Who Needs Role Models?

I never used to like the phrase “it is what it is.” It seemed like something people would say when they were dismissing my very real anger or frustration. Or something they would say when they were trying to pretend they weren’t feeling anger or frustration themselves.

I know now that the reason I didn’t like the phrase was because I didn’t understand it. I hadn’t truly lived it.

Along came 2020.

A friend of mine calls the folks arbitrarily buying up every random thing in the store (e.g. TP and bottled water) “panic hoarders.” Honestly, that is an excellent name for them. I mean, I understand the people frantically buying Purell by the gallon (why, oh why didn’t I buy stock in Purell???), but bottled water? Did Covid-19 get into the plumbing? I guess I will invest in a LifeStraw. That way I can drink from the creek in my backyard. And I’ll use the leaves for TP.

It’s been a long time coming, but Digital Dryad is nearly ready for me to show it to agents and publishers. I’ve gotten some amazing feedback from my alpha readers and the Barnsian Nobility (my writing group) and it’s turned this story into something I’m proud of.

Of course, that means that if I share it with an agent or publisher, they will likely 1) ignore it/me 2) trash it. At least that’s what I’m afraid will happen.

I’ve written 50,366 words in November 2019. I’m a little under half way through the novel. It’s been fun, and not really all that stressful.

I had hoped to cross the 50K mark a little earlier in the month, but life got in the way. However, it’s all moot as I’ve proven to myself for the third time now that I can write a good chunk of a novel in 30 days if I just push myself to do it.

This year I discovered that outlining is my jam. In August, I finished Digital Dryad (currently in editing and alpha readers). I had been working on that novel since around 2009, but I was able to complete the entire second draft–a complete rewrite from scratch–in around 28 days. That novel is currently 79,000 words. I was able to write this draft so quickly because I created a comprehensive outline first.

So I decided in September that I would outline my next novel to prepare for NaNoWriMo instead of pantsing it as I had done nearly every year I’ve participated in NaNo with a novel. I planned and thought about the novel through September and wrote the outline in October. And now, in November, I’m writing it.

From WorldCon 2018

I thought it might be fun to show some of my other notes that I’ve taken in Notability. I use an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil, so that makes it easy to draw. I would say the only issue I have with Notability is that I can’t figure out how to export it as an image. So I end up exporting it as a PDF and then converting the PDF into an image. I’m sure that’s because the Notability folks assume I’m going to use the keyboard to get actual text into it (or convert my tortured scribbles into text using the OCR). But it still makes it one step more when all I want to do is shove it into an image to put up on a blog page.

Today was a busier than usual day. First I nearly got my Elven Druid killed when she insisted on yelling at the top of her lungs in a cavern where a bunch of people had died. We didn’t die, and she is no longer cursed, so I call today’s adventure 100% positive.

Then I went home and let the dogs run around for a while. Padfoot has discovered that being fenced in is not his style, so he spends most of his days attempting to find ways around the many fences we have been erecting, repairing, adjusting, raising, and so on. Yesterday, we learned how he is getting out now, so this weekend the plan is to raise that section of fence another 3-4 feet. But until that escape route is thwarted, he gets to be locked in a kennel or in the house while I’m gone. Storm, the other dog, just watches him as he runs off, then she comes to me and whines as if to say, “Mom, Padfoot’s run away again…”

I set a plan to write for an hour today from 10:45am to 11:45am. And I did. 1220 words in my novel are now down on digital “paper.”

Next step on my plan is to make and eat lunch. I wonder what I should have.