ALL THE DISTRACTIONS!

This has been the week of distractions. So much intention to take a time-out and write, and it always ended up as missed opportunities instead. Which is even sadder since I only had to work today and the previous two days.

Last week's update marked the first of an almost week-long mini-vacation from work. After I was done with the blog post, I was going to work more on the story I told you folks about last week: the backstory of the town and tavern I created for my premiere D&D session. I honestly can't recall what actually happened, but I know it was centered around getting ready for my trip back to my mom's for the weekend. Everything that day took about three-times longer than it should have. The alarm for my writing hour went off, and I was in the middle of a project of some sort, so I ignored it. This was a theme all week: ignore the Writing Hour alarm because I was in the middle of something more pressing, or I wasn't anywhere that I could take an hour-long time-out.

Between all the last-minute errands I needed to do, as well as packing and a few house chores before leaving, I just didn't have a moment to really sit and breathe. Still, I stole away a few minutes in order to try to keep up with the X-Future roleplay so I didn't hold anyone up. Even went ahead and had Lia and Willow do something in order to move them forward as well. Ended up having them interact with each other. Got to say, it's a bit boring roleplaying with myself.

Friday was my sister's birthday. Trips me up that she's now the age I was when I got married. When did she get so old and mature????

Well, belated birthday now that it's almost a week later....

Anyway, I drove down to visit her for her birthday, which meant no writing to be had. I woke up early, but only to finish the last of the packing and car maintenance before the drive. Then the celebrations were had, which lasted fairly late into the night.

Saturday had a little bit of "recovery" time in the morning, some more bonding along with a lot more food - I gained about five pounds over the weekend - and then getting ready to head out yet again.

Not only was I down to visit my sister, but coincidentally, my godson was born on the tenth. Made life easier that both he and my sister are about twenty-minutes from each other, and share the same birthday weekend. Saturday was spent with him and PA-Bestie for a belated birthday hang-out. This lead into more food, Sis taking everybody out for frozen yogurt, a relatively-large dinner, and then a game-night that lead into the wee hours of the night.

Sunday found me waking up just about in time for church with the fam. Then a LARGE brunch. So large that I was actually spending a great deal of time waiting in the living room playing on my 3DS while Sis and Mom put it together; too many chefs and all kept me at bay. I probably should have taken the time to write, but I had no clue how long it was going to take. So I just stuck with my video game, figuring it would be easier to stop what I was doing the moment food was done.

Once brunch was done we had some more family bonding before I drove home. That's when I unpacked and just crashed; a bit burnt out.

Monday I really don't have an excuse. I had the day off; last one before returning on Tuesday. Hubby was at work early in the morning, and so I had the house to myself. Did I read? Did I write? Did I clean? Nope on all three. I DID end up exercising with Spink, and was late picking Hubby up from work because of the hang-out. Prior to Zumba, and after picking up Hubby was spent mostly working on a project for Cyhyr and Ronoxym's anniversary. It's definitely a labor of love, because dear lord I didn't realize it was going to be so time consuming and tedious to complete!

I should have accepted that they weren't going to get it for their anniversary and just taken an hour time-out to write or something. I just slacked off there.

Speaking of, Tuesday was CERTAINLY the Ides of March. It was such a Murphy Day; I was in a terrible mood by the time I made it home from work. We had just received our tax refund, and so Hubby decided to cheer me up with a mini shopping spree. This first resulted in us still being out during my normal writing hour, which I then forgot to reset the alarm for in order to remind me later that day. Then we bought a new board game, and a new 3DS game for us to play together. The evening was then spent playing said games instead of me writing. Whoops.

Yesterday I was working through my writing hour. I did spend most of the day thinking about what I'd write next, though. How I was going to fix the blaring plot hole I created during the last D&D session, how I was going to turn that into a mini-quest, should the players follow, and possible alternative plots depending on how the players follow through with the mini-quest. I also plotting out this blog post. See, technically I've been at work since 8am today, and so I had to write all of this last night.

When I should have been writing recreationally.

I guess it's alright, though. I need to take a step back after trying to marathon-write in February. Same deal as what happens after attempting NaNo. Give myself time to let my brain recollect itself. Bounce around writing directions in my head; figure out which I'd prefer to do.

In the meantime, I guess I'll focus on X-Future and prepping story for D&D.

Thanksgiving Week Was A Bust

NOVEMBER 18^TH – SUNDAY

I managed to plow through another 300+ words in the break room at work tonight! Yes, it’s not terribly impressive to write 300 words in 15 minutes, but it’s something, and it’s faster than I have been writing lately. Actually, the characters sort of took over this time and I went in to an all-out word sprint! I actually was almost late getting back from break because of it. Maybe it was the basil pesto hummus I was eating. :-D

Anyway, I discovered two things about my characters. The first being that Connor has one heck of an anger problem. I’ll have to wrangle that in during the re-write. I mean, he’s allowed to have issues given his background, but I didn’t expect him to go off on the Guildmaster like he did – and he went off on poor Natalie too. Poor girl. Speaking of Natalie, I also discovered that I totally forgot a key component I wanted for her personality. Therefore, she’d probably react way different than she has been. Gah…. Whoops.

NOVEMBER 19^TH – MONDAY

I managed to finish off chapter 5! Actually, after last night’s word sprint I only needed another 100 words or so. Well, with all the Thanksgiving chaos of this week it’s good to know that my secondary goal of posting a new chapter every week is still going strong. I just wish I could keep up the weekly update momentum when I switch back over to my Hey Arnold story. It’s doubtful though since the Hey Arnold chapters are about 3x the size of the ones for this NaNo story. However, perhaps I can finally get in to that monthly update rhythm I always wanted to accomplish with this story.

Anyway, back to NaNo.

I chewed through another thousand-some words in the break room first thing this morning. I brought Hubby in to work an hour before my shift started, so I just stuck around and typed. Not only did I finish the most recent chapter – as I just stated – but I got a nice chunk of today’s writing done. Sadly, I still ended up about 500 words shy for the day. Just add them to the pile I guess.

See, I had people talking to me in the break room when I was on my actual break during my shift, so I didn’t get any writing done then. When I came home I discovered that Cyhyr and her boyfriend were finally visiting again! We haven’t seen them in like a month! So I hung out with them for a little while, Cyhyr Tumblred with me. Then, celestialTyrant showed up. We were supposed to all go out to eat, but since CT and Cyhyr’s boyfriend haven’t seen each other in ages they decided to play a game or two of Magic.

By the time all that chaos ended, Cyhyr and her boyfriend left to get food and head home, and CT was finally ready for us to eat it was past 9pm! I NEVER eat dinner that late! Plus, I had been hungry for over five hours, but kept avoiding eating anything because we were supposed to go out “any minute now”.

So CT insists we all pile in to his car as we say “screw it” to our original plans of hitting up the Chinese buffet and just go to Taco Bell. Then CT gets a flat. For the second time in about as many months he has a problem with one of his tires going flat due to a faulty valve stem. Plus the lugnuts are on too tight for anyone to loosen them enough for CT to put his donut on. Which means, in the cold, perhaps a 1/4mile from my house – which isn’t so bad except it’s a long steep hill leading back home – we now have to walk back to my house so we can drive to a local store, and buy an air compressor so CT can fill his tire enough to get him to an auto shop to get his tire fixed. We walked the few yards to the McDonald’s – because we were just too hungry at that point – bought our food, and then I noticed that I was going to be late getting back to watch Castle. This is the one show I NEVER miss a new airing! So instead of eating in the McDonald’s to warm up, we practically sprint back to the house so I can eat and watch my show.

Good thing CT was going to be crashing at our place until Wednesday anyway.

NOVEMBER 20^TH – TUESDAY

While Hubby and I were at work CT hit up my in-laws to help him get his car mended. So now he’s all set. He also knew how stressed I’ve been about how disastrous our house is, so he offered to help clean. I’m still incredibly embarrassed that anyone even HAD to offer, let alone actually following through with it. However, I’m super grateful for his help and the fact that he’d volunteer in the first place.

He did simple things while we were gone, like cleaning up all of the Magic cards still all over the table from the night before. Then, when I got home at about 1:00 I started to wash the massive pile of dishes – I’m not joking when I say almost every dish we own was in the sink – while I instructed CT on what other elements of the house needed to be organized.

We did end up hitting up that Chinese buffet after picking Hubby up from work at 5, but the rest of the day was cleaning some more. The only writing I accomplished was a little shy of 200 words during my break.

NOVEMBER 21^ST – WEDNESDAY

More massive cleaning and work. My hands are disasters from being in water all the time, so CT offered to finish off the last of the dishes while I finished organizing the stuff that he would have no clue where to put away – even I didn’t know where to put it.

We got the house actually looking presentable by the time the in-laws made it to the house. Go us! We had an…. interesting…. dinner. All-in-all it was a fantastic day. Not one for writing though.

NOVEMBER 22^ND – THURSDAY

Thanksgiving!

I went to work while Hubby and his mother cleaned up after last night’s dinner. Then Hubby did the packing. I got home, showered, ate, and then we sprinted out the door. Made it to my mom’s at about 8pm. We ate the left overs of the Thanksgiving dinner Mom and Sis made. We watched some TV as we bonded. And then we crashed.

Worse part is that I completely forgot to grab my laptop when I went in to work. I was going to just use some paper I left in the break room, but of course I also forgot my pen! *sigh* So much for writing even at work.

NOVEMBER 23^RD – FRIDAY

As predicted, I spent the entire day with my husband, mom, and sister. We hit up Walmart – not for Black Friday shopping, we just needed lights – and then we decorated the house. We cooked more food to add to yesterday’s leftovers and had a “proper” Thanksgiving dinner while watching a movie. I attempted to write, but every time I got distracted.

NOVEMBER 24^TH – SATURDAY

Couldn’t sleep too well. My old bed was too small for both of us. So at about 6:30 I gave up and just went in to the living room to write. I wanted to quickly catch up on these blog updates since I haven’t even taken the time to do that over the past few days. I then discovered that the word document that I use to periodically update throughout the week ended up virtually blank! Nothing I’ve written since Sunday was in the document! Sooooo my early morning writing turned in to re-writing everything you read up to this point. Awesome.
So instead of my morning being spent on NaNo it was spent on this blog update... whoops.
The rest of the day was spent at the family gathering, and so there was no writing done yet again.

NOVEMBER 25^TH – SUNDAY
Because of the mini-vacation we didn't need to wake up at 1am to drop Hubby off at work! Whoot! So I got to sleep, and pseudo sleep in. The whole family once again hung out while I finished up this post and updated my NaNo story. Plus now my sister is following us up and spending three days with us at our place before she starts up her 7-days-a-week job leading up to Christmas. So it's perfectly clear that I'm not getting much farther in my story, but it was a valiant effort I guess. Sure, the story won't even be getting started really, but perhaps I'll have one last chapter update next week.

Yeah.... About that writing....

Well, I don’t really have much to show for the past week. There have been a couple of days in which I spent my 15min breaks and 1/2hr lunches playing computer games instead of working on writing. I had some major stuff weighing on my mind. One or two things are related to work drama, and then there’s a major thing that is mostly a happy thing that I’m excited about, but it could also have the potential of being a not-so-good thing. It’s kinda hard to explain while being cryptic like this.

Basically, one of my husband’s friends celestialTyrant has become a super-close friend of mine too, and he’s majorly crushing on my sister. I’m beyond excited to see these two together – especially since it’s not a secret that I don’t like my sister’s current boyfriend; however, my sister DOES already have a boyfriend, so the fact that cT is crushing on her could end in disaster.

Every time I try to open up a document to work on one of my many projects I just think about cT’s situation, as well as the work drama, and then I can’t focus on the story.

I have been fairly active on the X-Men RP though. So I guess that’s something. My one character Willow is coming up with a plethora of pranks that she and another character Devon can pull, so it’s fun to not only come up with pranks – I myself was never much of a trickster so it’s actually hard to think of pranks – but also have these long posts describing Willow and Devon talking about said pranks. Hubby decided to throw a monkey wrench in to the works by having one of the NPCs eavesdropping and deciding to pull some pranks on the pranksters. We’ll see how that turns out.

Then we have celestialTyrant. Well, his character Nix is actually dating my sister’s character Annika – which is how the two started talking IRL – and so it’s fun to read their interactions in-game, especially since Hubby just had Nix kidnapped. However, both Nix and Annika are telepaths, so they still talk to each other while trying to figure out where he was taken to. XD

In the meantime, Hubby’s main character Cajun is roommates and best friends with Nix, and so my main character Lia – who is roommates with Annika – is torn between comforting Cajun and comforting Annika, who are both broken over the disappearance of Nix!

And finally, there’s Lucas. He’s a character run by one of Hubby’s friends he met through work. The friend is like a walking comic book encyclopedia, and so he is Hubby’s assistant story teller. The two talk back and forth to come up with plot devices for the game, and they come up with some awesome stuff! Anyway, because of the friend’s vast knowledge, Lucas is the only character that was allowed to be made old enough to be a teacher – the rest of us are students. Well, Lucas also recently had an experience of being held captive for two weeks, breaking out of the facility that held him, rescuing three kids that were also held captive, and taking the children to the institute. Lucas – who was raised in the future and came back in time to the present in order to live in a more peaceful time – soon finds out that one of the kids he just rescued is destined to be the mutant that kills him. Dun, dun, duuuuun! On top of that, another one of the kids he rescued is killed the same day that Nix is kidnapped! Finally, one of the people that held Lucas captive has a mental link with him and – presumably – forces him to have violent blackouts. So far all Lucas has done is destroy the landscape around the institute, but he fears for the students and is now leaving the school in hopes of figuring out how to handle the blackouts.

This game is like a mini soap opera! I love it and want to write those webcomics even more each week! I just might open up Celtx and start up writing the scripts. In the meantime, I’m trying to make it easier for everyone to follow what-happens-when by writing up a “calendar” of all the events. It's kind of like the calendars used in dating sim games. So that’s my most recent little project.

Hopping RPGs to the Vampire LARP Hubby’s BFF runs, Friday was the first game with the new vampire character. I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had. Normally, I’m so lost my characters just hang off in a corner somewhere twiddling her thumbs. This time it was alright that I was lost because my character was SUPPOSED to not have a clue about what was going on. It was just amazingly fun to come up with her reactions to things like “First time attacked by another vampire” or “First time seeing a vampire killed and turned to ash” or “Surprised to have staked a vampire first go-around and is excited to have ‘survived’ the attack”.

Throw in Hubby and I visiting celestialTyrant on Wednesday, and one of Hubby’s high school friends and his wife visiting us yesterday… well, the week’s been a touch busy.

I really do want to write, and I have plenty of options to choose from. I just need to find the drive to just sit down and start tappin' on the keyboard until words show up on my screen! XD

Maybe I’ll have something for you guys next week.