So… NaNoWriMo is nearly over. Here’s my current status:

Not too shabby, all things considered. I wrote up a bit of ‘filler’ the past couple of days, which is what has boosted me over the 12k mark. I’m working tonight, but I have tomorrow (Day 30) off… my last chance to push that word count as high as it will go.

I had been hoping to break 15k by month’s end (my revised target once I realized that 50k wasn’t going to happen). I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that or not… I have less than 2,500 words to hit target… a productive three or four hours could do it.

We’ll see. Wish me luck!

(By the way, if you want to read what I have posted thus far, visit The Stars of Lochost.)

I’m going to be a lot more open and honest about things than I have been recently… it hurts my pride, but I need to get it out.

I’ve just finished looking at our financial situation, and it isn’t good. Things have been tight for the past few months, with Mary in school and so forth. We’ve been barely keeping our head above water.

But there’s a surge coming (to continue the nautical metaphor)… and I don’t know how we’re going to get through it.

As of right now, we are a month and a half behind on our mortgage, two months behind on our car payments (with December’s payment for each pending), and the credit card bills have started to slip. We also have heating bills and overdue taxes on the house to consider… not to mention the cats are overdue for a checkup… and the car needs its 40,000 mile service (in order to keep our extended warranty valid).

Mary has had a little bit of money coming in from work study, and we’ve had roommates who contribute as well… but that’s likely to change in the next month or so.

You see, Mary is going to take a semester off, and the financial aid money we had been using to help make ends meet during the semester won’t be coming this spring. One of our roommates is likely to be moving out in December or January (he finished his thesis and plans on moving away from Bangor), and the other one has been making noises about leaving as well (he’s been trying to keep it quiet… but did a poor job of it).

Come January, it looks like all we’ll have is my paycheck. Nowhere near enough to meet our financial obligations — especially with a baby on the way. Unless we get some kind of major cash infusion… we’re going to go under.

We’ve already gotten some help from family, and I’m looking at liquidating anything that can bring in some money (good bye magic cards, so long large RPG collection)… but that’s not likely to bring in anywhere near enough, and not soon enough.

Quite frankly, I don’t know what to do. It’s everything I can do at times to keep from just breaking down… a couple of years ago everything was going well from a financial standpoint, but now it’s twisted the other way around.

I try not to burden Mary with it… she’s got enough going on right now with school and the pregnancy and her back problems. She can tell something is wrong, though, and doesn’t know how to help me. Hell… I don’t know how to help me.

If anybody has any ideas (or a spare nine or ten thousand in cash lying around), let me know. I’m exploring some options, but anything you can suggest will be considered. (Speaking of which, we applied for heating assitance this winter and were denied. I make significantly more than the income cap for a couple — the baby doesn’t count yet. I imagine that other social programs will result in the same result.)

All right… I’m done for now. Sorry to dump this on y’all.

Bleah. After burning the midnight oil to break the 10,000 word mark, I have done pretty much nothing as far as the NaNo story goes. In fact, I’ve only opened the file once (thinking that I might get a few hundred words down last night), and just didn’t feel it.

I’ve got… seven-and-a-bit days left to boost my word count as far as I can… but I’m just feeling burnt. Not burnt out of the story (it’s still there, niggling my brain), I just don’t have any energy.

We’ll see if I can get anything down tonight. I got out of work not too long ago, and I have to open tomorrow (that means I need to get up about 5:30am)… I may call tonight a wash, head to bed early, and get back in the groove tomorrow afternoon.

As mentioned in an earlier post, we had an appointment with the OB today, and had another ultrasound done. Everything is going well — all the measurements and such are right where they should be, and there is no sign of any developmental problems.

Here are a couple of pictures from this ultrasound session. We didn’t get many pics this time around, because the tech was looking at parts, getting measurements, and the like. We didn’t get a shot of the face, because baby was face down and not cooperating very well. The thumbnails link to the full-size images.

The peanut did cooperate enough for us to learn the gender. I will not post that pic here for general viewing, because I know that there are some people (like my parents) who want the gender to be a surprise. If you want to know the impending Harrison’s gender (and chosen name), then click this link. If you don’t want to know, I will keep the updates on the main page gender neutral so as not to ruin the surprise.

Missed the earlier ultrasound pictures? Use these links to the relevant posts:

August 25, 2006
September 15, 2006
October 12, 2006

That’s all for now! No progress on the story the last couple of days (bleah). There is a new section ready to be posted, but that will probably wait until tomorrow night. Ciao!

I finally hit the 10,000 word mark! I had hit a minor snarl in the most recent section I’ve been working on, but I figured out how to unsnarl it while at work… so I came home and after catching up on my mail and such, I plugged away at hitting the most recent goal I set for myself.

About ten minutes ago, I ran a word count and saw that I had beaten my self-imposed objective! Relief doesn’t begin to describe the feeling at the moment.

That’s all for now. I’m tired (as it is nearly 5am). More later.

As you can see, I have added very little to my word count since my last entry — 331 words, actually written early Thursday morning, but not officially uploaded until now. My schedule the last couple of days has been too busy to get any writing done… it’s a Camarilla weekend, which means that Friday and Saturday night were both full with LARPing. Add in work on those two days… and there’s very little time to get any writing done.

However, I am working Sunday night 4-12, so perhaps I can get a couple of hours writing in tomorrow before I do dishes and go grocery shopping and such. Then I’m off Monday and Tuesday… we have an appointment with the OB on Tuesday at 11 for another ultrasound, but otherwise my next two or three days are (mostly) free. I hope to get something resembling back on track, and break that 10,000 word mark (my current goal).

That’s all for now. More to come later…

So here we are at Day 15… halfway through the month. Here’s my recent progress:

Day 13:

No recorded progress on Day 13. My work for the day was mostly late at night and it got counted as the next…

Day 14:

Made some progress — about 600 words (which includes the count from Day 13). I’m maintaining a reasonably steady pace, but nothing miraculous. I got hung up on a minor plot snarl, and got a touch slowed down. I thought about it while at work, but didn’t actually add anything to my count from the previous night.

Day 15:

I’ve broken 9,000 words. Still not quite where I want to be, but I’m making forward progress. I’m off to work in about 15 minutes here (and don’t get out until midnight), so this is my final official tally for the halfway point.

I am off tomorrow, and I’ve managed to undo the plot snarl… maybe I can get a bit more focused work done and break the 10,000 word mark.

That’s all for now… more updates later!

Day 11 :

Day 12 :

Made some decent progress… cranked out a little over 1,000 words, and broke the 8,000 word mark. I had been hoping to break 10k by the end of the weekend, but… well… that didn’t happen.

Meeting the goal of 50,000 words by November 30 is looking less and less likely as time goes by. At this point I need to crank out about 2,300 words a day to meet target… and I’m not sure I have the time to pull it off.

On the plus side, I’m still feeling the story, and making forward progress. I’ll consider it a victory if I manage to keep my momentum going for the thirty days (and perhaps beyond). That motivation is what I’ve been lacking… and I hope to carry this momentum forward into other projects in the future (say, finishing a certain adventure I’ve had in the early stages for a couple of years… or writing that other novel I’ve had stalled for the past six years or so).

And who knows… I may find myself with a load of time and motivation to churn out two or three thousand words a day between now and two weeks from Thursday.

If you haven’t seen the latest posts to The Stars of Lochost, go on over and check them out. And please, leave comments or feedback. It’s one of the things that’s keeping me going.

Until next time…

It’s been a couple of days since my last update here… so here’s the daily progress.

Day 9:

It was a good day. I added nearly 1200 words to my total, and broke the 6,000 word mark.

Day 10:

Not as productive overall, and I just missed my target for the day — 7,000 words.

I’m still off pace, but I’m not feeling quite as bad as I did a few days ago. I haven’t really run into the fabled ‘second week slump’ — but perhaps that’s because I had a couple of days last week where I generated zero content.

As you can see from my “current total” over on the right there, I have actually broken 7,000 words… they just came after midnight, so they’re under Day 11. Ideally, I would like to break 10,000 words by the end of this weekend. I don’t have any real plans tomorrow (other than working from 7-3), so if I knuckle down I just might pull it off.

It’s late (and I’m up early tomorrow), so I’m not going to update the story blog right now. That can wait until tomorrow. Later!

Some more progress made… but I’m a little off-pace right now. The first week is done, and I was hoping to have broken the 10k word mark at this point. Instead, I’m barely over half that target.

On the plus side, I’m not struggling due to a lack of ideas… it’s the result of insufficient butt-in-chair. I have the next three or four scenes in mind… I just need to sit down and write them

Another entry has been made in the story blog, if you’re interested.

That’s all for now… sleep beckons.