I Made It.

(Posted simultaneously at Family News.)

Can’t say I’m done, ’cause I’m not, but I did make the 50,000-word “finish line.”

Two nights ago, actually. And yesterday I spent much of the day cleaning house because we were having company for dinner, so I didn’t write anything before “validating” my 50,267-Word document this morning. (You are such a nice little document!) It came in as 50,116 words.

Good enough for me. I did what I set out to do (make word count) and have had a “highly educational experience” that was not frightening or humiliating (I understand many highly educational experiences are one or both). I now have more words on a single story than I ever have before, and I spent more consecutive days on a single project (excluding marriage and children and eating) than I have before in my life.

Since it’s still not done I’ll have to spend some more hours on it before it’s complete, but I’ve got those penciled in for January or February.

The plan for December is to create order in my physical world (this was already manifesting itself toward the end of the month as my word-count slowed and my house got pretty) and enjoy Jay’s time off.

The whole month. *WooHoo!*

I’m hoping to have some time in there to create a semi-formal “pre-school” lesson plan for Natasha. She it just chomping at the bit right now. She has loved poetry since she was 2 1/2 and fell in love with that rabbit poem. We read them between chores this morning, and she was never ready to let me get back to my clothes-folding. Then she went off “playing school” and “reading” both by herself and with Melody.

Grace for All Things

Today’s epiphany, courtesy Hudson Taylor (via Adventures in Autism):

…In the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult, His grace is sufficient.

I don’t remember particularly questioning God’s sufficiency in difficulty; my faulty thinking was more about assuming I could reach a level of competency that would leave me grateful for– but somehow less completely dependant on– God’s provision of grace for the smaller roles.

Taylor goes on with more encouraging reminders about sufficiency.
The illustration:

It matters little to my servant whether I send him to buy a few cash worth of things, or the most expensive articles. In either case he looks to me for the money and brings me his purchases.

What a lovely picture of dependency and trust.

So, if God should place me in serious perplexity, must He not meet much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that His resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.

Such a great and precious promise from our faithful God and Father:

2 Corinthians 12:9
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Wouldn’t This be Cool?

I got this idea reading the paper this morning, called a couple friends to verify it sounded cool to more than me, then cast my line.  Still waiting to see if anyone will bite.

The e-mail I sent (edited, of course):

Dear Ms.  Teacher,

In the paper today you mentioned you were the co-op coordinator for the High School Career Fair this year.

I wanted to suggest the possibility of a “homemaker” booth/presentation (whatever your format is) next year; I know a number of people who could work with me to create a professional and informative setting.

Presenting home-by-choice as a valid option alongside more lucrative careers could have the positive effect of raising appreciation for those parents who choose to focus on their families, rather than entering the workforce.

High school may be a little early for students to show much open interest (we may never know if we don’t try), but it’s not too early to normalize home as a priority.

I hope you’ll consider discussing this with me.
Sincerely, etc.

I haven’t sat down to make any lists of stuff, the idea hasn’t been accepted yet, after all.  But I’ve been doing “this” long enough that I could get it together as soon as was necessary.

Wouldn’t that just be the coolest: Having mothering alongside dozens of other “normal” and “real” jobs?

Not Worth the Effort

From A.W. Tozer’s book The Pursuit of God.

The heart’s fierce desire to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable.

Such a burden is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.

Needs

I watched the first disk of the first season of Monk last week.

Really liked it.

After finishing the last two episodes in one evening, I mentioned to Jay how nice it was to find another good source for my story “fix” that was positive/clean. I think I’m mentally setting this against, say, soap operas. Monk is a sort of modern Sherlock Holms, so it is a detective show.

Then, of course, as soon as I acknowledged my need for Story as a type of dependency I got both nervous and defensive. Nervous because I have to question whether each dependency is healthy, and defensive because I want to argue it isn’t, at least, unhealthy.

It got me thinking about all those needs we have that aren’t physical. Continue reading »

Ahhhh

See, playing around with templates can make a difference.

I still don’t know what’s up with wordpress, but from my playing with templates I remembered this one with search and links at the top.

It’s not as organized as some of the others, but with things as they are, it’s doing the best.

~~~

I’m thinking now I might have made a “NaNo” category, but “Developing novel” is doing okay.  It just covers more than my Lindorm story… If you go back far enough.

It’s funny now to think how proud I was of my  13,000+ words I had accumulated on my swan story.  Nearly at 40,000 now on the Lindorm effort, and I have an entirely different perspective on volume.

A little competition is all I need…

For the first half of NaNo I was riding between or ahead of my two “buddies” that were in the front of my pack of four.

Then I had a few days of Elisha not napping when the girls did, and not wanting to be up until 11+ and my count slid. I still did a little everyday, but that was almost pathetic: less-than 400 2-days in a row, and I fell miserably behind those two.

Like, thousands of words behind them.

So I went poking around until I found someone else whose word count was closer to mine and had a reasonable daily pace (not one of those ignore it for 5 days than write 8,000-types). I added him to my buddy-list to watch his progress and became instantly more productive. I had a goal (Pass this guy) and even better I was at an exciting point in my story.

I’ve been just flying these last two days. I really ought to find a second somebody, so this doesn’t start to look personal ;-9

Anyway, current word-count: 37,351

I’m continually amazed that I’ve now spent this many words on one story. And there’s still more to go. I still wonder if the story will be done (or close to it) when I reach goal.

Another angle of amazed: I’m impressed I’ve stuck with this. Not that I don’t enjoy it (when I sit down and do it I usually do), but there are so many other enjoyments calling for my attention– that piano class I’m attending weekly, for example.  I’ve been glad Jay’s on-board with me, since if it were just me I probably would have found 25,000 enough to be impressed with for now and come back to it later.

Now I know what 37,000 feels like, and about how long it can take to get there. I’m very curious to see 50,000.

Ugh.

WordPress/this blog is acting weird.

The text isn’t supposed to be centered all down the page, and the links are supposed to be running along-side in that nice empty space to the right.

*sigh*

Oh well. Maybe it will self-correct next weekend when Jay updates the WP version. I’ll get some new templates to play with too. Jay has wanted to be in charge of updates and stuff. So I’m just waiting until he’s ready/free to do it.

He updated the budget this weekend, which was very cool. I am so thankful he sees that as his job.

Word-count sits at 26,810 right now. I haven’t yet been able to get back into the website to update my daily count, so it may be less-accurate than I’d like for today. But at least I’ve made back some time. I only got about 700-words in the two days before today, so I was getting a bit nervous.

Feeling again like this isn’t going to meet my goal of having something to work into publishable material.

Jay encouraged me, saying whatever I end up with, the process of writing itself was being very educational for me, and other useful things that I’ve sometimes told myself, but were good to hear just now.

I asked him to pray encouragement for me. The idea of investing this much time just in “practice” is a little intimidating.

Clipping right along

Broke 20,000!

Sitting at 20,0058 and still have this evening’s writing time to go. Woohoo!

Updated before bed: 21,394

Just think how much I’d have if I wrote the whole time instead of blog/surfing.

But, then, I do feel the need to dilute this noveling experience a bit. Believe it or not it’s a little intense.