August 2009 Archives

So, yeah, Go Daddy and very many Word Press blogs were hacked into and caused much disturbance. I won't go into details, but I will explain the reason Ye Olde Cultist is not as it once was is because during the fixing process Super Husband deleted the wrong folder.  We're good with this.  At least the site is still up.  However, I will have to beg forgiveness while we fix the over all look of the place. I loathe to say this but: This site is under construction.

First, I have to give props to Super Husband for fixing the random errors on my blogs.  Now they only appear in the plugins section on Wordpress, but we figure it must be a form of demon possession, and we just haven't happened on the correct rite of excorsism to completely eradicate it.

So, NaNoWriMo is coming up in November.  You might be thinking it's a little early to start writing or even worrying about it.  Normally, I would say you were right, but I have a tweet peep who will be doing it for the first time and she questioned me about this NaNoWriMo novel she saw.

No Plot? No Problem!

Yes, it's a book on how to write for NaNoWriMo.

I'm sorry, while I give props to Chris Baty for finding a way to fund this international past time, or at least make some extra dough representing it, you don't need a freaking book to tell you how to write for NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo is, for those not in the know or are too lazy to click the above links, is National Novel Writing Month.  The goal for pure bragging rights it to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, November 1st through 30th.  Despite the criticisms from stupid professional writers who think that only their way is the only way, it's a chance to finally get that novel in your head onto the paper.  Granted, it equals out to about 175-page novel.  The one I have in mind is longer, but just think, writing 50,000 words in a month is a hell of a start.

To those writers who have said it "degrades" their "craft".  You know what, assholes?  You had to start somewhere, too.  Screw you and your egos.

Either way, again, you don't need a book to survive NaNoWriMo.

Here is my personal steps to NaNoWriMo.  You can call it a survival list, but I'm not entirely sure I survive it.  (Hey, with my obsession with zombies, it's entirely possible I'm just one myself.)

• Come up with an idea you want to put in a book: It might be something you've been knocking around for years, started several times unsucessfully, or just thought up yesterday over a serious doughnut high.  Everything starts with an idea whether it's a moment of literary genius or a chance to be stupid with dry ice and styrofoam.
• The Dreaded Outline: it helps to have some sort of outline of your plot.  I know, I know, it was the dreaded part of the writing assignment in high school, but dammit, it really can be helpful.  If you have the whole story in outline, you just have to connect the dots.  If all you have is "this guy has a love affair with his sock and hilarity ensues," then you're probably good without one.
• The Survival Stash: Okay, so, I can't have caffeine anymore, but it's the rare person who can't.  My suggestion to you over the coming weeks is to stock up on your favorite caffeinated beverages (an assortment is better) and a butt-ton, whatever that is, of your favorite food indulgence.  Usually, I suggest chocolate because it's somewhat universal, but hey, who am I to judge if you're favorite food indulgence is mashed potatoes?  Either way, this indulgence is very important.  It's the thing that keeps your family alive.  Whenever your husband/wife, kids, pets, friends, and nosy neighbors, interrupt a really good writing moment, you need something to placate your inner writing demon.  See, we all normally have creative monsters who sit on our shoulders and nudge us, but during NaNoWriMo we have writing demons.  The writing demons are mean.  They growl and bite.  Better to bite into a bar of chocolate than your neighbor's poodle.
• Actual writing: Okay, so you've signed up with your idea; you have your stash in hand; you've gently warned your family that fingers could be lost if they interrupt you; so now it's down to the writing.  50,000 words in a month might not seem like a lot to a seasoned writer or someone like Neil Gaiman who is brilliant and disturbed under his friendly exterior, but to the rest of us, it's a scary prospect.  It all begins with the first word, and it all comes down to you remembering that it is indeed a rough draft.  Anything you lay to paper right now that's not being immediately published is a rough draft.  Write it down, let it go, edit later.  Trust me.  Either way, you'll write yourself into a corner and abandon it...again.  I know you feel me on that one.
• Writer's Block:  Every writer complains about it.  It seems like a foreign object that should be tossed out with the trash, but it's an unfortunate product of your own mind.  It might be caused by the latest reality show or the fact that leaf looks really pretty outside your window.  It's a matter of your brain deciding it wants to do something else and decides that writing worth as much time as digging your underwear out of your ass.  It.  Happens.  To.  Everyone.  Seriously, if you don't experience it after the third day, you're doing well.
• The Forums, Facebook, Twitter, Your Mom: So, when I first started NaNoWriMo, really all you had was the forums to console each other and remind each other why we are all completely insane.  Now, we have other forms of social media to unleash our very victimized sentiment upon the world with little to know sympathy as a response.  But, at least we can release it, right?  Strangely, anything you put out on the forums, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, etc. will be way more creative than anything you write in the novel you're burning braincells to write in 30 days.  It's a weird paradox.  I think the Writing Gods laugh at us.
• Have Fun: So, it's supposed to be fun.  It's supposed to be about getting your novel written or started.  It's supposed to be about enjoying some random insanity just to say you did it.  There is fun in that somewhere.  Somewhere between the lack of sleep, the fifth time you locked your husband in the closet for being a pest, the twelfth pack of chocolate bars, several hate letters to established authors, at least three acoholic stupors, and several promises to not put yourself through this again, there is fun to be had.  Let me know when you have it.
• The Hurdles: So, yeah, the choice of November, the month that officially begins the insanity of the holidays, is not a choice I would have made to have a National Novel Writing Month, bu then I think, it must be for the challenge of it.  Talk about a major distraction.  Here you are, focusing, finally, on your novel and in comes the holidays with all of its bad commercials, traditional demands, and whiney kids.  If you can make it through NaNoWriMo during that season without setting fire to your own house, I figure, you can make it through anything.  I still question the timing, but I figure that's the reason they're willing to stick with it.  At least the reasons they're willing to fess up to.
• The Aftermath: Sleep.  Blessed sleep.  Just before the holidays.  So you get all of 5 hours of sleep before you have to hit the mall and take down a granny to get the newest Elmo doll.  Enjoy your recovery.
• The Aftermath, Part 2: Finishing your novel if it isn't finished, editing your novel, doing all the sordid and horrible things you want to do to it if you want to publish it.  This isn't a necessary thing.  For some people, the NaNoWriMo is a chance to get the novel out of their head even if it only visits the harddrive and a few questionable websites.  For others, it's to realize that dream of being a published author and taking great pleasure in flipping off those pompous bastards who said it wasn't doable because you did NaNoWriMo instead of starving in the streets or finding a sponsor or whatever else they can make up to make themselves feel better.

It's not a long list and it's not necessarily hard to achieve.  It's just sort of the natural state of being in the NaNoWriMo.  Yes, doing this makes you completely nuts, but at the same time, it's fun as hell.  Even if you don't succeed to 50,000 words, you really will enjoy every word you wrote.  Guaranteed.

Write on!

_____________________________________

The truly fun thing about NaNoWriMo is the late night random gibberish you write just to get the word count.  "The whale watched the nugget from the convertible and told it that it was truly worth the string." makes sense in a way.  Good times!

I almost forgot it was Thursday and I had promised I was going to do this so that at least one post got out a week.  I've been working since last Tuesday.  My days are a little thrown off. This week's Totally Random Thursday is brought to you by the number 2 (in representation of the crap that's happened this week.) and the letter "P" for the puking baby brought to the shop:

• I had a woman call the spa and scream at me for making her 87-year-old mother sick because we "had mold". Yes, we have a roof problem, but there is no mold according to our building manager's person.  However, we have wiped everything down with bleach and emailed the building owner.  I say "we" but it's really the part owner and the total owner.  I swear, if it's not fixed, I will fix it.  We have no mold of which we know, but by the gods, I will make life hell for the building owner if he doesn't fix the bloody roof!
• I smell like bleach after we freaked out and cleaned the spa's kitchen just in case.
• The dragonfly hordes have been seriously massive in and around our neighborhood.  Massive!  At least an estimated hundred dragonflies per yard.  I've never seen the clouds so massive. I hope it's because of the rain and the lack of funds to spray the yards with pesticides.  The Dragonflies are doing their jobs.  Let them!  Let them eat the mosquito armies!  Let them do their dragonfly jobs!
• My sister-in-law is being emotionally savaged by a local person who was once her best friend.  I have told her to let it go, which is easier sad than done.  I had a chance to mangle said person through email.  I know it will help nothing, but damn if it won't make me feel better.  I resisted...dammit.
• I have been working since last Tues.  Outside a non-first-world country that's a laugh, but in this first-world country...bloody hell I can't wait until Friday!
• Just so ya'll missed it:  I smell like bleach.
• The person who hired us for the golf tourney still hasn't paid us.  I told Spa Owner to tell him she was sending "her girl" to get the check.  I would really hate to take it out on his knee-caps.  *cracks knuckles*
• Every woman over the age of 60 starts undressing before I can leave the massage room.  I know it's because they have no reason to be ashamed, but for the sake of my job, at least wait until I leave the room so I can't be sued later!

Now that I want to write random, there isn't so much random.  Damn you the Law of Murphy!  Goddamn you to hell! _________________ So, yeah, the weekend I was totally not at work, nothing interesting other than the guy smoking in the rain.  Last weekend, we endured sweaty golfers of a country club tourney.  They tipped really well, but still...sweaty golfers...It's been a loooooong week.

I was going to totally start a new weekly thing called Totally Random Thursdays where I guarantee at least one post a week by hitting you with more of my random musings and stuff you really don't want to hear, but I went to bed early instead.  So, it will have to be next Thursday. Maybe I should call this Fail Friday? Eh. But, still, if I get a little random, just bear with me.  I feel like I'm a day behind since I had to work today. Yeah, work.  In fact, I have to work all weekend.  The spa owner and I decided in a moment of insanity to work a golf tournament at the country club.  "You can make a ton of money," said the decidedly cheap, kindness-sucking, and advantage-taking club manager.  Trust me, if I had answered the phone when he had called, I would have laughed at his flat fee offer.  Spa Owner is way nicer than I am. So, we get to this club and can't find the guy who's supposed to tell us where to set up.  We are told by staff that it's the men's locker room. Yes, we are to set up for massages in the men's locker room. I am well aware of the possible sit-com style scenarios this could create. We had nothing else to go onl, so into the locker room we went. The locker room is like a hidden casino.  There is an actual locker room in the very back, but you have to go through several rooms full of green-carpeted card tables, ash trays, chairs, and sofas to get there.  Yeah.  Totally a locker room. We are immediately told by the local doomsayer/cleaning woman that we had our work cut out for us, especially since she had to tackle three industrial-sized garbage bags full of beer cans, another full container of plastic cups, an untold number of full ash trays, and a craps table full of puke. Yeah.  Totally a locker room. This, of course, got us a little nervous, but yet excited.  Well, hell, if this "locker room" was the hang out then we should be swamped. We eagerly set up two chairs and two massage tables, laid out our business cards, seeded the tip jars, and waited. And, waited. And, waited. So, the manager-type person had told us to be there at 9 am.  The tournament was supposed to start at 10 and had actually started early.  So, they were all on the course. We had two massages by noon. So, we waited a little longer until Spa Owner, her Minion, and I decided we were starving and went to get lunch. We come back an hour later to the local doomsayer/cleaning woman with news that as soon as we left 40 people showed up for massages. There was much cussing. Okay, fine, we decided.  We'll stay until around 5.  Plenty of time for them to finish.  Doomsayer wanted us to stay until dark.  Dark is 8 or later.  I have an hour's drive home.  She can take that can of mulberry spray* and stick it in a very sensitive place. Around 2, we get a guy who wants a full body, so I put him on the table, perform some magic and turn him into ooze.  Damn near literally.   He requested some time to lie on the table for a bit after I was finished.  Well, sure, why not.  15 minutes later, I started to worry, so I went to check on him.  He started a bit when I asked if he was okay and turned his head out of the face cradle.  I had to take a little pride in the bit of drool he had to wipe from the corner of his mouth and the amount of time it took to convince himself to get up. He jogs passed the spa every day.  He might come back. Spa Owner took care of another guy who wanted a 15 minute chair massage...and then another five minutes please...okay, that's awesome...hey, can I get 30 minutes on the table?...that was fabulous, how about another 15 minutes...Snore. Okay, so, it wasn't a total bust, but not the "ton of money" or the "work cut out for us" we were expecting.  So, a decision was made to go in later in the morning, work through lunch, and possibly leave earlier.  That might sound stupid to most folks, but Spa Owner usually makes $350 on a Friday.  She made $75.  I usually make about $200 on a Friday.  I made $85. Do.  The.  Math. One of the manager-type people came by to ask us if it were worth it.  We grinned and nodded the nod of people who were nodding just to agree because they hoped the next day would be better but knowing, if there were no change, if asked again, nodding would not be in the equation. Next time they call, I'm going to ask Spa Owner for the phone... $300, my ass... So, that was the day.  Sadly, I'm still worn out.  Maybe from a slow-burning anger in my gut from not being given enough info or advertisement.  Who knows?  I didn't go to Stitch.  I was so bloody tired.  I ate and mostly played Bejeweled because that's about all my brain could handle.  I'm not even sure why I'm awake now.  I think I've passed into the mysterious realm of Too Tired to Sleep.  It's a strange and alien land that needs to be nuked from orbit. Because I didn't give ya'll the Totally Random Thursday I didn't promise you, I feel I must be random now.  You can either consider it late randomness or pre-emptive randomness.  Half-empty, half-full, I guess. So, I present to you, your weekly Totally Random:

• My cat, Merlin, was so totally stoked at having a balled up piece of paper thrown down the hall he poofed to three times his normal size.
• I have not cleaned my house in a week, and I am going through DTs.  I am unable to rectify this because my feet have decided that standing is an affront to their existence.  I figure by Tuesday, I will lop them off and clean on my knees.
• I absolutely don't miss the clinic.
• The other day, I watched a man in his front yard, in the pouring rain, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, shorts, and a ball cap, struggling to pull some serious weeds from his front yard, while smoking a cigarette, in the rain.  (Yes, I mentioned the rain redundantly.  Seriously, this guy was smoking and pulling weeds in the rain.  That's some beautiful suburbia weirdness right there.)

Okay, enough of that.  Tomorrow will either bring some grumbling tirades about mornings or nothing at all.  Please hope that it's nothing.  These country club guys are creepy enough without encouragment. __________________________________ *Ya'll, this woman had this can of mulberry spray that was more or less like a series of random chemical smells in a can.  She was standing there talking to us explaining what we missed when we dared to go to lunch.  She punctuated each sentence with a spray from her mulberry can.  She did this about ten times, got bored, went and sprayed every inch of the actual locker room, sprayed every piece of furniture that didn't belong to us, and dashed away in a cloud of unpleasantness.  I have to seriously agree with our Minion:  "It smells like a really stinky ass wrapped in a blueberry sauce."  I like our minion.  I like her a lot.