Winter

I am pretty bad at winter. It gets dark way too early and it's too cold and then when it snows, driving is terrible. I really should be used to winter because I grew up in Michigan and went to college in Iowa, and now I live in Michigan again. But I'm still bad at it. I'm sure I could get diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder if I wanted to be, especially since I've struggled with clinical depression in the past, but it just seems like such a silly disorder to have that I'd rather not. Unless, of course, I can get a pass to hibernate until March. Then we'll talk.
Anyway, I'm bad at winter. But I'm not horrible at December, because people put up Christmas lights and that makes it a little easier to deal with sunset at 4:30 in the afternoon. But I'm still looking forward to Daylight Savings Time again. I like it better that way.

NaNoWriMo 2010 Completion

Today, I wrote more than seven thousand words.
I finished my story.
I validated my word count.
And today I won NaNoWriMo for the second time!

50K in 25 days!

NaNo and Work

I passed the halfway point on The Last Days of the Unreal City earlier this week, and it felt like a huge accomplishment. Once the word counter went over 25,000, I felt yes, I can do this. Then I kept writing and now I feel like it's a nearly insurmountable task again. I'm sure I'll feel better once I hit 40K.
In contrast to most of October, I've been quite busy at work this month. The paper we are trying to submit came back with requests for major revisions (experiments, basically). So I've been trying to run a GLUT4 blot for almost a month now. After troubleshooting the heck out of my non-polymerizing stacking gel (bad APS, needed de-gassing) and a bureaucratic snafu regarding the membrane protein extraction kit we needed, it's still not done. Here's hoping that next week will put the lid on this experiment and the paper can go back out. I've learned a lot about the paper submission process even though I'm not doing the actual writing or submitting, and I can conclude that it is a total pain. I'm not particularly looking forward to that part of getting my PhD now.

NaNoWriMo 2010 Week Two

NaNoWriMo is very hard for me this year. I'm still keeping up with word count, but this is so difficult. Last year, it was easier. It was more fun all the time. I think I only had a couple of days where I had to force myself just to make word count. This time it's almost every day that I struggle for the magic 1667 words.
Now last year I had a much more developed plot going into November, and I had an easier sort of plot as well. This year I went in with less plot developed, and this plot is much bigger and more difficult. This year my plot involves an entire planet, a society of my own making, genetic engineering, and a lot of computer hacking (which I'm all making up because I know absolutely nothing about hacking). Last year my plot centred on a family. I guess the bigness of the world I'm working with is overwhelming.
I have come up with some good ideas, enough to drive my plot to the 50,000 word finish, but it's making it a coherent story that is so hard. I'm struggling to write awkward scenes that string these cool scenes together. Maybe it will get easier once I get a little farther in, but this is not easy right now. But I still love doing it.

NaNoWriMo 2010

National Novel Writing Month has officially started. I have 2425 words as of tonight. My goal is 50,000 words by November 30th. I expect not to blog for most of the month. Yay November!