All I want for NaNo

I'm doing National Novel Writing Month again this year, though who knows how it will go. 

I started this year with a lot of goals for my writing. So far, some have been checked off the list, some are in a holding pattern that I can't talk about quite yet, and others are looking more and more unlikely to be finished in 2013. But with NaNoWriMo, I've got an opportunity to work on something totally new -- a couple of novella ideas that I've had rolling around in my brain for awhile. 

It's sometimes hard, trying to be a professional writer while also being a professional anything-else. Having goals helps. 

In my ideal world, I become a hybrid author--someone who is both traditionally and self-published. I'd love to put out two books a year, but knowing how slow I draft, it's more likely to be one. I love smaller, independent publishers, but who wouldn't also love to be published by one of the Big 5? 

But in order to be a successful hybrid author, you have to be able to write more than I am currently writing. Successful self-published authors generally get that way by putting out multiple books a year. That's not even counting the books I'd hope to get traditionally published. And between my regular job and regular life, I am very lucky to finish one book every year.

Is there a way to change this? Everyone has heard the story of James Joyce writing just 6 words a day some days. On some level, writing is an art. It can't be rushed, and you can't change your normal instincts. For example, I am a character-girl. I have lots of ideas for plots, but until I hear the voice of my main character, I don't get too far in my drafting. That's just the way I think.

But on another level, writing is a skill, and like any skill, it can be improved. Not just the quality of your writing--but the actual act of writing. That is how I reformed my pantsing ways and became a plotter (for the record, there is nothing wrong with pantsing -- but when you're a slow drafter like me, it can kill productivity). And now that I've mastered the use of an outline, my next goal is pushing myself to write faster.

So what I am really hoping to get out of NaNoWriMo this year--aside from two novellas--is practice with drafting faster and more efficiently than I normally do. Hopefully by forcing myself to shoot for 1,667 words a day for 30 days, I will get in the habit of tapping in to my inner speed-writing demon.

What are you hoping to get out of NaNoWriMo? And if not you're not doing NaNo, what are you hoping to get done in this, the second-to-last month of 2013?



PS: If you'd like to support NaNoWriMo and some great authors, check out The Spirit of Christmas Anthology. All proceeds go to NaNoWriMo and inspiring artists to chase their dreams.  

To sign up for the "All I Want for NaNo" bloghop, sign up below:

Things I am excited about for on

(I added more prepositions for your viewing pleasure.)

1. Vampire Diaries and Modern Family returning to my weekly routine.  Have I mentioned that I am obsessed with TV?  Absolutely obsessed.

2. The Utah versus USC football game this weekend.  I am going to make blackberry cupcakes for the occasion and I'm pretty sure they're going to be epic.  I know this isn't a cooking blog or anything, but be prepared for some mad bragging if all goes according to plan. 

3. Writing conference in two weeks.  Actually, I don't know if that's actual excitement or total trepidation.  We will see.  Either way, I plan to buy some bitchin shoes in its honor.

Speaking of shoes, can I just say I am relieved/disappointed that these are sold out in my size?

I've never bought anything at Anthropologie before (on principle and on lack of funds) and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to maintain that goal, but jeez.  It was close with those shoes.

4. Finishing A Dance with Dragons.  Stayed up until 1 am last night.  I probably would still be sprawled out on my bed, completely enraptured, if a Bran Stark chapter hadn't come up.  I am sorry, little crippled kid, but even with the ability to mind-meld with wolves and people, I find you more boring than church.

(Sorry, church.)

5. Reading Life As We Knew It.  I know I said it was number 2 on my to-be-read list while on vacation, but I ended up putting Twenty Boy Summer (yes, it is better than the title implies) there instead.  If you want a nice one-two punch of contemporary young adult, I would definitely recommend that and Anna and the French Kiss.  Twenty Boy Summer is definitely more somber, so maybe go with that one first.

Speaking of awkward titles, are there any books out there you'd like to read, but feel like you can't because of a bad title or cover?  I've mostly gotten over that, but this was a big problem for me as a kid.  I remember hiding LJ Smith books in my history text because I didn't want anyone to know I was reading something called THE PASSION (of all things) at fourteen.  It sure didn't help that the cover made it look like something that would definitely include some throbbing members.  (It didn't, but try explaining that to a group of scornful post-tomboys.)

Awkward. Early 90s, there was just no excuse.

All my life I've had one dream - to achieve my many goals

The year is half-way over, and now I've got some thoughts on what would make 2011 -- dare I say it? -- more bitchin than any other year that has come before it.

1. Finish the first draft of my current story by August 15th.

2. Get Spence housebroken in two weeks.

3. Find the will to finish painting my dining room.

4. Return to Crossfit. Get amazingly hot.

5. Go to New York, see The Book of Mormon musical.

...

Actually, that's kind of it. 

I don't think setting too many goals is healthy. 

What goals do you guys have now that 2011 is a lame duck year?

Arbitrary goal alert

Sometimes when I want to accomplish A, I do B instead and hope that will force me to do A by default.

I want to get in shape, I buy a gym membership.  (Or a bottle of HCG drops, whatevs.)  I want to "get out there more," I set up an online dating profile.  (Always a mistake, people.  Always a mistake.)  I want to read more for pleasure, I get a Kindle.  I want to be that person who cleans every Saturday morning instead of just when things get really tragic, so I get a lot of cleaning supplies and cute rubber gloves. 

This has always given me mixed results (somewhat more in shape ... technically more "dates" ... a few more pages turned ... a slightly tidier apartment ...), but never quite what I'd imagined when I set out my brilliant "Gain Willpower By Default!" plan. 

The last month or so has been kind of rough on my writey ambitions.  Blogging has been mostly fine, but blogging is sometimes just a way for me to feel like, "Hey!  I did write something non-legally today, I'm doing just fine!" when I am certainly not doing just fine.

Now, there are a bazillion good excuses I could offer (really and truly I could) but they'll just depress me and bore you.

So instead I will just ask for your feedback and what is likely just yet another arbitrary round-about goal.

I want to finish my current piece (for whatever reason, I refuse to call it a W-I-P)* this summer.

So I will register for the Southern California Writer's Conference in LA this fall.  With a deadline of September 3rd for all crititique submissions.

Game, set, match, self.

Thoughts, criticisms, concerns?  Good plan, or more like my order the "Carmen Electra Stripperobics"  DVD plan?  (That one was both for getting in shape and getting out there more.)





* I do this all the time.  The 1L Reading Room at law school had (what I considered to be) a fairly dorky nickname.  I refused to call it that for nearly a year, and cracked only when I finally realized I was the only student out of roughly 300, plus teachers and administrators, who didn't refer to it as "The Gibby."  And then I crumbled like the Berlin Wall.

I hate nicknames and abbreviations.  I don't know why. 

B is for billables

So here's the thing about billable hours.

There are pros to the billable hour requirement, for both lawyers and clients.  (I won't get into them here.)

And there will always be firms with a worse billable hour requirement than yours.  I know someone who has to hit 2000 billable, 400 nonbillable every year.  That's a total of 2400 hours, for those of you who are bad at math.  I know someone who had to keep track of all his time, even "Went to lunch" and "Surfed the internet" for a minimum of 7.5 hours every single day.  I know people who have an unstated requirement.  Believe me, it could always be worse.

(Of course, it could be amazingly easy, like a 1700 billable requirement.  Oh 1700 billable requirement ... how I lust after thee.)

But.

If you're a lawyer, complaining about billable hours is a fact of life.  The trouble is when people think complaining equates to laziness.

Believe me, if you made it through college and law school, if you passed the bar and got a job with a firm, you are not a lazy person.  You probably like working, which is why you've been working your ass off for quite some time now.

Complaining about the billable hour is more complicated than that.

Every lawyer knows the "Company Man" lawyer.  The guy or gal who defends the firm and its policies to the bitter end.  And that person makes complaining very difficult, because they generally turn the discussion into something it is not.

So let's get a few things out of the way.

I like working.  I am glad that I am not unemployed.  I'm glad I never had to deal with more than four months of unemployment--believe me, that was bad enough.  It's just that I think gratitude for my job should not have to equate to slavish adoration for policies that dick me over.

How does an associate get billable hours?

By working for partners who give them assignments.

What happens when partners have no assignments to give?

The associates are screwed.  Note that there is nothing the associates could have done about this situation.  Good and less-good associates alike suffer when there is no work to be had.  And this is true at every firm with a billable hour requirement.  Just because your firm might have a friendlier corporate atmosphere than most does not mean your firm ever stopped being a business.

What happens when there are assignments to be had, but it's all mind-numbing work ... like X many months of document review, for example?

Well, then the associate has something to do, and will continue to earn his or her paycheck.  However, the partners' incentive to find new and diverse work for the associate -- to participate in the associate's development as a lawyer, in other words -- is dramatically decreased.  Because the associate is "busy."

This is a double-edged sword.  Sure, you aren't becoming a better lawyer, but no one really knows that.  Furthermore, your comeuppance is a long way down the road since you're packing in your hours now. An associate might be a total crap lawyer (which I suspect may have been true in my case), but no one will know for months, since it's kind of impossible to screw up crap work.

Why was I able to take off two weeks last December, and other lawyers work on Christmas?

Well, it helped that a huge part of my main case last year ended mid-December, but the primary reason is that our year ran January - December.  Some firms run October - September, meaning you can take off time during the summer after you've built up your hours.  This is something I never knew before coming to work at a firm, and something I never would have thought of asking about when I was interviewing.

Did I love my two week Christmas vacation?  Hells yes.

Did I love that I could just take weekend trips, knowing that there was an almost-endless supply of work that would await me upon my return?  Of course.

Did that ever make up for my growing resentment of document review?  Unfortunately, no.

My first week at awesome new job was literally like a breath of fresh air.  If not for the unstated open-door policy, I would have done a "No-More-Billable-Hours!" dance to Mumford and Son's "Little Lion Man" for roughly twenty minutes on my first day.  The unedited version.

Since then, I have realized there are some benefits to keeping track of your time in six-minute increments.  It does help focus you and guarantee that you do your best to remain efficient.  There are times here at new job when I could use that, and sometimes I catch myself wondering if that took me 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, or 54 minutes.

But is it worth the anxiety of wondering, "Did I spend too much time?  Not enough?  Will they cut my time when they send out bills?  Will that hurt me?  Will I ever even know?  If I take more time next time, will they wonder what's wrong with me?"

Now, I just get my job done.  When it takes me a long time, I stay late and finish.  When it doesn't, I email my friends.  Or I read.  Or I surf the internet. Or I work on a short-story.

And that doesn't make me lazy.

That just makes me happy.




A song I hear often on the radio: "Forget You," Cee Lo.

A is for adventure

So we're really doing this "26 Alphabet Posts in April" thing, are we?  Yes, we really are.

That, in and of itself, is kind of an adventure.  But there are also some other adventures (read: actual adventures) I am going to work on having in April.

1.  Taking a trapeze class
2.  Night skiing
3.  Run a total of 100 miles

... and that's about as far as I've gotten.

I IM'd my friend Jose for advice on this very topic.

J: Is there some sort of flora or fauna that makes its spring debut in spectacular fashion?

R: Probably.  But I want a bigger adventure than tulip festival.

Anyone have some suggestions?

Raise the roof

Basically, I kick ass.

Yeah, that's a crane in that picture.  Putting a roof on a house.

While my personal contribution was to merely install the hurricane clips (because hurricanes are so common in "Austin") and caulk (I love saying "caulk," for all the immature reasons you might imagine) the baseboards, I feel like I earned my Amish Merit Badge today.

Oh yeah, I also helped build a wall.  It was totally a load-bearing wall.*



*(No it wasn't, I'm just trying to talk big.)

Dieting complaint No. 54

Why does Yoplait insist on producing flavors of yogurt that shouldn't exist?

Yoplait, I love you.  I love your various fruit flavors, particularly raspberry and lemon cream pie. 

But yogurt and Boston cream pie do not mix.  Neither does yogurt and red velvet cake, yogurt and ducle de leche, yogurt and anything that was never originally meant to be sour-flavored.

Every time you trick me into buying one of your new flavors.

Every time I regret it.

And now I'm really hungry.

This is creepy and I don't care

If I ever get married, I want to be just like Eric and Tami Taylor.

I'm going to work on getting awesome hair and sass first.

Suggestions?

Going to Destination Wedding in two weeks and need some pool side books.

Thoughts?

Double Chinese

What did you have for lunch today?

I ate the Chinese food that the firm had brought in for the all-attorney lunch.

Then I went to my pro bono client interview.

Then I went back to the catering galley to get some more lunch.

Not a snack.  A whole additional lunch.

Does that give you any idea how the interview went?



PS - The half marathon training is going well.



PSS - That is a total lie.  Why do I lie?  Whhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyy?

The last Diet Coke of the season

I know, I know.

Mormon girls the world over periodically claim that they're giving up Diet Coke.

I have probably been guilty of setting that absurd goal myself a time or two.

But this time I really am -- at least for twoish months.

See, the half-marathon training isn't going very well.

And this last week I have been constantly tired.

I've thought about it, and the only conclusion I can come to is that I need to change my diet.  Eat less, and ... sigh ... consume less carbonation and caffeine.

Because really, I thought about it, and since I've started work, I've averaged 72 ounces of Diet Coke a day.

Three 20 ounce bottles spread through the work day.  One to get me through the morning, one to go with my lunch, one to get me through the afternoon.  And then I usually down a can of Diet Coke/Diet Coke Cherry/or Tab to accompany dinner.  Sometimes two.

So I am giving it up, at least until April 17.

At which point I am going to demand an IV of the stuff to shoot directly into my veins.

Half-marathon update

OK, it's confession time.

While the first three days of half-marathon training went well (if getting shamefully tired after the second mile can be termed "well"), I must admit I've been off the program for the last five days.  It seemed like every day there was a new thing to assemble -- table set, bed, desk -- and by the time I was finished, I was already thrashed.  But yesterday friendster Nelson called and asked how the training was going, and I had to ruefully admit that it wasn't going anymore, and my excuses actually weren't very good.

This morning I had every intention of getting up early and putting in the three miles before church.  Well, goal was probably a bit misguided to begin with, so we'll see how after church goes.

Sorry blog community, I know I've let you down.*

11 Weeks, 6 Days to Marathon

* I know I haven't let anyone down but me, but it's easier for me to motivate myself when I believe other people have a stake in things.  Self-delusion: it's the new Wheaties.

Before I Move: Operation Rice Pudding

My Grandma made fantastic rice pudding. I don't know how to describe it without indulging every hyperbolic adjective I can think of: scrumptious, amazing, delicious, delightful, comforting, creamy, delectable, etc. There was literally no other dessert we chillins liked as much. I remember when my cousin R impaled himself on a piece of rebar after jumping off a trampoline. My favorite part of that whole adventure was the fact that Grandma made him rice pudding every day he spent in the hospital ... and she always brought extra over to me, Echo and Charlie. (What can I say, JM Barrie was right: children are heartless. Hey, he survived, right? And became the semi-legendary Boy Without A Bellybutton. I think a little rice pudding gluttony on my part is nothing to be ashamed of.)

(Yes, I know that there are two sentence/sentence fragments in the aforementioned paragraph that improperly end with a preposition. Sue me.)

The first week of my freshman year in college, my grandma passed away. (There's another. Also passive voice?) Among the many things I regret not asking her before her passing is the rice pudding recipe. Ever since, I have been doomed to subpar cups of Jell-O 10 calorie ridiculousness.

Until now.

Among the many things I am planning to do during my pre-law firm period of underemployment (watch football, write a novel, improve my snowboarding, paint, travel, just generally make memories), I am going to figure out the rice pudding recipe for which my grandma was widely renowned. Between google.com and endless willingness to taste test rice pudding samples, I think it can be done.

Sure, there are some problems with my plan. Namely, I'm not a very good cook, and may very well run across the correct recipe, but due to my own culinary shortcomings, fail to recognize it as such since it will taste nothing like the original. But I will persevere. And succeed. And overcome. And whatever.

Experiment Number One:

1 1/2 cups cooked rice

2 cups milk

1/3 cups sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon butter

1 egg beaten

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

nutmeg or cinnamon (optional)

Combine rice, sugar, salt, and 1 1/2 cups milk in medium sized saucepan, cook on medium, stir until creamy and thick (15-20 minutes). Blend remaining milk and egg. Stir 2 minutes. Add butter and vanilla.

Verdict: Not quite sweet enough. Also, I definitely did something wrong - the egg didn't mix evenly, so there chunks of scrambled egg throughout the pudding. (Think ham fried rice style.) (Not as gross as I described it just now.) OK pudding, but not amazing. Possibly not thick enough? Also, I burned myself. (Not completely relevant, but worth mentioning.)

New Project: Beowulf on the Beach

Number 38

I was at Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago with my friend Ryan when I noticed a paperback called Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits by Jack Murnighan. Intrigued, I picked it up and gave it a skim. Partly because it seemed interesting, and partly because it was on the "Buy 2, get the 3rd free!" table, I bought it (along with a copy of The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Working Poor by David Shipler).

Well, I've gotten around to actually reading it, and in doing so, I've found my new project. A Ph.D. in medieval and Renaissance literature, Murnighan picks 50 of the all-time greats (in his opinion, at least, but the list seems pretty standard) and tries to make the pitch for reading them (or re-reading them, in the case of hated high school classics like Moby Dick, Great Expectations and Wuthering Heights).

Challenge accepted.

So I have a new goal: reading the 50 books on Murnighan's list in the next year. Some of them are, frankly, pretty intimidating (I have never had any desire to read The Faerie Queen or Madame Bovary), but that's what unrealistic goals are all about, right?

So with the help of my friendly internet random number generator (see www.random.org for a greater explanation), I have picked my first challenge:

Number 38: The Trial by Franz Kafka.