I was doing so well. I blogged through my father kicking the bucket. I blogged through my subsequent emotional freak-out. I blogged through two huge deadlines and all sorts of unreported school drama. And then – and then – just when I should have been able to truly devote myself to the NaBloPoMo thing for a couple of days, what did I do?

I fell asleep.

Yeah, that’s my big excuse for not posting yesterday. I had the laptop in bed like I usually do, and I was all snuggled up with the kid who just would. not. go. to. sleep, and I thought “I’ll just cuddle with him for a little bit” – and then I woke up and it was 12:05 and I’d missed a day of posting. Just like that!

Gah. My lameness, it is staggering even to me.

In other news, it looks like I may fail somewhat more spectacularly at NaNoWriMo, even though I swear I will need psychiatric intervention if I do because I NEVER MISS A DEADLINE and yet, here I am, 3/4 of the way through the month with only 16K words. Oh yeah, I can totally write 34K in the next week and a half. No problem whatsoever.

I am full of tired. We just got back from a baby shower for one of Not So’s coworkers, which was a surprising amount of fun (I say ‘surprising’ because I usually shrink in fear from social occasions which involve people I don’t know). Happy Fun Baby ran around with the other kids and had a grand time, and I got to hang out with people, and I even ate a little. Good times.

Now, of course, we’re home, and I’m facing the reality of being 4000 words behind on NaNoWriMo. Worse, Not So is even more behind, which leaves me torn – do I slog on despite that, or do I hold off until he’s had a chance to catch up with me so he doesn’t feel all discouraged? Because, see, I’ve written books before. Writing one in a month is a challenge, but it’s not the same challenge as writing one at all. I love that he’s doing this, and I want to be supportive…but I also want to finish my book. What to do, what to do.

I bit my tongue earlier today and now it’s all swollen and hurty. It rubs against my teeth when I talk. Waah.

At 11 months (well, almost), Happy Fun Baby’s vocabulary is at a whopping four words: “ghee” for “kitty,” “luh” for “love,” “ba” for “ball” and “da” for “yeah.” “Do you want to go downstairs?” I ask. “Da,” says the baby. It’s like living with a little Russian diplomat.

I’m pretty sure yesterday (and today)’s crying jags are tooth-related. A couple of times today the baby has, apropos of nothing, put his hands to his mouth and wailed. I feel so bad for him, but I don’t know what I can do aside from offering snuggles and the occasional dose of Tylenol, which he sucks down like a little addict. Do you remember when medicine tasted bad? This cherry-flavored baby crack is not exactly off-putting. On the other hand, do I want to wrestle with my child before he will take his painkillers? No I do not.

The Code Fairy (aka my inimitable husband, who loves it when I call him a fairy) performed some sort of magic on my Buzzverb site and now it works gorgeously. I’ve posted the second of my 30 Days of Writing Links: if you’re doing NaNoWriMo (or even if you’re not) you should check it out. I’m not collecting all these links for my health, people.

I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year (seriously, where would I find the time?) but I am all enamoured of a new manuscripting application. I downloaded the Scrivener beta yesterday, and it is, in fact, all that and a bag of chips. If you write novels, you know that Word is somewhat lacking in its outlining capabilities; I’ve always needed to either print out my notes and ideas so that I can refer to them while writing or have lots of windows open, neither of which is an optimal solution. And changing the order of chapters? Not exactly painless. Scrivener addresses these concerns and more. I’m digging the hell out of it. I may even do some work on the novel I started a couple of years ago and then abandoned in favor of sleep deprivation and mood swings. Er, I mean, parenthood. Stranger things have happened, you know.

technorati tags:scrivener, manuscript, writing, buzzverb, teething, tylenol, baby, nanowrimo, code fairy

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