Fait (non) Accompli

I've had a lot of different reactions to the idea of just tossing the NaNoWriMo project in the bin as soon as it hits 50,000 words.

1) "But I want to read it!" (most common)
2) "You'll regret it later because no matter how crap you think it is, there might be good stuff in there." (usually followed by 1)
3) "..."
4) (upon hearing the "you can't do that!" reactions I've been getting) "Oh yes you bloody can!"

While I'm open to opinions and am not really annoyed about reactions 1) and 2), it's nice that some people are content to just let me make the decision, and nicer still that one person wholeheartely endorses my choice, if it's the one I really want to make. Always among my favourite people, she has now risen even higher in my estimation. Thanks, Toos.

Actually, I'm finding that while the real life segments of the NaNoWriMo are utter and complete pants, the swashbuckling shit is actually halfway decent, taking into account a few edits. The characters sort of stopped being mirrors of the 7th Sea bunch I know and torment and started being ... well, people ... in a way that the RL characters haven't yet. So I don't know; I have to keep on course now or I'm going to completely screw this whole challenge up, and that's as far ahead as I'm looking for now. In any case, no matter what I do with it, there are certain people who will not -- I repeat, WILL NOT -- be allowed to read it.

1) Anyone I share living space with.
2) Anyone I play 7th Sea with.
3) Anyone I'm even remotely likely to see face to face at any point within the next six months.

There are reasons for this, most of which come under the heading, "It's crap and I'm embarrassed but you're pushy". I can deal with people online, who I never see face to face, reading my shit and making comments -- hell, I remember the so-called BNF days, may they finally die the death. However, having to look someone in the face while they critique stuff that I know is utter nonsense is something else again. Besides, at least one of the people that come under the criteria above (and the only one who comes under all three) tends to go after every potential weak spot in what I write while turning a blind eye to plot holes the size of the Channel Tunnel in other things, the way normal people do. Sometimes it's willing suspension, and while he believes in it in other things, he won't take it from me.

I think people expect too goddamn much from me sometimes. But I suppose that's okay, because I expect still more.

Disorganisation

These are the days when you want to take and hit people about the head with mallets.

Work's been mental, but I think I finally may have got the organisational problems sorted out. You see, the problem is not, as you might expect (knowing my propensity for running around like a blue-arsed fly scattering papers everywhere as I pass), my being disorganised. I may shed paper like Yuki sheds fur, but at least I usually know where everything is, or at least is likely to be. Unfortunately, this does not help when two different consultants with two slightly different ideas of what constitutes order go ploughing through my piles and mess everything up. All of a sudden I don't know which pile is which anymore and when my office manager sees two separate consultants going through piles and finding things that I swear upon my life I didn't put there, it's obviously all my fault. So I've completely rearranged the tray system -- now there's a tray for action items, a tray for patients who need appointments and a tray for signed or corrected letters. The other tray remains for filing, and there's a pile in front of the printer that is post to be stuffed in envelopes and sent off. They're all labelled. Now they have no one to blame but themselves. Fuckers.

Then there's this Agenda for Change bollocks, wherein we discover that the pay grades we had when we were hired have now ceased to exist, we have to "negotiate" pay rises with management (this, I believe, includes the cost of living increase), they seem to have phased the increase in London Weighting right out of the Agenda, we might wind up taking a pay cut if we're not careful and generally speaking, things are screwed. Management also had the bright idea to have us e-mail in when we arrive at work and e-mail again just before we leave, which Violet has vetoed in no uncertain terms (not too surprisingly, seeing as she gets in around 9:30 every morning), along with the "clocking in and out" idea. So it's been chaos, pure and simple.

I don't want to do anything else for anyone else today. I want to do my NaNoWriMo work and hopefully eat something I don't have to put effort into and generally forget this day ever happened. I have service jobs.

Ganked from infodump

( Meme! )

Must get to the writing. There need to be words. I'd ideally like to get to 45k by the end of the evening (yeah right).

I had cholten99 tell me that NaNoWriMo strikes him as the best way to be put off the idea of writing for life. Time will tell, I guess.

More Things in Heaven and Earth...

45,375 / 50,000 (90.75%)

It was supposed to be normal. It was supposed to be normal! I was trying not to have anything supernatural and then magic happened and now there are goblins. Agh!

Ah well, fuck it. If I could get 2,993 words done tonight, maybe goblins aren't such a bad thing. It's the fact that the goblins have a master that begins to worry me.

Why is it that, just when I decide that I'm going to bin the stupid thing, bloody Thren (for newcomers to my journal, I have named my muse Threnody; she's basically a more hyperactive version of me with the psychic equivalent of a tazer and a bullwhip) gets me to change the concept and the plot and then throws in goblins so it's now actually possibly going to be worth reading ... in about a decade ... after several dozen rewrites and the editorial equivalent of a napalm drop?

It'll be over soon. I keep telling myself that it will be over soon. And I really am going to do it this year.