Thought Patterns

March Madness has begun! No, not the basketball thingy, but where writers at Forward Motion set a higher goal than usual and, with the word count only being a single work (unless it is connected poetry or short stories), reach those goals over 7 days. Mine is over 5K a day, which I happened to reach yesterday. Time to get started on today's!

Simple Sarah is up to 88,575. Total for the year is 249,115. Wow. That means I am less than 100 words from reaching the half-way point of my year goal. What month is this? Oh, and I just added my word count spreadsheet. Well, part of it. I have it in a MSWorks Spreadsheet. Across the top are all of my 'projects', down the first left hand column are the dates along with what that row means. For example, almost every day has two rows: '3/26 count' (the ending count of the document for that day) and 'word count' (the new words to that document that day). I get the daily count by having the spreadsheet take that day's start count and subtract it from the previous day's ending count. To the right, at its appropriate place, is the total of all the other columns for that day.

Example:
(image will be added later)

Clear as mud?

In Real Life I got my lovely CPAP machine, the ResMed S7 and its HumidAire 2i, yesterday and spent my first night as an official 'hosehead'. I seemed to have done okay and only woke up once with it out of place. Lorna says I still snored some though since I slept with my mouth open. Goody, that means I now get to strap my mouth shut. And no, I will not take pictures, even though my shut mouth is an endangered species.

We have decided to find Sammy and Bobby a new home. Spring is here and they are wantin' some gals. Its just not fair to them to not be with a flock.

Wow, hadn't realized it had been so long…Not very 'bloggish' of me, is it? Rude too. Writing has gotten interesting. I am growing as I go along, learning alot from that group of nuts at Forward Motion. I got a good crit (critique) back for Simple Sarah that made some great suggestions. My 'showing' the story is getting better, at least according to my spouse. She is good at seeing things from an angle I do not - the reader.

I have only worked on Simple Sarah lately. I am even behind on my 2 Year Novel class. It's all about priorities, isn't it?

Counts as of 3/21:

• Simple Sarah - 65,736 (after a four day edit that started at 69509)
• Simple Sarah Worldbuild - 247

I have been hard at work on this new novel, now tentatively called Simple Sarah, and just have not gotten around to updating my blog.

Yesterday Lorna and I went to Charlotte and attended our first Ham Fest. We were disappointed, since it was appearantly not only not well attended, but there were about half the usual exhibitors. Even the flea market tables were pitiful. However, I did get to touch and mess with several of the radios I am trying to decide between. The size of buttons and how they are used are more important than what the radio can do. Does not do any good for a radio to have all the bells and whistles I want and the buttons be too small or too close together for my hands to use. I have narrowed the choice down to two: the Icom IC-706MGIIK and the Yaesu FT-895. They are very much identical, even in price. They each have their own quirks and their own special bell or whistle. One weighs less but the other has 3 different power options.

Not that it does any good to decide since both radios run between $750-900 (depending on the retailer) and that is just the radio! I need an antenna tuner (the RT-11 or the Z-100 or the AT-897), the grounding materials, a reliable power source, etc etc.

One of the things that has me leaning more toward one than the other is that the reps in the Icom booth paid me little to no attention. It was as if I was invisible; which is hard to do since I am a fat broad in a yellow powerchair with a rottweiler at my side. Sad that the fact I was a YL (female) outweighed all the other.

However, at the Yaesu booth, the rep not only answered my every question, he also knelt on the floor, so he was at my height, and he understood my needs both physically and drool-wise. He was not a 'true' rep, but was a technical guy so he had no sales pitch (and if that was his sale pitch, who cares! It worked!). Keep in mind, the reps are not there to sell you anything, but to provide information about their products and company.

Anyway, back to my writing. Maybe I should push Wayback along so that I can get my radio, huh? My point in initially bringing up the Ham Fest was that on the way back, I read about 16 pages of Simple Sarah to Lorna. She had some good points to make, and I even made notes about them! I think I may be getting the hang of this writing thing.

Counts as of end of 3/13:

• Simple Sarah - 59,122
• Simple Sarah Worldbuild - 2276
• March thus far - 54,895
• Year to date - 182,640 (and 'only' 317,360 to go on the year long dare of 500K)

I am making steady progress on the new novel. With this one, I understand the idea of 'rough draft'. I have nicknamed it 'Next Step' to help me keep everything organized. It currently is already at 21,367 as of yesterday.

Wayback is still with another writer being checked out. I believe she has a life, unlike me, and will take a while. At first I was all nervous about it and now I am fine. I put a snippet of Predictable World up on the forum and got some good feedback. So I know it desperately needs some editing. I have not touched Pedigree in quite a while and I need to get another chapter of Ryan's book done and sent to him.

I recently got a book by Cameron called The Right to Write. It's a decent book, each section is a small essay followed by an exercise at the end. Some of them are a little odd from my perspective but I understand that the generic 'you' is prominent in this book. I recently heard she had a third book out but I can't remember the title.

The year to date word count is: 143,706. Not bad for a Southern blonde, huh?

In Real Life, I had the second sleep test and hated the CPAP. The mask is going to take some getting used to. I goofed up on the cable bill something awful and it may be off for a while, including the internet. I may experience withdrawals soon. Spring seemed so teasingly close and then today winter reared its white head. Temperatures are dropping like a rock and there are severe wind warnings up as well as winter weather advisories. Arrgh!

Well, I made all of my Dares.

• Master Level Word Count - 127,845 for 120,000
• Journeyman Level Worldbuild Count - 6985 for 6000
• Apprentice Non-Fiction Dare - 2 for 2

So far for March I have done 8428 words. AND those words are all for my NEW novel. Yeah, I know. But Pedigree is far too much like I am *still* writing Wayback. And Predictable World is not only too deep for me to just sit and do, but it really needs some editing. And the 2YN is, duh, a two year project. This New Novel is not named yet. I am playing right now with the concept, seeing how it flows and how the ideas I have fit together. So far so good. I think it will make it.

Oh, and I still have Ryan's book. It's time I sent him another chapter.

In Real Life I go for the second sleep study tonight; less than an hour from now actually. More on that later. Nothing much else going on.