Thanksgiving 2016: Writing, Pokemon Dittos, and Kamikaze Turkeys

Getting the winner banner is one thing.

Getting a novel truly finished and published is the one goal I haven't crossed yet.

Gotta catch 'em all!

No, wait, that's the Pokemon Go game. They're running a special Double XP this Pagan Turkey Sacrifice Day, and unleashed a rare Pokemon called Ditto:

Ditto hides disguised as low-value Pokemon, so that Rattata you've been ignoring could actually be a Ditto. So you kinda have to catch everything you can now to add up the Dittos.

And, as this is a Pagan Turkey Sacrifice Day, let us honor the greatest ritual of mass kamikaze turkey genocide we ever saw:

AS GOD IS MY WITNESS I THOUGHT TURKEYS COULD FLY.

The Last Week of NaNoWriMo Always Gets Packed Crazy

Just to note, there is something about Thanksgiving weekend being the root cause of this last week of intense novel-writing being more stressful than it should be.

The rule of thumb for coping with a 3-Day Weekend of Mass Distraction is simple:

Let it happen.

Family and friends take priority in the real world. Go and enjoy your Pagan Turkey Sacrifice Day. That's your Thursday, and likely your Friday taken for the most part. Saturday can be optional.

Thing is, there is always time somewhere and somewhen to get your daily word count done without it being intrusive on your commitment to a sane (relatively speaking) social life.

You can, for example, type the word count out on your laptop under the table during turkey dinner.

Just be discreet about it.

You know I will.

What, mom? Whadda ya mean "Do the dishes"?  Now?!

Yeesh. I take it back.

Anywho, if you're anywhere near your 50,000 count finish line, you're good and I wish you best of luck reaching that goal. If you're not as close as you like, just remember you're still working with a rough draft to a new novel that needs your love to make it finish on its own time.

Happy Thanksgiving, and I will see you at the Validation count!

NaNoWriMo Through Time And Space, Specifically This Weekend

Some observations:

1) This is the first year that the Lakeland / Polk County area has its own NaNo Region, and I'd like to think it's been a successful one so far.

We've got an active group of writers who have been showing up for the local Write-Ins, and as a region our challengers have already gotten over the 1 Million word count by Day 20.

2) We're making in-roads in terms of outreach across the county, getting more people aware in places like Lake Wales and Winter Haven.

The best move we've done has been to get a Write-In scheduled at one of the major colleges in the county, World Famous (tm) Florida Southern College. There's a Creative Writing program with their Humanities school, and we've made the NaNo effort aware to them and the feedback we've gotten so far is that the school would like to get involved for it next year.

3) Getting to 40,000 words well before Turkey Pagan Sacrifice Day - AKA the Speedbump - is trickier than it looks for some (cough okay me cough) writers.

KEEP WRITING, NANO-ERS!

NaNoWriMo 2014: Welcome to the Speedbump that is TURKEY PAGAN SACRIFICE DAY

Seriously.

I think the reason why the NaNoWriMo site managers went with November as the Month of Writing is because Thanksgiving hovers here at the end of the month like a massive speedbump.  A huge distraction from writing writing and even MORE WRITING.  I mean, here you are with two to four days of NO WORK NO SCHOOL and you're well close to 50,000 words by now if you've kept at it, and you're thinking OH MY GOD I CAN FINISH UP NO PROBLEM.

And then you realize there's COOKING and EATING and WATCHING FOOTBALL and STUCK WITH CRAZY NON-WRITER RELATIVES who can't even comprehend the awesomeness that is getting a novel typed up.

And that's just Thursday.  Then there's Friday, which is pretty much a day off anyway for most of us, and BOOM THERE'S MAD SHOPPING FOR BLACK FRIDAY SPECIALS or heading out to Busch Gardens/Disney/Universal Theme Parks with energy-sapping relatives who drag you everywhere instead of letting you get 2,000 more words in before that damn roller coaster ride that always knocks you unconscious from the g-forces.

You'll be lucky if you can get back into the writer mindset by Saturday.  As long as your relatives aren't college football alums and their schools are playing the BIG RIVALRY GAMES WOOHOO OH NO CMON WAR EAGLE BEAT TIDE.

This is like that part of the marathon where you've gotten your 20 kilometers in and you can feel the finish line and then there's this 80 foot hill with a 50 degree incline and potholes everywhere as your legs give out.

Thanks a lot, NaNo people.  You really know how to mess with our heads.

KEEP WRITING, NANO'ERS!

And enjoy the turkey sacrifice.