Insomnia and NaNoWriMo

Hi! I wanted to be really organized, and wanted to blog about NaNoWriMo a lot, like on a daily basis, but that hasn't happened. But it might now.

Insomnia happened. Of course I'd be hit with the worst round of insomnia that I've ever faced. You'd think that not being able to sleep when I have a lot of projects that I want to finish would be good, but it's not. Well, the first couple days awake aren't too bad. But not being able to sleep, after day three, means not being able to think or do much of anything other than obsess about not being able to sleep or be unbearably angry about still being awake. It doesn't do much for productivity.

I've been holding my own against NaNoWriMo (a little behind, but I should be able to finish catching up today) and regular life-related stuff despite the insomnia other than the fact that I've been completely unpleasant to be around, but I think I've broken the insomnia. I slept five hours last night.

This is a breakthrough because I've had two nights of 5-6 hours of solid sleep in the past few days. Before that I had been sleeping 12-16 hours on Friday to Saturday, and then about 10 hours spread out during the week in half-hour to 2-hour long segments.

This morning when I woke up at a normal time, after sleeping for a rather normal length of time, I wanted to get up and exercise. I'm not used to having this extra energy at all. I'm especially not used to feeling focused... weird. I had been trying to push through the insomnia, and act like it didn't impact me that much, but it did. I see that now.

So, I'm ready to get back on track. And even though I'm a bit over 30k into NaNoWriMo, it's very disjointed, so I'm going to skim over what I've got and start filling in the missing parts. I have to do that or else finishing this novel is going to be much more difficult. Onward to 35k! And to 50k beyond that!

Context 26

I'm doing something writing-related--and I'm trying to blog more. Good for me!

I will be in Columbus, Ohio, this weekend attending Context 26, and hanging out with friends in the area that I haven't seen in a while. I'm a little nervous about going to Context just because my plan is to have very little by way of a plan, which is pretty standard, but something I haven't done in a while. But, it's only Tuesday and I do have more plan than I started out with this week, so it's all falling into place.

I'm already stressed thinking about the almost 5-hour drive, but I should be able to time that to miss the brunt of annoying traffic situations. I hope.
And then the thrilling drive back on Sunday.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting out of the mountains for a weekend, and hope to see some friends, make new friends, etc.

Favorite Writing and Editing Software

I usually use Microsoft Word--pretty basic, right? And I have Scrivener, but I haven't taken the time to figure it all out. It looks useful. (And they have a free 30-day trial) I bought Scrivener with a NaNoWriMo winner discount for $20--it's usually $40.

My favorite editing tool is SmartEdit. They offer a free 10-day trial of SmartEdit. I got a older, free edition of it somewhere (that was a while back, though). SmartEdit looks for repeated words and phrases, and also locates cliches. I like putting a number on repetition, so I scan documents with it before I start editing just to know what words I should watch out for. It's one thing to notice when a word is a bit overused, but it's an entirely different thing when you quantify that.

Do you have any favorite software for writing or editing purposes?

Editing Playlist for August 9th

I make playlists for just about everything. And usually, as I work and listen to music, I find that I pull the same songs or bands into a playlist over and over again during the course of a project. So, here is a sample of what I've been listening to while editing in recent days:



(And if you want any info on what novel I'm currently editing for Erato, then I'll send you over to Katie Young's blog where you can get all the updates on The Other Lamb)

--and, yes, I will post about my past editing projects soon. And I have other things to blog about, writing-related and otherwise.