Thursday, September 27, 2012

Sorry about that...

I seem to have disappeared.

Between internet outages, grading piles of tests, entering grades into a frustratingly slow data entry system, and still having to teach that whole time, I haven't had much time for blogging. In addition, every time I sit down to blog I keep toying with a blog post that I started a few weeks ago and haven't yet finished/decided to publish. Then I feel guilty about not finishing it and so decide not to write anything else. Stupid really, but there you have it.

Today, I'm sick on top of everything else, but as I've used that as a reason to back out of many of my obligations for the evening it also means that I find myself seated on the couch with not much else to do but write. Yay! That is an upshot to being sick if ever I've heard one.

Unfortunately my brain's not working all that well, so creativity isn't high, but at the very least I can knock out this blog entry, right?

In the moments of free time that I've felt the need to squander recently, I've been spending a lot of time looking at kickstarter campaigns. I've backed a grand total of six of them so far. Corey and I were just looking at some of the campaigns that have been funded this year and we were getting inspired for our own  projects. It's such a great concept, and I'm really happy to be supporting other creative people whom I've never met before in this way. I'm working to come up with ideas for rewards for my own project which I hope to launch in early October. If you have any suggestions for things you think would make good rewards let me know! If you haven't ever looked at kickstarter.com I recommend that you check it out.

In other news, I'm having a hard time finishing any of the short stories I've started here in my September project. I think I need to spend some time this weekend just wrapping up the stories that I've started and then tag on a few more. It's looking like 30 short stories will be quite the stretch, but I think I might be able to round off 10-15 if I push it. I've had 20,000 word weekends before, I can do it again!

In the meantime, November is coming ever closer and that means so many things to me that I don't quite know what to do with myself! It means two weeks in the Grand Canyon, it means flying out of state to visit family for Thanksgiving and, most importantly, it means NaNoWriMo 2012! Last year, was my fifth attempt at NaNoWriMo and the first time I've ever failed to complete the 50,000 words in one month goal since I first started back in 2007. Now, in my 6th attempt, it's particularly important to me not to fail. I consider last year a perfect storm. The combination of two weeks backpacking in the Grand Canyon, being sick, planning and executing my wedding and having the family visit for wedding/Thanksgiving was more than I could handle, though I did still manage to write about 18,000 words, defeat reared it's head and snatched my best intentions from my grasping hands. This year I will tell defeat where it can shove itself.

For now, though, I am struggling with a balance of work, playing outside (known as exercise to some) and writing. I need to work on that balance from now through October and get myself thoroughly even keeled in time for National Novel Writing Month. Perhaps adding the maintenance of a Kickstarter project to all of that isn't the best idea, but I'm probably going to try it anyway. If I talk myself out of it then I'll have to start the kickstarter gig in December instead. I don't know what the seasons are like with Kickstarter, but I imagine the run up to the holidays is a good time to catch people who want to spend money and the fall off afterwards not so much... So me thinks October may be the best time. Yarrrr!

Oh, yeah, that reminds me. I dressed up and got my "Arrrr" on for Talk Like a Pirate day. Did you?

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