Thanksgiving & Gratitude

I am not going to make the 50,000 word count for NaNoWriMo.
More about that later....

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. We are visiting PC's family for the holiday. While I'm glad to visit, every minute that I am here I am thankful that we do not live here any longer. We can all go back home in a couple of days.

Gratitude List:
I am thankful for our house and our breathing room.
I am thankful for our children (even if they are loud and unruly).
I am thankful for my husband.
I am thankful for my dog (yes, I am one of those people).
I am thankful for myself and I am thankful that I am finally able to appreciate my own perseverance (hard-headedness) and strength.
I am thankful for my health and the health of my husband and our children and our extended family.
I am thankful that I have so many things to be thankful for.
I am blessed.

I think I will do the gratitude list more often to remind myself just how blessed I am.

Limited Connectivity, Word Count, and Rambling.

I am at The 123 and the internet air wave is sparse. Maybe this will get posted. And maybe it won't.....

Word Count for the NaNoWriMo is up to 10,515 (that's this morning's count - I've added since then), still far below what it should be for this time of the month.
I have not given up yet.
I can make the word count.
What I mean is: I can write that much each day.
However, what I'm beginning to wonder is if this story even has that much substance to it.

I'm beginning to get the feeling that all the fleshing that I thought was here may not be. In other words, I don't think this story is worth 50,000 words. And I'm scared I'm not just saying that because I'm behind: I think this may actually turn out to be a more effective story in a much shorter version.
I guess that's okay, but I really thought there was more to this than a short story.
I think I was wrong.


So what do I do - keep plugging away and strive to make the word count? Or push towards carving this story into a finished version regardless of length?

On one hand - pushing for the word count could result in a bunch of useless gobbledly gook that gets thrown in the trash (I've already got plenty of that:)). OR it could result in the hatching of another story that would be better told separately. And then I'd still have to go back and clean everything up to make something stand alone.

On the other hand - finding and defining this story and making it stand up by itself would result in a finished project even though the finish is very different from what I had planned to accomplish.

Now I'm really rambling.
If it sounds bad out here, you should see the inside of my head.

What do you guys think? Not what do you think about the inside of my head, but what do you think about the story options? (Although comments about the goings-on inside my head are fine, too.)

The First Cut

Looks as if I made the first cut for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Here's the text from the notifying email:

Congratulations! We are emailing to notify you that your entry is eligible for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

Your Registration ID: 3**N*QC*A*

We take the contest review process very seriously, and are working diligently to consider each submission carefully. Submissions are now being reviewed by a team of Amazon editors and Amazon top reviewers. You should expect to be notified no later than January 15, 2008 if your entry will advance to the semi-final round.

Please keep in mind that if it becomes clear in the future that your entry violates our eligibility requirements, we reserve the right to disqualify your submission. For complete and official rules, go to http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200183240

Best of luck,ABNA Admin Team

However, I don't think it took much to make this first wave of eliminations. From what I was seeing on the forums, some people were worried about margin widths as an eliminating factor. The rules were specific about margins and related things, so I knew I'd be okay with that. Now the real judging begins: My entry will now be judged (and weighed against others) on my writing as opposed to how well I follow directions.

Aaaaaack!

I'm not even going to post a word count for NaNoWriMo.
Let's just say it's not going so well.
I cannot get my head into the story because I am firmly anchored here in reality with a feverish child and my own (very) early case of cabin fever brought on by being homebound this whole week.
On the bright side, the feverish child seems to have recovered (mostly) because he has been teasing the dog into a frenzy.
I'm going outside to play fetch.

4,603

After the weekend, my official word count for NaNoWriMo is 4,603.

I'm about 2,000 words behind where I should be if I were to write the same number of words every day for a month and get to 50,000 by the end of 30 days.

I've got a little bit of catching up to do.

If I stop thinking about everything else I should be doing -updating blogs, exercising, loading the dishwasher, laundry, cleaning the floor, repotting the plants that haven't made it inside yet, walking the dog, and checking on my feverish 7 year old who's upstairs sleeping (the list will change later, too, when one comes home on the bus and the other needs picked up at the high school at 6) - I might actually be able to catch up.

NaNoWriMo - November 1

I did well with the first day of the Novel Month.
Thier site must be jammed, though, because I couldn't even get on it yesterday. I did, however, succeed in updating my word count this morning at 4:30. Apparently, no one gets up that early (or stays up that late).

November 1st word count: 3461. Good start.

Here's the link to my profile over at NaNoWriMo (I am user #208280.)
I posted part of what I wrote yesterday over there. After I clean it up a bit, I'll post some over here. But that could be awhile.