
Pages (approximate):		84

A few more stats before I progress onto the mindless gushing:

Words written: 50139
Total words warred: 20150
Average words written/day: 1626.48
Days skipped: 9
Days wrote over 4000 words: 4
Days wanted to go crazy: 29

-----

So, like, I can't come off of this high. It's so crazy! I posted on my twitter about a moment after I won, updated my facebook status, and then Ally called me and said she was kidnapping me and Karynna (who had won about fifteen minutes before me) out to ice cream to celebrate... and just wow.

I have a feeling that childbirth is something like this, (bear with me on this one): Beforehand, it's all "Soon I'll have something wonderful! Oh won't it be wonderful?" And then, in the middle of it all, it's like: "Gawd, what was I THINKING?! This is absolutely certifiably INSANE. Why would anyone DO THIS?! I just want it to be OVER!" and then when it's all over, you're all, "Oh, look what I just created! I want another one!"

(See? It makes at least a little sense!)

Because now, a mere hour and a half after it's finished, I understand why people keep coming back to nanowrimo year after year, why it is in its elventh year of existence:

It feels good at the end. Like, really good. And at the end of it, you're ridiculously numb in all sorts of places you usually aren't, and your ass hurts like crazy and you have irritated rashes where your arms have been bearing down on the desk for thirty days... and it's all worth it. ALL worth it.

I have literally never been so creative in my entire life. I have never, in such a short amount of time, created something so big! Sure, my first fanfiction piece Not Knowing was 57000 words, but that took me three years to complete! Three years! And I did this in thirty days?

I can't tell you how good it will feel to walk around tomorrow and have won this thing. I have a button that says "Ask me about my novel" that I'll be proudly displaying! I think I might explode into colored confetti or something. It doesn't matter that for the last six days of my life I have been practically glued to my keyboard (I am talking more than 25,000 words since last Tuesday.) It feels good. And you know what?

Next year, I'll be back full force. NaNoWriMo November 2010? Heck yes.

(Before then, however? Not a chance. I need an eleven month recovery period.)

NaNoWriMo Update #7

First, the stats.

Counts		Document
Words:		43725
Characters (no spaces):		182335
Characters (with spaces):		226161
Paragraphs:		1499
Sentences:		4461
Pages (approximate):		79

Ten things I am going to do after winning NaNoWriMo... which, god willing, will happen tomorrow.
1) I am going to read that book that I have been pushing back that I need to read for my final exam for English. (And then reevaluate time management for next year's NaNo)

2) Seriously, dance and scream and shout and buy myself a HUGE milkshake. I really want a milkshake.

3) Try and bum a massage out of someone.

4) Read a book for pleasure. Like seriously, I haven't touched one of those in, like, a month.

5) Reintroduce normal habits back into my writing; stuff like adding in contractions and dashes into my writing.

6) Knit that darned scarf that has been sitting in my bag for MONTHS.

7) Study for finals.

8) Study for those annoying "Oh, it's the last week of class! What a perfect opportunity for a test!" tests.

9) Brag to everyone. No, I'm not even kidding. I can imagine my conversations looking a lot like this for the month of December:
-"Hey Stef!"
-"Why yes, I wrote a novel, thanks for asking!"
-"I, uh, didn't... okay. A novel - wow!"
-"Yeah, it was pretty epic. Even though I took a bunch of days off I pulled it off in the end."
-"That sounds great, hey did you do the chemistry homework?"
-"No, but I did write a novel - didn't you hear?"
-"Yeah, uh... that's great."

10) Take a nap. I miss naps.

(Uh, and now I go back to my novel...)

NaNoWriMo Update #6

I've emerged from the depths! Can you believe it? I have a short update for yall who prefer my blogs in text, and then I am going to head back into the depths of my novel. Picture this as a surfacing-for-air for me.

For the stats inclined...

Counts		Document
Words:		37981
Characters (no spaces):		158596
Characters (with spaces):		196656
Paragraphs:		1258
Sentences:		3805
Pages (approximate):		72

And for the words inclined (though I probably shouldn't be wasting them on the blog), I am just 12000 words away from winning. According to the nifty little document that Karynna created (which we have fondly dubbed the Quotameter) I have to average 3000 words a day for the rest of the month.

I wrote 3000 words yesterday (Yes, on thanksgiving! - What, you think I have a life?), and it is totally doable. It actually, ironically, felt light. Even, dare I say it, downright easy. 3000 words is something like six pages of writing in Microsoft Word.

On Wednesday, when I last updated yall, I ended up writing 6000 words. I went to bed that night with a brain that could be best described as a pile of gelatinous mush, but I went to bed feeling ridiculously competent and accomplished.

I did break it up into different writing sessions. I wrote 2000 from 4-6pm at my apartment, 3000 when I could no longer stand being at my apartment and went to La Madeline and sat in on a write-in with some other Austin NaNoers, and another 1000 words when I got home and thought "I could totally make my ambitious quota today. Screw my safety!"

Something I have noticed during this month (which I mentioned to Siobhan in an email yesterday) is that while yes, I have suffered from a crazy high level of writers block, the nature of this competition is to just keep writing, and write on through that writers block. In the past, I have had a tendency to wait for perfection and just suffer through weeks of internal debate and angst, and nanowrimo has forced me to just push any and all writers block behind me, because if I spend too much time faffing about not writing I lose time. And time is words.

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving yesterday (ours was so ridiculously delicious that I cleared my plate twice). I can tell you that I am thankful for many things... and one of those things is my awesome family who just lets me go along with this crazy-stupid writing challenge!

Back to my novel! Huzzah!

-----

Today's ambitious goal is: 43000
Today's slightly-more-realistic-goal is: 41000

Nanowrimo Update #5 (Text. Vs. Video!)

Today is text and vlogday (as always, click into the browser to see the embedded video.)

Part 1: Text!

Can't talk now, I'm novelling.

Counts		Document
Words:		29950
Characters (no spaces):		125747
Characters (with spaces):		155735
Paragraphs:		966
Sentences:		2959
Pages (approximate):		52

Part 2: Vlog

Can talk now, since I'm making a vlog.



P.S. Yes, I have a cold, or something coldlike. Allergies? Cold? I'm actually thinking mild cold because it seems to be a pretty consistent level of suck, though it isn't that bad.

Double Whammy

Not only is it my 20th birthday... it also happens to be Vlogday!



Today has been beyond awesome... and I cannot possibly thank everyone enough for being there for me.

Thanks to everyone who loves me. I love you too!