POST A WEEK/DAY 2011….I’m undecided

So….  I fizzled on NaNoWrimo– but made it to roughly 1/2 the expected word count in spite of the timing of a major move and complete job/city change.

Now WordPress wants bloggers to challenge themselves to a blog a day, or for people like me- a blog a week.  Here, I will vow to you to blog at least once a week regarding updates on the zoo.

I might even try the post a day and incorporate a more popular blog I write on my personal social networks: Word of the Day.

I am not going to make any absolute promises, and if I do attempt the craziness of POSTADAY2011, I will be sure to tag correctly so that you all can still find the zoo blogs with ease.

BTW- Happy New Year to everyone!

Molts, NaNo, and a stray Roach.

Quick Update for you guys:

-Siddhartha, the Godfather of the Desktop (or floor of the new apartment) has molted!

I am guessing that (s)he is 4″ now!  This is the 3rd molt this year.  One every 5 months is the trend.

-Osiris Molted!  The Ephebopus cyanognathus from the kind stranger looks like it might be about 3/4″ now, up from 1/2″ ! It still has the pink legs, and hopefully will keep baby colors for a while.

Stray Roach-

One of the Gromphadorhina portentosa babies escaped, and was found basking in the light on top of Lizzy the Leopard Gecko‘s tank.  I think a few more are missing, and some have been found living amongst the crickets.  I just pick them up and place them back in the roach tank- I can’t figure out how they are escaping!

Aphrodite (Brachypelma boehmei) has not moved in a few days.  I am keeping a close watch, in hopes that there might be a molt coming up.  She hasn’t eaten in some time, so we shall see…  I hope that she turns out okay, but I refuse to move her or do anything until I know for sure.  Every forum I have read says not to move a tarantula that might be dead until it is in the death curl,and/or stinking.

NaNoWriMo–

12,774 words as of this posting.  I took Saturday off to spend time with my husband whom I had not seen in a week due to the move, and his new Graveyard schedule.

I have been making coffee by hand (since our old maker had to be thrown out) and my guy was awesome enough to bring us home a new one this morning!! (After I had just spent a half hour hand making a pot…sheesh!)

It gets tough to write without thoughts of editing and restarting every five minutes.  However, knowing that I have committed to doing this has really allowed me to stick to it without feeling like I can just walk away.  I have developed “writing buddies” on all of my social networks, along with interacting with local Wrimos -although I have yet to be able to make it to a write-in.  I hope to, someday!

Well, it is back to the ol’ word processor, and hopefully a few more words so that i can at least make my daily goal of 1700 words for the day.

Wish me luck, and if you are writing as well, good luck to you!

You can always look me up on the NaNo website under the user name SidNata!

 

 

NaNoWriMo is my Bitch…well…Days 2 and 3 it was…

First things first:

I have not seen Alee in her jar for about a month now.  This morning, during routine critter check, I noticed that she pushed out a molt through one of the burrow holes.  I will try to measure soon.

We have another addition to the zoo: Lizzy Borden, a Leopard Gecko that needed a new home ASAP.  She got one, and seems to also like hiding.  When I started the zoo (which now sits on the floor of the new apartment) I never expected to have a gecko, or the scorpions that I should be sending the shipping fees for next week.  5 in all, babies.  I am going to need help with these, guys!

All is still well in the zoo, although I am having problems getting crickets.  Luckily no one in this household ever starves, and I can get superworms if necessary.

NaNoWriMo stuff-

Day one I began my quest, we met Ferren andFierre, while getting some of the back story that brought Fierre to where he was at in the Black Lands.

I couldn’t quite get my footing in day one, so I fell behind by about 500 words off the days goal of 1600.

Day 2 came, and I woke up just feeling ready, like I knew that the story was bursting to get out from some far off place.  I typed and typed and typed, allowing it to flow and manages 2,558 words.  Far better than Monday’s 1185.

Then, day 3 came and my mind and fingers were working in such cooperation that I couldn’t stop typing!  I was developing more characters, killing 2 off (one was planned all along) and the other just screamed out of my brain and on to the laptop keys. GONE. VANISHED.

I typed and awesome 3,310!

Now, you may not know this, but most of this typing has been on the hard floor of my old apartment.  My husband sleeps during the day and works nights, so I have had the wonderful task of packing and cleaning.  We moved almost a half hour away, and since I am not able to drive, I have been stuck there, trying to pass the time-or better yet-making good use of it.

The move is almost complete, and today has been my first full day in the new apartment.  The entire zoo is here (including a leopard gecko that was given to me a day before we started moving) and so is the cat-who hates being indoors.  He let me know this all night last night.

This apartment is bigger, has central air and heat, softer carpet (since we now have no furniture beyond a bed and a desk that are still at the old place til tomorrow) and I am typing this to you from the floor as well.

So why is it that I only have 400 words today?

I just woke up from a heavy nap and have devoured a Tiger’s Milk bar.  I have a cup of coffee beside me, and am hoping that (as my NaNoWriMo writing buddy would say) I CAN DO THIS.  Hell, she’s doing it with NO caffeine, and way worse stresses than I have to deal with.

Now that all of this is off my chest, I am off to type for really reals now.

 

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is just a couple of weeks away, and with that, I wanted to unveil my soon to be novel, and my cool Author Bio Page 🙂

This is a screen shot I took with my NoteBook application.  Cool, huh?

I hope to see some of you during the month of November, and happy writing to you all!

Tomorrow, the E. Cyanognathus and the P. Subfusca should be arriving!!!  YAY!!!!!

 

National Novel Writing Month

Last night, I was asked by a friend of mine to join her during National Novel Writing Month.  She told me to google the word NaNoWriMo, and there it was:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/.

This means that for the month of November, 100,000’s of people from across the WORLD will be doing nothing but putting together 50,000 words that may form some type of novel that has no real need for high quality, no agent to tell them to do better, and no focus EXCEPT for word count.

Why?

Because too many people put off the Novel within their souls because they never have time, it won’t be good enough, so on and so fourth.

They do it because of the cool satisfaction of having written a novel in 30 days or less.

Some of those novels may actually find their way into the presses of some cool publishing company because without the push of NaNoWriMo, the novel may have never been written at all-crap or not.

I think I have 4 or 5 novels that could benefit from the deadline of NaNoWriMo, and so I am telling you-my dear anonymous reader-that I will be participating (under the name Sidnata) if you choose to join and want to say Hi.

I wanted to post about this here, because it has been a dream of mine for some time to write childrens books, and most of them (in my head, with a few on paper) have been nature/bug themed.

I usually put them away because I cannot afford the fee of a proper illustrator, and then we have the business of finding a REPUTABLE publishing company to submit to.

I PUT THEM AWAY, and this is not a good thing.

So, I am hoping that NaNoWriMo will give me the spark to pick up the old pages and dust them off…and of course to try my hand at writing something even bigger!

This blog was started to keep me writing, in some form or another, and I am glad that my friend invited me to this cool event!

Check it out, and I hope to see some of you there!!!