I finished!

I just validated my word count and won my third NaNoWriMo! I have written three novels during NaNoWriMo so far. Yay!
So, since I just had the idea I have to write it down so I don't forget. Next year's NaNoWriMo-a sequel to this one, maybe called Uncharted Waters. Twenty years after the events of Days of Defiance, none of the protagonists have aged. Curious, they go to the Great Library and find out that somewhere far to the west, in a part of the planet that hasn't been explored in centuries, is someone with the answer they seek. In addition, they hear of a mythical treasure and decide to seek it out. This will be more of a straight-up pirate story with a little bit of fantasy thrown in. Yay!
Doing a sequel makes me want to keep editing and rewriting the first story too, so that I'm working with the characters all year between now and next year's NaNo.

Mid-November already

Time is going by really quickly! It's almost the middle of November. Next weekend, I'll be driving home to spend Thanksgiving with my family! I have two tests that I have to take between now and then-Biochemistry and Bacterial Genetics. I'm a little worried about both of them. I always worry about Biochemistry because I do struggle through the class and I want to get a decent grade. As for Bacterial Genetics, we only have two exams and that's what our entire grade is based on, and I've never had a class taught by this professor before, so I don't really know what to expect. Hopefully everything goes just fine. I did find out that I got a 91% on my Micro 553 exam, which is awesome! And I was way above the class average so that was kind of cool. It's been a while since I've been close to setting the curve in a class so I felt very accomplished.
NaNoWriMo is going pretty well so far. I'm only about a day's worth ahead, and I need to get more since I don't know how much time I'll be able to spend writing during Thanksgiving Break. I think I can do it and since I don't have class until 4pm tomorrow, I'm going to try and write three to five thousand words.
The only bummer is that I registered for classes and BBMB 405 was listed as full! I've never not been able to get into a class. It's a big class and should be easy to get added to in the spring, but it's kind of lame.

Things to be thankful for

November has started. This is the month we're supposed to be thankful and remember. I have so much to be thankful for.
I'll start with the most immediate: as of today my first rotation is done! I gave my report at lab meeting this afternoon. It went really well. I am glad that I was able to do some work with plants since I had never done any before, and there's a slim possibility that I might get a publication out of this. But I'm glad it's done because I'm pretty sure that I don't want to do my thesis there. Giving my report was the last thing I had to do, and now it's not hanging over my head.
Second, National Novel Writing Month started yesterday! I love NaNoWriMo. I am so excited to write my novel this year. It's a lot of fun and a great break from doing science.
Third, in three weeks I am going home for Thanksgiving Break!!! I have been waiting for this since September. I miss my family so much. My parents and I are so close and being far away has been a lot harder than I expected. And I miss my grandparents, who are also back in Michigan. Having all my family nearby as I was growing up was so awesome, and it's just now that I'm realizing how hard it is to go it alone. I am really thankful for having such a wonderful stable family that supports me in everything I do, even when it's hard.
But I have been feeling better about being here in Iowa, and that's in large part because of Tessa and Mike, who are my closest friends here. They are really awesome and it means so much to me that they've been inviting me to things and spending time with me. It makes me feel a lot less lonely and I have a lot of fun with them. Thanks guys!!

Last Week of October

It's the last week of October! I have a lot of work this week. It's the last week of Micro 553, so there's the final project and the final exam this week. The project isn't too bad. It was just writing the specific aims to a grant proposal that was given to us, and then we get into groups and pool them and pick the best ones. The exam is on Friday, and hopefully it will be alright. There's a lot of material to cover and I'm not sure how in-depth the questions will be.
It's also the last week of my rotation. I have one experiment to finish, and then next Wednesday I give a talk in lab meeting to present my data. I'm nervous about the talk because I hate public speaking, but at the same time I am really looking forward to it being done.
What I am looking forward to is National Novel Writing Month, which starts November 1st! This year I am writing a fantasy novel. The story has pretty much been in my head in one form or another since I was 12, so finally getting it out on paper properly will be exciting. It might be hard to balance school and NaNoWriMo, but I think I'll be able to do it. After doing science all day, which is driven so much by data, it's nice to come home and write a story where I can make everything up and don't have to justify my choices to anyone.
The other awesome thing about November is that I'll be going home for Thanksgiving Break and I can see my family again! I am generally feeling better about being here and living by myself, but I still really miss my parents and grandparents. So I am looking forward to seeing them.

1. Tell us about your favorite writ­ing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.

I think that my favorite thus far was my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel, entitled Terminal Dreams. It's about a haunting and ghost hunts from the ghost's point of view. I got the idea while simultaneously doing homework and watching Ghost Hunters and wondered what the ghosts thought about the guys doing this stuff, if they were there. The universe was present day, and the nice thing was that I didn't have to do a lot of background research beyond what types of things people use for ghost hunting. The background research on my current project is killing me. Anyway, I think this is my favorite because it came together so well, and it is my first complete novel. This year's, once it's done, may become the favorite because it's been kicking around in my head for so long, but for now Terminal Dreams takes the cake.

Odds and Ends

I went shopping today. I bought a new bed, upgrading to a queen size for my new apartment. I bought an ottoman, a wall clock, and a couple of floor lamps. It was relatively painless, which is how I like my shopping. My mum makes fun of me because I shop like a guy. I don't like to spend hours looking around at everything-I just want to go in, get what I want, and get the hell out. Today I was able to do that so I'm a happy camper. Tomorrow I'm going to the outlet mall with my mum and granny for clothes and kitchen gadgets, and I'm hoping that it will be equally painless. We'll see.
After I was done shopping, I helped my dad plant the garden. We had chives and red onions spontaneously grow, but we had to plant the bell peppers and tomatoes. We'll also put in green beans and cucumbers, but the greenhouse didn't have those plants yet. Just as we finished putting them in, it started to thunder and the tornado sirens went off. We went inside to find out that we were under a tornado warning. Oh, what fun. So we had to corral three cats in their carriers to get them to stay in the basement, and my dad had to carry the collie downstairs because she can't walk down the stairs by herself. Our oldest cat started yowling, which set off my cat, and the fluffiest cat was trying to escape the whole time. Thankfully we only had to stay down there about fifteen minutes and the worst of the storm passed by.
Now I'm starting to plan my latest NaNoWriMo novel. It's actually a reboot of the one I tried to do and failed in 2008, which is the story that's been bouncing around my head for more than a decade now. I'm actually going to start doing a load of research since it has to do with pirates, and I need to get my nautical terms straight. And then throw in a really bad dude, meddling gods, super soldier manufacturing camps, and some cranky dwarves and you get the idea. It's X-Men meets Lord of the Rings meets Pirates of the Caribbean meets Iron Man. So really, really complicated, pretty much. And hopefully it will be really awesome when I write it.

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!

National Novel Writing Month

It's October, which means I'm seriously thinking about my upcoming plunge into insanity, also known as National Novel Writing Month. That would be in November. This year will be my third year participating. Last year I "won" for the first time by writing a 50,000 word novel in one month. I actually have a proof copy sitting on my bookshelf, in case I ever decide to self-publish it. I probably won't, but having it in physical form is beyond cool.
I like to write. I have since I was very young. I vaguely recall writing some kind of story in first grade that involved my two best friends and a horse. I only remember the horse because I recall drawing a horse a lot. In middle school and high school, I struggled with prose and wrote poetry. I'm pretty sure that's because I can only write poetry while severely depressed, which is the state I spent middle and most of high school in. Now, I can barely write a poem, but I've got one story at 23,000 words and one complete novel, and hopefully this November I will add a second novel to that tally. (For the record, these are completely original works and not fanfiction. I can only write vignette-length fanfiction. It's weird, I know.)
Anyway, that's how I'm planning to spend my November. It will be fueled by a lot of caffeine, probably some unhealthy snacking, and the obnoxious feeling in the back of my head that there's a story that has to come out. It's crazy, it's hard (especially with a real job and grad school apps), and it's totally awesome.