D'oh!

I've just realised that the books I've been looking forward to receiving from Amazon won't actually ever arrive.

I only dreamt that I ordered them.

(Realisation occurred 5 hours after waking up...)

Hacked or just really open?

I'm not sure whether this will stay long before being amended, but when I just went onto the John McCain page on Wikipedia, the first sentence was:

"John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) licks balls."

Decision

After some soul-searching and calendar-scouring, I've decided I'm going to attempt NaNoWriMo again this year. I only managed about 16,000 words last November, but am coming at it from a different angle this year. I've noticed that while my WIP isn't autobiographical, a lot of the characters and situations have some basis in my life or experiences my friends have had. I think this is understandable, but I want to broaden my writing. So, for NaNo I've decided to really experiment and try to write against my instincts, in terms of characters and plot. I'm not letting myself think too much about it before November 1st (though to be honest I'm so busy right now, that's not too hard!), but I've already got some ideas, and they feel really fresh and different. When it gets to December, I'll have to reassess what I want to concentrate on, and whether my NaNo writing will change any aspects of my WIP. I'm really excited about seeing what will happen!

Forgot...

I managed to unremember that I'd also written 1000 words in a notebook, so that's been tacked onto the word count too. Nearly back up to 43,000...

Words

I have now adjusted my word count, and was pleasantly surprised. I knocked off 10,000 words from my total over the summer with some much-needed pruning of the brain-dump back-story, but have managed to carry on writing since then and added 5,000 words back in. Now I just need to keep going...

Swan Lake

Last night I practically swam across Manchester (the weather was dreadful) to get to The Lowry. Standing in the foyer waiting for my friends, chilly and with wet feet, I thought that the show would have to be pretty special to make me feel a bit better about the state I'd got into on my way. Well, I wasn't just pleasantly surprised, I was totally blown away.

The Australian Ballet have totally reinterpreted the story, making it much more intense and dark, and the choreography is so much more than just dance. There is an emotional depth to the performance that I've never really seen in ballet before, and a heightened realism to the movements that makes it all the more haunting. I think it would definitely still have been worth seeing, even if I actually had to swim the Manchester Ship Canal to get there.

Cringe...

I realised I had left my purse at home today while trying to pay for my lunch in Boots. Luckily, I did still get to eat because I knew the person in the queue behind me, and very kindly paid for my food.

Unfortunately, it was my boss's boss's boss (my great-grandboss?).

My cheeks matched the tomato in my sandwich.

Correlation

I have spotted a direct inverse correlation between workload and blogging frequency before. The last month (since I received a promotion, thereby increasing the number of accounts I work on and the responsibilities I have for each of these) has yet again highlighted this relationship.

I have kept writing, doing some major surgery on my WIP, taking out around 10,000 words of back-story that isn't strictly crucial for what I'm trying to say. I've also plotted more and been working on filling out scenes I've sketched. Unfortunately, I haven't updated my word count here, but will when I remember and am on the right computer.

I'm also getting that autumnal NaNo-is-just-round-the-corner feeling, and story ideas unrelated to my WIP keep popping up. I'm trying to suppress them so far, but maybe a break is what I need...