A title for Jasper's Story

I have named my NaNOWriMo novel Tripping Over Myself. I have 39 pages to go before I hit 50,000 words. If I write like crazy for the next few days I just may make it.
Song Lyrics of the Day
In the rain the pavement shines like silver
All the lights are misty in the river
In the darkness, the trees are full of starlight
And all I see is him and me forever and forever
And I know it's only in my mind
That I'm talking to myself and not to him
And although I know that he is blind
Still I say, there's a way for us
I love him
But when the night is over
He is gone
The river's just a river
Without him
The world around me changes
The trees are bare
and everywhere
The streets are full of strangers

From the musical Les Miserables

Coming fast

The deadline for the end of NaNoWriMo is coming up fast now. I am still about 45 pages away from my goal. I think the story will have to be rushed to finished in that amount but it can be done.
Jasper is just about to enter the military where he finds out his lazy attitudeis not going to work at boot camp. And then he will be coming back home for the conclusion of the novel.
I know I won't get much writing down on Thansgiving or the weekend following so the only time I have left to write this month are three days next week.

Ever Closer

Could I actually complete this in time?
I now have 151 pages. I think the quality is slipping even more now that I am nearing the end but, honestly, I don't care. The excitement of closing in on the last section of this novel is pushing me forward. This unnamed work about a young man who is trying to make a decent life for himself despite his low self-esteem, lack of emotional support, family drama, and the own messes he makes of his life may be the first story I have finished in over 10 years. NaNoWriMo is the best thing to happen to my writing in a long time.
What I am reading now- The Whores on the Hill by Colleen Curran

Feeling easy

I now have 125 pages and I am in the middle of the 15th Chapter. Writing this novel reminds me of the novella's I wrote in high school where I just poured out my ideas on the page, hardly never tossing a page away for not being good enough. I wish my other projects could been done so easily but I know to one day become published I will have to strive to produce better work than this. Still, I am enjoying NaNoWriMo more than I thought I would.

Halfway

I have hit the halfway mark in Jasper's story. It still does not have an official title. The only one I have come up with so far is Losing the Loser. But I am not sure Jasper will shake his loser self image.
I wish I could write at this speed in my other projects. I have only been able to churn out the pages by writing what comes to mnd and not agonizing over if I am writing it the " right way". Jasper's story has plenty of passive writing and run on sentences but I could careless. I am proud to have written 25,000 words in half a month.
Song of the Day
This heart still believes
that love and mercy still exist
While all the hatred rage
and so many say
That love is all but pointless
in madness such as this
It's like trying to stop a fire
With the moisture from a kiss
And I hear them saying
you'll never change things
And no matter what you do
it's still the same thing
But it's not the world that I am changing
I do this so
this world will know
That it will not change me

Garth Brooks Song

piling up

The pages are piling up. Needless to say I have never written this fast before in my life. I now have 23, 250 words. I started the challenge days late so I feel I am doing okay. I have skipped days too. But if will write as much as I can and try for that 50,000 word deadline.
Jasper had a rough week. He wasn't able to spend as much time with his new girlfriend as he would have liked and she is the only good thing in his life. But now they are back together again( for now! I will not let them stay happy. Where is the drama in that?) But he still has job issues and family stresses to contend with. It is about time for the crap to really hit the fan and his life to fall apart so I can work him through his issues by the end of the story.

Song of the Day
Freedom, oh, freedom.
That's just some people talkin'
You're a prisioner walking
through this world all alone.
Don't your feet get cold in the wintertime?
The sky won't snow
and the sun won't shine.
It's hard to tell the nighttime
from the day.
You're losin' all your highs and lows.
Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?....
You better let somebody love you
let somebody love you
You better let somebody love you
before it's too late
eagles song

More pages

I wrote 7 more pages last night. I needed to write double that amount but my creativity comes in spurts. I should have two writing sessions per day for the rest of the month in order to get as many words as possible per day. Now Jasper is happily dating someone but he still has plenty of other issues for me to write about. He could use to go to classes in anger mangement and a heaping dose of self esteem. But these things feed his story, driving him to act out or isolate at times. I am enjoying spending this time getting to know the inner workings of Jasper Patterson's mind.

Song of the Day
Drove up to Hillside Manor
sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower
about the things you could not show her
And it's been a long December
and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass
And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
It's been so long since I've seen the ocean
I guess I should

counting crows song

Happily Moving Along

I am finally catching on to how to write without my eternal editor freaking out and paralazying me. I have only had to throw out one page on Jasper's story. That is major for me. I am now up to 16,000 words, still in it even though I am behind. Jasper has now been arrested on a minor incident and met two women who both want his attention. I am now entering the hazy middle part of the novel that always slows me down though. Will this time be different? Will he be left hanging the way Allie (from my half finished novel Come Back to Me) was? Or will he be my first character to get to the end of his journey?

NOT QUICK ENOUGH

I am not meeting my dailiy goals of writing 2,000 words a day. I am not up to 10,000 words yet. The story overall is going okay. I just write what comes to mind, weaving my way through the world of a someone nearly 10 years younger than me and of the opposite sex. Jasper smokes weed, drinks, has a ex-girlfriend who is a ho, and wantsto hook up with a sixteen year old( this is the female lead- She is named Annabella) even though he feels she is too young for him. He lives in a single wide trailer with a middle aged alcoholic co-worker but considers that better than living at home with his mom and her 20 years younger boyfriend. I have never written about this type of character before and since I am not aiming at publication I find it easy to throw random obstacles at him as if it is a game. But I still don't write long enough each day to make the kind of progress I need to.

Song Lyrics of the Day-
Jacob walked a limp to remind him
Of the greater gift of the greater one.

But when I fell,
I fell to my own resources.

How can I carry the truth if I can't even crawl to you?

I wanna feel something sweeter than this sin.
Cover me in leaves roll me over again.

I've been everybody else now I want to be.
SOMETHING CLOSER TO MYSELF

Paint me in a different light.
Shed me yet another coat of skin.
Mark me with ash until I'm clean again.
'cause I'm so sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I know I can love you, I know that I can

kendall payne

Good Progress

I have been working on Jasper's story since Saturday night. In four days I have 5,000 words. Way under the number I need to be on track for NaNoWriMo. I think I need over 10,000 at this point for that but I am doing well for me. I wrote 10 pages today so I am thrilled. Jasper has met the female lead in the story now, though she is unnamed at this point. I wil learn her name when he does or when she tells me.

Hanging on

Today I thought about starting over again. I looked at my two chapters and said" This is crap! Why bother?" While I admit it is not my best work it is an interesting little tale so far and there was no reason to give up on it. So I started Chapter three and wrote a couple hundred more words. Then I came up with the next twist in the story so I know a direction to head in. For me it is always I balancing act of deciding where to take the story but not plotting it all out at once. If I do that I completely lose interest.

Song Lyrics of the Day-
I'm broken in two
And I know you're on to me
That I only come home
When I'm so all alone
But I do believe
That not everything is gonna be the way
You think it ought to be
It seems like every time
I try to make it right
It all comes down on me
Please say honestly
you won't give up on me
And I shall believe
And I shall believe
Sheryl Crow Song

Redo

As I feared my original idea for NaNoWriMo was going no where. Though I still think it is a strong idea, right now is not the tme for me to write it. So I sat down and wrote the first few pages of different ideas off the top of my head. One voice was particulary strong, Jasper Patterson, a 19 year old angry kid who tries to turn his life around by joining the military but acts out in one crucial moment and jeopardizies his whole future. So I switched to his story and have a couple of chapters written so far.
I am quite behind my 2,000 word a day goal but I plan to keep going untill the end of the month and see what I have to show for it.

Song Lyrics of the day
Today we took a walk up the street
and picked a flower and climbed the hill above the lake
and secret thoughts were said aloud
we watched the faces in the clouds
until the clouds had blown away
and were we ever somewhere else?
you know, it's hard to say
And I never saw blue like that before
across the sky, around the world
you're giving me all you have and more
and no one else has ever shown me how
to see the world the way I see it now
oh I, I never saw blue like that

Shawn Colvin song

Less than a Chapter

I have less than a chapter completerd on my November Novel for NaNoWriMo. I did decide on a subject. The tale of a forty -two year old man just released from prison, after serving ten years, coming home to try and build a new life for himself told through his eyes and that of his sister , father and grandmother. Also there would be a few flashback chapters to important moments in thier past. But since I haven't gotten very far on it I wonder if I should change ideas. Maybe something else would flow easier. I tell myself it does not matter what I write, just put words to paper that make some sort of sense. But I find I can not do it. It took untill November 3rd to come up with the idea and another day to write up the background of the characters before I got started.
What I am reading - Alice's Tulips by Sandra Dallas

Song Lyrics of the Day
how can i go home with nothing to say
i know you're going to look at me that way

and say what did you do out there
and what did you decide
you said you needed time
and you had time

you are a china shop
and i am a bull
you are really good food
and i am full

i guess everything is timing
i guess everything's been said
so i am coming home with an empty head
ani defranco song