Not going to make it

I'm not going to win NaNoWriMo again this year. I had a very solid start, I thought this would be my year, but then life came along and expected me to do things other than write. I was nodding off at my computer, not hitting my words for the day, and as this state of affairs wore on, the finish line not getting any closer, I knew I had too much to make up to be able to get there.

Now, the wonderful thing about NaNoWriMo, and the reason I keep doing it year after year, after year despite losing almost always, is that even thought I'm going to 'lose', I have 28,453 words written as of today. I hope to at least get over 30,000 by the end. My normal monthly word count is probably 1/10th of that. That's nothing to be upset about.

From pushing myself to write more each day, I've learned what a comfortable amount of writing is for me in a sitting, and in a day, and it is much more than I've been doing prior to NaNo. I'll report in in another month, but I have a new system I'm going to try out for myself to make my writing more consistent based on what I've discovered about my process and what I think works for me and what does not.

Basically, I think daily, or at least almost every day daily writing does work better for me than letting days and days go by with nothing. I get more excited about my story, it stays in my head, and new ideas pop up when it stays in my head. However, forcing myself to write while exhausted, or drained from a hectic day produces stupid writing that is also tired and dull. So while I need to push myself, I need to stop short of force.

That's how NaNo went for me.

Respawn - Flash Fiction Friday

Act more casual she told herself. Stacy fiddled with the slip of paper in her pocket, folding and unfolding it with her fingers until she forced herself to stop. She took a deep breath, trying to relax.

The numbers on the paper were a clear message to her. In code. She recognized it at once. It was a code she and Hillary had used for fun for months now. But Hillary had gone missing last week after confiding in Stacy that she thought she was being watched. Now the code shows up.

It would be easy to decode, but Stacy had to get in the game. She arrived at the gaming cafe and walked in, not allowing herself to look around too much to see if anyone was following her. The cafe was less than half full. That was good. Enough people to blend into, enough open spaces to grab a terminal and get in and out again.

She ordered peppermint tea and took it to an open terminal where she could see the front door without turning. She logged in as a guest and created a new user registration for the game. Every dat that had passed since she last saw Hillary made her more paranoid. She didn't want to leave a digital trail of her own account info.

Once in the game though, the code didn't work. The numbers were in pairs, coordinates on the game map. Each should be a named location in the game and she should use the first letter of the location for the message, but the first five locations were in the middle of nowhere. No name to use.

Stacy sat back in her seat, staring at the screen and thought. What was wrong? Then it clicked. The cafe used the game's local server. Hillary was probably using the one for their home location, which was different. A different map.

Stacy glanced around. Was this the sort of place she could get away with hacking into to change servers? Would they even notice? It was a nice place. Upscale compared to the places she usually hung. There were only two employees, one was behind the counter and seemed to be keeping busy with orders, and the other moving around the cafe busing dishes, wiping tables, and such. She looked at the ceiling. Two black domes which were likely video cameras. Yet there were partitions around each terminal, so she didn't think the cameras were there to see what people were playing. The cameras would have a tough time seeing any screens. The benefits of an upscale place – they wanted customers to feel a sense of privacy.

If anyone wanted to see what she was doing they could always check this station later. She was sure it kept a log of activity, but no one would look until after she had gone, and there was a little she could do real quick to cover her tracks before she went.

Halfway through this train of thought, she had already started hacking into her home region server, and five minutes later had deciphered the code. Hillary was safe. She'd learned it was her ex, Todd, who had been following her. Although he never seemed to accept the 'ex' part. So Hillary had disappeared. Not the first time she had had to do so, Stacy knew.

She also knew that when Hillary disappeared, she had left everyone she knew behind unaware. She had to. Todd could get to anyone and if anyone knew where Hillary had gone, Todd could find out. Stacy knew what it must have meant for Hillary to send her that code. To let Stacy know, to stay in touch at all. It was a risk.

Stacy did what she could to erase her tracks from the rental computer, finished her tea, and left. She thought she should find a way to respond, but she would have to find a safe way. After such a show of trust from Hillary, she would be damned if she would risk bringing her danger. She couldn't let Todd get anywhere near Hillary. But how? Perhaps she just had to wait, and trust Hillary would contact her again when she felt it was safe to do so. It was so frustrating to was to much to help and feel so powerless to do so. Maybe a better plan to keep her friend safe was to find a way to make sure Todd couldn't threaten Hillary ever again. 

Tummy Ache - Flash Fiction Friday

Bethany clutched her stomach with her left hand while leaning heavily on the stair's handrail with her right.  She took one more step up, breathing out in a rush through her mouth.

The pain wasn't that bad, she insisted to herself. She was just over tired. If she could get upstairs and just lay down for a few minutes she would feel much better.

She took another step, this time sucking a quick breath in through her teeth. Looking up the long staircase in front of her, she took one long steadying breath and forced herself upright to start up the steps in as normal a stair-climbing posture as she could manage.

"Merow!" A black furry blur darted down the steps right at her and into a circle that twined itself around her legs forcing Bethany to grab the handrail again or risk falling to the landing below.

"Shadow," Bethany said, pausing again to breathe and calm herself. "Not now sweetie. Come upstairs. I'll snuggle with you there." She took the last three steps slower, placing her feet more carefully as Shadow continued to dart around underfoot.

Shadow would need dinner soon. Add that to all the other things she needed to take care of: picking up the grand-kids from school, checking in with Ms. Brown next door to make sure she was taking her medicine like she was supposed to, running by the marker to get the last few things she needed to make dinner before Henry came home. Bethany just didn't have time to feel unwell. A half hour nap, or at least a lie down was all she could manage. It would just have to be enough.

Chills went through her causing spasms of shivers as she made her way from the top of the stairs to the bedroom, Shadow trotting on ahead. Sitting down on the edge of the bed sent such a sharp stab of pain through her lower right abdomen that even Bethany could no longer pretend this was something that she could overcome with a nap.

She reached for the phone, dialed her doctor's office, speaking with a nurse there who, after a few questions, said she would send an ambulance. Bethany thanked her, and as she imagined the effort to go back downstairs to open the door, she tried to hang up the phone. She missed the cradle, knocking the bedside lamp which tipped and fell to the floor, shattering in tiny pieces.

Shadow leaped onto the bed in alarm, then curled herself around Bethany's head, partially on the pillow, purring and kneading her.

NaNoWriMoing with yWriter for PC and Android

I wrote before about my little Samsung laptop that is probably eight years old now is slowing down. It takes so long to power on lately, I was concerned it was getting ready to die. Since NaNoWriMo is upon me, I wanted to make sure I had a reliable way to write when I'm not at home. Buying a new, or even a used replacement laptop was a bigger expense than I could make right now, so I bought a bluetooth keyboard and planned to use it with my phone.

I originally thought I would type in Google Docs because I know I can use that on both my desktop at home, and on my phone, but before November began, I decided to just research if there might be a better option. I found yWriter, and decided to give that a try.

I'm glad I played around with both the PC and android app versions of yWriter in advance of NaNoWriMo starting because it took me a few days to figure out how to sync the two versions. Being able to write on my phone while out, then continue on my PC when I was home was key to my whole plan of living without my laptop, so it was the most important feature to me.

yWriter still actually does (or can, there are other methods too) use Google docs to sync between devices. Both the PC version and the android app save to Google docs. They do so in slightly different ways, and since I'm not super tech savvy, it took me a little while to figure out how to get them to do so. Now that I have, however, it works great.

There are lots of bells and whistles in yWriter that I'm not using. There are outlining tools, and scene breakdowns, and character lists, etc. I already had my outline ready to go for November, and didn't want the extra work of putting it all into yWriter, but looking around in the program, there are some things I'm looking forward to trying out with other books down the road.

Even better, the PC version of yWriter is free, and the android app only cost $4.99. So far, I have to say it was money well spent.

Today on our weekly library trip, my kids finished looking for books and found me typing away on my phone with my snazzy new keyboard and both commented how 'cool' the setup was. Considering all the tech these kids have grown up with, I took that as a huge compliment.  

NaNoWriMoing with my New Bluetooth Keyboard and my Phone

I think I mentioned in my last post that my laptop was dying, and instead of spending a lot of money I don't have to buy a new one, I was just going to write on my phone.

This is the bluetooth keyboard I got, because it had great reviews and was super affordable. I bought the white one because it was a dollar cheaper at the time, and I don't care about color. It looks like both the black and white keyboards are the same price now though.

So far it's wonderful. It's actually easier to use out and about than my tiny laptop was. I'm trying to write on my lunch breaks, or when the kids are in a class or something. Before, if I was sitting in the car trying to write, it was scrunched and uncomfortable because the open screen of the laptop hit the steering wheel, so I had to keep the keyboard uncomfortably close to my body to have it open at all.
With my new bluetooth keyboard, I put my phone in the hands free holder on my dash, and only the keyboard itself is in my lap, so I have more freedom to adjust it to a nice position.

The keyboard is very light. Probably less than a third the weight of my laptop, and I had one of those tiny laptops - it was no more than 10 inches wide. So carrying it around in my bag is much nicer.

There were other keyboards that came with a case, and I was a little worried that this one didn't have one as I know it would be in my bag a lot and I wanted it protected. I figured I'd sew a little quilted pouch for it to live in. With NaNoWriMo in full swing I don't have a lot of free time for sewing, so I've just been keeping the keyboard in the little box it came in and that has worked dandy. The box just fits the keyboard so there isn't a lot of other space or padding or anything to take up more room. Eventually I'd still like to make it a cute quilted bag, but this will work for November.

I'm not exactly a tech person. I love tech, but I'm not especially good at it, and I had this keyboard synced to my phone and up and running on the first try. I was a little confused because the power light doesn't stay on, it just flashes when you first turn it on, then it goes out again. I thought that meant it wasn't still on, or my batteries were bad or something, but it's just they way it's supposed to work to conserve batteries. Types just fine with no light on.

So if you are in a similar position of not wanting to invest in a new laptop, but wanting a portable way to write, I highly recommend this system of using a bluetooth keyboard with your phone. I also bought the yWriter app to write with on my phone, and I'll talk about how that part is going in my next post, but there are other online word processors for you to pick from if you'd rather.