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The last few days I’ve been feeling pretty crummy so NaNoWriMo has been a struggle. Hence the lack of post Monday. I did manage to keep up with the minimum daily goals, and maybe a couple of hundred more except for last night. I was only about 50 or so words short, but finally got too sleepy to write about midnight.

I’m finally feeling better today so I wrote most of the morning, as well as most of the early part of the afternoon. As of the time I’m writing this… About 4pm central US time. I have 18,907 words. Phew… It seems like a lot when you write it out like that but when I look at the page count it’s not so much.

I’m having to get back into really bad first draft mode…. It’s very hard for me to not go back and correct spelling errors and other things. Even with the spell check shut off in open office it’s extremely hard to resist.

I am ahead in one thing, for once. I already have one book ready to review for the week.. Now if I can get though a couple of more for the Clear off your shelves challenge. I’m going to try and burn though some of the smaller books I’ve had on my shelves for awhile. That way the easy books are done and I can start digging into the thicker books, like Perry mason mysteries, and so on.

Pretty much all my other projects are at a stand still due to NaNoWriMo other than the purple and black scarf I’ve been knitting on since last year. I lack about 6 inches and I’ll be done. The reason the scarf is taking so long is that I got bored with it due ot the length, and it’s supposed to reach from finger tip to finger tip. Which means it’s going to be approximately 5 ft 11 inches, give or take a bit. (Provided what I read about the length of your arms finger tip to finger tip when spread are equal to your height.)

That’s about it… So break time is over, back to work on NaNoWriMo! How’s your word count comeing?  (If you’re not doing NaNoWriMo, what current project are you working on?)

On a whim I decided to switch from Microsoft Word XP To Open Office on my main computer.  I’ve been using open office on my MSI Wind since I got it. It loads quickly and runs smoothly even with Firefox running in the background.

So far I’ve been really enjoying it.  It loads documents noticeably faster than MS Word XP.  It will open MS word documents, so I haven’t lost anything. Another bonus is that it saves in Open Document Format, which a lot of programs can open.

My favorite part about it though, is it’s free. I could say the same about google docs but I prefer something on my hard drive for now. I’m still stuck with the mindset of  a dial up customer. That my internet is likely to go down at any time.  So, I’m not ready to go to cloud computing just yet.

I’m using open office for my NaNoWriMo writing this year, and so far no problems. I am going to make a back up every night of the file, as I’m not sure how well Open office will handle large files.  I doubt that it will have any problems, but better to make sure.

Writer is the only part of open office that I have used so far. I’ll try the other parts of it as I go along. PowerPoint is the only other part of office that I used on a regular basis. I use it as a make shift card file for my Petz 4 Game to keep track of the different pets, and what other pets they’re related too.

I took classes on Excel and Access when I was in vocational school,  and I’m interested to see how much of that translates over.  I’ll probably put up another post when I get a chance to try it.

NaNoWriMo News

I’m currently at 3,507 which is over the day two goal of 3,334 by 173 words.

It’s going a lot easier than last year because I have a better idea of what I’m doing.  The hardest part is not going back to edit the spelling when I make a typo. The point is to get a rough draft, not a polished piece. It is something I didn’t have as much trouble with last year.

Another problem, is that it’s dialog heavy, so far. I haven’t been putting in much information about the settings that you’re in.  I’m going to have to go back and add in some extra detail. Good for the word count, but bad for the time taken. I’ll have to be careful to put that in the first time through in the upcoming chapters.

I hope things go smoothly for those of y’all trying NaNoWriMo. If you’re looking for a nano buddy follow me on twitter, and add me to your NaNoWriMo.Org buddy list. My ID there is stancymckatt

Happy writing, I hope you have a great week!

With the new FTC ruling, I thought that it’d be best to put a post up. I’ve signed up for Google Adsense, you’ll notice the advertisement on the bottom right. Also on book reviews you’ll start noticing buy at amazon links. I signed up for amazon affiliates. I’ll mark affiliate links as such, and I won’t try to sneak payed posts in. I’m not so greedy as to try and hide things.

New Items in my art gallery:

Watercolor of a beach: Here
Photo of a Clematis Trio: Here
Early Swirl Drawing: Here

In other News:

I’ve started a hat using the One Day Beret pattern and a bright rainbow colored cotton. I’ve been working on that a bit along, I love the yard because of it’s bright colors. It’s Peaches and Cream brand, Fiesta yarn… quite beautiful. Also, I’m still working on the purple and black scarf, as well as the ripple blanket. I haven’t been able to crochet for a few days because I cut my finger while cooking. Ouch!

My plans for NaNoWriMo are no more solid now, than they where a few weeks ago. I’m going to just start writing my snippets and pieces out on index cards, like I did last year. Hopefully something will fit together. It usually does if I’ll just sit down and start working on an idea. I’ll just have to come up with a consistent way to mark them all so I can tell at a glace which story that they’re from.

My two project sites, I have the layout done for … I’ll call it TG and the other one OA. TG is going to get finished putting together first, because I have a more solid idea of what I want to do. I have most of the writing done for part of it. I just have to start shooting… Shooting what? I’ll leave that as a bit of a mystery for now.

I sat down yesterday and wrote a list out of all my projects that I’m working on, or have left unfinished that I want to finish. It takes up 2/3rds of a sheet on a legal sized pad… I’m going to try and finish at least 5 before I start any new projects. I’ll put any new ideas I have on a pending list until I get those done. The exceptions being of course if I enter a contest, or if I need something for a job. The list will keep everything in front of me at least, as I put it in my Control Journal.

That’s it for this update, Take care y’all have a great week.