Ten Years Now with Mal the Krazy Kat

Officially, this weekend is Mal - that black panfurr, that feline of ferociousness, that tailwagger of terror - being ten years old.

It's been that long ago when I rescued mama cat Ocean from the mean streets of that Bartow apartment complex, with the warning that she might be pregnant, and then finding out YES SHE WAS when she started giving birth at the start of the Fourth Quarter Super Bowl between Denver and Seattle.

Ocean gave birth to six kittehs that night, but I held off on naming most of them until I could determine which ones were which and name them to the characters of the TV show Firefly. Until they opened their eyes, and I took them in to the vet to have them checked out. And then I waited to see which of them was the bravest - or craziest - of the lot to where I would name him Mal (two of the tuxedo kittehs were River and Simon, obviously as River was the daughter to Ocean and so the male tuxedo was Simon, the pretty grey female was Inara (almost Kaylee), the remaining male black kitteh was Jayne and the female black kitteh Zoe).

I wanted to keep one kitteh so I could feel okay about one of Ocean's babies growing up well - the animal rescue I took the remaining kittehs would not allow me to share contact info with their future forever home adoptees - and so I kept Mal thinking he would be the friendliest and fearless of the lot. Instead, Mal turned into a scaredy cat around my parents - essentially the only ones who've visited me over the years as my domicile isn't well-meant for hosting a lot of things (sigh) - and well that's how it turned out.

To ANYONE who adopted Inara, Zoe, Jayne, River and/or Simon, I can only hope they are still with us and that they've enjoyed loving homes.

In the meantime, I got stuck with THIS guy.

Happy birthday, Mal!

Ten years old. In hooman years
that means he's getting AARP mailings.

The Trick With NaNoWriMo: Stay Interested

More than staying focused, the thing is if you lose interest in your work the second NaNo ends - either hitting 50,000 or hitting December 1st - the whole endeavor goes for naught.

It's not that you have to force yourself to follow through.  You have to like the work enough to see the value of continuing with it.  Even just one nugget of a plot idea, one line, one moment by your characters, is enough to justify finishing the rough draft.

Writing is both work AND fun.  Find the fun part, and you'll get through the work in no time.

NaNoWriMo 2014: Keeping Up

Week Three now lined up, getting past the 32,000 word count and aiming for 40,000 by the end of the week (I think).  I'm starting to lose track of which day limit I gotta surpass.

I'm getting some traffic of NaNoWriMo interest.  I gotta ask, any of you currently writing the novel this year?  Post a comment, lemme know how you're doing.

NaNoWriMo 2014: Midway Point Update

Hola and opa.

I'm currently past 25,000 words en route to hopefully a 5,000 word day to get to 30,000.  It'd be nice to have some clearance room to make the finish line.

One of the things I'm seeing on Facebook and Twitter is frustration: this is the point where writers are starting to think "I'm never going to get to the good parts" or that "my characters are going in directions I didn't want them to go."  Frustration is what drives writers to quit sometimes, even when the work is actually going places and getting things done.

I've found that not worrying about getting to the good parts isn't a problem.  Even if what you're writing right now doesn't look like it should be in the finished product, that's NOT your concern at the moment.  Editing comes later.  This is the rough draft.  Get all the words on file/paper NOW.  You can edit and fix story order, character traits, and other tidbits later.

Relax.  Your novel is SUPPOSED to be messy.  Keep at it.

NaNoWriMo: In Case Anyone Asks About Why My Aliens Are Blue-Skinned Humanoids

They're a species able to shapeshift in their natural forms, and so when they mass-bred human forms they merely adjusted their skin pigmentation to look blue.

If anybody asks about the unhealthy levels of hemoglobin or silver in their bloodstreams, I'll just whistle a jaunty tune and keep writing...

(muttering under breath) damn geeks, we never stop nitpicking do we....

NaNoWriMo 2014: Clearing Out the Leftovers

Tell me to get at least two of the six stories finished that I'd planned to make part of my superhero narrative from 2013 NaNo before Halloween.  Two.  That's all.  I got one, if I can get two I can post them in a combo mini-anthology of sorts on Smashwords or something.

TELL ME.  I need an editor with an egg timer and a 2x4 standing behind me right about now.

NaNoWriMo 2014: Another Reckoning Another Chance

It's time to NANO.

This year I'm plotting out an alien invasion with a twist (the aliens are here to SPOILERS).

Meantime, I am finishing up some of the chapters from LAST YEAR's NaNo attempt to see about getting the rough draft edited out and published before I get working this November on this new one.

This time I'll have the 2013 work finished BEFORE I go jumping for an artist / cover designer.

Things to Do for 2014

It's a week after the new year started, I know, but this is more a To-Do List than a resolutions page anyway.

Need to improve at work.  The first months at a new place of employ is getting settled in, getting aware of the rules and office arrangements.  Now that I've been at Bartow Public for a year now, I need to step up a bit more, pick up on the classes I'm teaching for computer use and pick up on some of the duties a reference librarian should do.

Need to get more writing finished.  I've had way too many projects getting juggled and barely any finished.  On the bright side, I've gotten back into finishing up short stories well enough to get published in an anthology... and will get a second submission looked at for acceptance (here's hoping).  But there's three five stories on file needing completion.  One is two, maybe three chapters away from getting finished as a rough draft, at which point I'll need beta readers to test the narrative and destroy my work pointing out glaring inaccuracies and terrible dialog.

Need to lose weight.  I've gotten down to 277 lbs before, shouldn't be anywhere above 300 lbs, but here I am again.  A lot of the weight re-gain wasn't from a bad diet as it was the inactivity (and dour mood) brought on by prolonged unemployment.  But that's been a year now, I'm fully employed and doing well and need to get my body feeling as good as I need to.

I'll let you all know how it goes.