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A Catherine Noon

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Thursday 13 – December 3, 2009: Thirteen Randomities

A Catherine Noon

It’s Thursday! … I have a cold. So guess what? You get a window on the Noonybrain. o.O

1. Chocolate is good food.

2. Why is Starbucks so blinking expensive? I don’t like their practices, and they burn their beans, and yet I still go there and buy stuff. I spent seven bucks this morning!! On a coffee and a scone! Isn’t it Einstein who said stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

3. Einstein is stupid.

4. Yeah, yeah. I know. Shut up. It’s MY list, I have a cold, and I can say whatever witless witticisms I desire! Besides, Einstein is a hero of mine.

5. So is Ben Franklin.

6. And DaVinci. I love his idea of the trivium and quadrivium. (Extra points if you know what those are without googling them.)

7. I love Google. I love googling stuff. Makes my writing so much more… well, hey. I’m a curious person. Google is like crack for curious people. Must.keep.clicking…

8. I’m a big fan of Day and Nightquil. I also use propolis tincture and VitaBiotic, as well as my regular vitamins, when I’m sick. And lots of sleep. Saw a thing once, about the duration of the cold from the Renaissance to the present. Sadly, I don’t remember where, so I can’t give credit, but it went something like this: colds, 1598: treatment – bed rest, chicken soup, water, juice; duration, two weeks. 1955: treatment – bed rest, chicken soup, Vick’s cough syrup, Vick’s rub, water, juice; duration, two weeks. Present day: treatment – Dayquil, Nightquil, Contac or Benadryl cold, chicken soup, tea, Echinacea and goldenseal, vitamin C, multivitamin, bed rest, juice, salt water gargle; duration…

Two weeks.

Yeah.

9. I’m tired of coughing.

10. Humidifiers really help at night, particularly in a cold place where there are heaters that steal all the water out of the air. We put tea tree essential oil in ours, which is anti-fungal and anti-bacterial. I slept a lot better last night.

11. I actually like Office 2007. There are several new features that I’ve grown to depend on, mostly having to do with how fast I type and maneuver around the keyboard. I like being able to control formatting on paste, for example, and more pasting options. It’s a lot smarter about where and how to paste images, too.

12. I feel bad for homeless people. I know, that sounds like the usual yuppie complaint, but there was this crazy woman at Starbucks this morning, dressed in thick rags and talking to herself. She bought herself coffee and then tried to talk to me. I feel bad because I don’t have all the energy to heal everyone I come in contact with, no one does. Mother Teresa said, don’t be afraid to do the little you can do, because it matters. But when I see people like this woman, I feel like it’s never enough, there is too much misery in the world. No one should be shamefaced in giving back to the world a portion of its lost heart, which is the frontispiece from Sarah Ban Breathnach’s excellent book, Simple Abundance, though I can’t remember the woman who said it. But anyway, I try to remind myself of that, to remind myself of what I do for others and that it’s enough in the eyes of the Universe.

But that woman will still be cold today, and hungry, and crazy. And I feel bad for her.

13. I’m not always this morose. My puppy makes me happy. She’s got cute feet, and they smell like corn tortilla chips. (Don’t look at me like that. You go smell your dog and tell me if they don’t smell like chips! And if you don’t have a dog, don’t judge what you don’t know!)

I TOLD you it was a random list!

I DID IT!

A Catherine Noon

I finished my novel! It’s my first, full-length original novel. I’m so excited I could spit!

Neither cold, nor stroke, nor homework foul could keep me from my novel!

I’d love to wax poetic about how amazing it is to write a novel, but… MY IS TIRED!

~faints~

Thursday 13 – November 26th, 2009: Thirteen Things I’m Grateful For

A Catherine Noon

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know it’s sort of common this week, but I don’t care. Gratitude can never be overdone; we can never be too grateful for the abundance in our lives.

So what are you grateful for? Tell me, in comments!

1. Chocolate.

2. Chocolate.

3. Choco… Oh, fine. I was just kidding. I’m grateful for my lovely husband Michael. It may sound sappy, but he’s pretty farking awesome, man. So is my stepson Joshua. Woot!

4. My father-in-law comes home from the hospital tomorrow (Friday). He had a stroke two weeks ago and it was dicey there for a while. He’s still got a bum arm, but he’s moving around and anxious to get home.

5. My big fat Italian family. I’m half-Irish, but honorary Italian by marriage. I love it! They’re loud, rambunctious, loving, inclusive, and MAN can they cook!

6. My job. One of my online buddies mentioned that, and I think she’s totally right on. In today’s economy, I’m grateful to have a job I love and that I enjoy my coworkers and the work I do helps people. I could do a lot worse (and believe me, I have… I once counted traffic!)

7. That I no longer count traffic.

8. I was grateful to count traffic at the time, though. I mean, I got paid an hourly rate AND got expenses! My expenses were a per-mile charge I got to write in for, and it varied by tax year. It meant I could drive to way far locations and actually get extra money! This was way cool when I was in college.

9. I am grateful I’m no longer in college and don’t say way cool anymore.

10. I am grateful I can type. Srsly.

11. I am grateful for the internet. Like, way cool, man.

12. I am grateful for our new car. I got stuck in Minneapolis last summer, see. Stuck as in stranded. My car died. So we bought a new one. We named her Black Betty, after the song. Woah Black Betty/Bam a Lam… which is a lot cooler on the radio than typed. ANYWAY. She’s a pretty black car and I love having reliable transportation!!

13. Turkey. Triptophan coma. Woot!

Thursday 13: Thirteen Reasons Why I Love the New Coffeemaker

A Catherine Noon

1.

2. It’s pretty.

3. It makes coffee.

(Really. You didn’t see that one coming?)

4. It can make decaf!

(Really. My intern, gods bless her little ditsy heart, stood there with my coworker and I as we’re setting up the new coffee maker. She looked quizical and then asked, “Can this machine make decaf?”)

5. …

Yeah, made me speechless too.

6. IT MAKES FREAKIN’ COFFEE!

7. It heats the water inside the unit, so you don’t have to have the burner on to have hot coffee. This is a plus when you’re the first one in the office and have to make the first pot; you can just put your cup under the basket and voila! coffee.

8. People that put their cup under the basket to steal my coffee before it’s even brewed. Hey. I do it. IT’S MY COFFEEMAKER.

9. Put cinnamon on the grounds before you brew it.

10. Honey in my coffee is better than sugar or sweetener. Tastes lovely and isn’t overprocessed.

11. No one is asking me WHERE IS THE NEW COFFEEMAKER? Did you know the old one is broken? When is the new one coming? Srsly. I actually had an email asking, I kid you not, “how was it shipped?”

IN A BOX!?

12. It makes coffee!

13. And the number one best thing about the new coffeemaker?

IT’S NOT BROKEN!

Thursday 13 – November 12th, 2009: Thirteen Pet Peeves

A Catherine Noon

So. I admit it. Our coffee maker at work died, and I’m caffeineless. For the second.day.in.a.row. A caffeineless Noony is not a happy thing. So, I figured I’d share. Don’t say I never gave ya nuthin’.

1. Paper cuts. Something about the winter air makes my skin dry, and I have been getting little nicks and slices every time I go in my briefcase for a file. And manila folders HURT. Maybe it’s a sign that I should not do my homework?

2. Weirdos on the train. I mean, I’m sure there’s a cultural awareness group for Weirdos, but really, who wants to join? Weirdos! This guy on the train today had these big silver dishes on the side of his head (okay, they were SOLD as earphone, but they looked like freakin’ plates, people!!). I looked up and he met my eyes and gave me this big grin – the kind of grin you don’t give strangers. I mean, hello??? We’re on a train, dude. Keep it down.

3. People with too much crap that they take up more than one seat. You know who you are. SCOOT OVER!

4. CELL YELL!!! Need I say more?

5. Small, yappy dogs. Dude. If you wanted a cat, get a cat. You don’t want to walk the damn thing anyway, so what’s the point? Annoying the neighbors? Well, you’re doing GREAT! “But terriers bark, that’s what they do!” Yeah? That’s what Draino is for!

No, I’m not THAT mean, I just haven’t had coffee. I’m not going to feed Draino to Muffy.

I sure might be tempted, though.

6. CELL YELL!!! Oh, wait. Said that one already.

7. Parking spaces that aren’t. (You suburbanites probably won’t get this, but that’s because you’re the ones DOING it in the first place.) You know, when you come home at oh-dark-thirty because class ran late and you just want to go to bed and there it is: Tah-dah! A spot, in front of your house.

It’s a spot, all right. Just won’t fit your car. The spot that will?

Yeah, that’s four blocks away.

8. Female gingko trees.

9. …

Okay, I’ll explain. Female gingko trees STINK. Somewhere between bar puke and dog shit. I’m not kidding you. Apparently, the male gingko trees don’t, since we’ve got one not four trees from our house and it smells just fine, thanks. No, this one’s a doosy, and it’s been stinking up the neighborhood for about two weeks now. It will go away, and has been fading. But dude, firewood mean anything to you?

9. People who complain about the broken coffee maker. Yes, I know it’s broken. I’m the one that put the frackin’ sign on it! Didn’t I order a new one? Didn’t I send an email about the new one? Do I LOOK like I want to discuss the finer points of coffee service and what we didn’t get but should have? I HAVEN’T HAD ANY COFFEE EITHER THIS MORNING, DO YOU REALLY WANT TO START SHIT WITH ME?

10. Broken coffee makers. See #9.

11. New biz-speak. Dude, seriously. The language is English. We have enough people in the cultural salad bowl adding words to the piquant dish that is our tongue. WE DO NOT NEED FAKE ONES! This was on my business school required reading panel for Module One: “Most educationists consider learning by doing to be the most effective learning methodology.”

Educationists???

The word, people, is “educators.” ~headdesk~

12. MAN, do I need coffee.

No, that wasn’t number 12. THIS is number twelve: PEOPLE THAT BUG ME ABOUT MY LIST! I’m writin’ it, I get to say it how I want. Type it. WHATEVER.

13. Bicycle messengers. No, really. If you don’t live in an urban environment, you probably think, oh, cool, they’re keeping down pollution and staying healthy. Yeah. Don’t you believe it. Those people are VULTURES. Worse. Ninjas with wheels. They have NO regard for pedestrians or traffic laws and are dangerous, the lot of ‘em. I once had one whiz in front of me, jump the curb, narrowly miss the woman standing near me, and careened into a planter. I’ve had them hit my car as they drive by, ignore red lights, and cause accidents. GAH!

~shudder~ There. I feel better.

NaNoWriMoPepORama

A Catherine Noon

Yes, well, so I make up words. Sue me.

But, today, I wanted to highlight Chris Baty, from NaNoWriMo. He sent an amazing Week Two pep talk, in which several things jumped out at me. It was so good, and I had such a hard time picking which parts to share, that I figured heck with it, I’d post the whole thing here.

Dear Author,

Hey there! It’s Chris Baty again, and hoo, boy, have I been watching some television. Do you know this show Battlestar Galactica? I’ve just started in on the first season, and I am shocked by how much stuff the show’s writers borrowed from NaNoWriMo.

For instance, Battlestar Galactica centers on a group of humans stranded in space after their worlds have been destroyed by their enemies. NaNoWriMo takes place in the space of November. In Battlestar Galactica, people are hunted by shape-shifting robots who sometimes wear red dresses. In NaNoWriMo, participants sometimes hunt for the, uh, red address bar, where…um.

Shoot. Okay, so the similarities break down a little bit at the granular level. But there is one irrefutable nod to NaNoWriMo in the show that many veteran NaNo participants likely noticed right away. The crew on BG use mysterious technology to “jump” from one galaxy to the next, folding time and space to cross vast distances in the blink of an eye.

This was obviously inspired by NaNoWriMo’s two famous wormholes, which fling writers forward (in a good way) when they hit 25,000 and 35,000 words. At these magical tipping points, normal rules of NaNoWriMo physics no longer apply. Forward writerly motion becomes easier, fitful stories take off, and word-counts begin accelerating towards warp speeds.

Our mission this week is to heave ourselves up to the precipice of the 25,000-word wormhole. From where I am now, that feels woefully far away. In reading through the forums, I see I’m not alone. Our non-noveling lives have turned hectic, we’re facing tough decisions about what to do with our characters, and we’re grumpy from lack of sleep. I am also—for the third year running—facing the very real possibility that my protagonists might literally bore me to death.

To help get us through Week Two and on to the exciting worlds beyond, I have a few tips I’d like to share.

1) Write every day. Even if you just knock out 75 words before collapsing into bed, those 75 words will keep you connected you to your story in essential ways, and make diving back into your book much easier.

2) For now, stop thinking about 50K. Just sprint thousands. Visualize each writing session as a tall staircase made up of 1000 steps. You are part ninja, part monkey, and part stairmaster cyborg. You were born to fly up those steps. Bash out 250 words, and you’ve made it halfway to 500. Keep going for another ten minutes, and you’re past 500 and within striking distance of 750. Once you hit 750, you could sneeze out enough words to get to the top! After each thousand, be sure to take a quick break and celebrate. Then fire up that monkey spirit and go run another thousand.

3) Remember that your book is important. I didn’t say this in the Week One pep talk because we’d only just met and there’s really only so much cornball sentiment from a random guy on the internet that anyone should have to tolerate in one month. But here’s the truth: You have a book in you that only you can write. Your story matters. Your voice matters. The world will be richer for you seeing this crazy creative escapade through to 50,000 words.

This may be hard to believe given the craptastic state that many of our manuscripts are in. But there are great, unexpected things ahead for you in Weeks Three and Four. And there is someone out there who has been waiting their whole life to read the book you’re writing now.

So don’t slow down. Don’t give up. We’ll be at the first tipping point soon!

Chris

Thursday 13 – Things I Like to Eat

A Catherine Noon

1. Chocolate.

2. Chocolate.

3. Chocolate.

HAH! You thought I was serious, didn’t you?

Well, really, it IS chocolate. But if I can’t have chocolate, I also like

1. Potatoes

2. Scrambled eggs with salami

3. Quiche

4. Frozen mangoes with Greek yogurt and honey

5. Ice cream

6. Coffee

7. Tea, particularly hibiscus with lemon

8. Pumpkin pie

9. Macaroni and cheese

10. Tuna and noodles (not the casserole)

11. Hamburgers with bleu cheese and bacon

12. Corned beef and cabbage

13. Bagels

And, for a bonus, you guessed it! Chocolate!

NaNoPagesMorningThingie

A Catherine Noon

So, I’ve been writing.

A lot.

No, really. A LOT. For some reason, I decided NOT to discontinue my MBA work, OR the other two novellas I’m writing while doing NaNoWriMo. So my daily word count is really about triple the NaNo count. But I’ve learned something in the process, and it’s about the tools.

Yeah, the tools. What tools, you ask? Well, read on, MacDuff, an’ I’ll learn yeh!

I sat down this morning to do my morning pages and realized I didn’t do them yesterday. (I am, on occasion, inclined to ignore my own advice.) (No, YOU don’t get to ignore my own advice, I’m just special. So there. ~sticks out tongue~)

Well, actually, let me back up. I sat down with my AlphaSmart to write some more on my current WIP. No, the other one. In the process, I kept finding myself noting things that I usually put in my morning pages. Like stuff about my day, the bus, the weird lady in the corner talking to a cell phone without a cell phone, stuff it’s really better NOT to write about pre-coffee but that’s what the rules say – morning pages are first thing in the morning, every day, and twice on Sunday.

So, as I’m trying to type, I realized something.

Julia Cameron is right, again.

Darn it all, I really get tired of that.

So I’ll say it again, for myself if no one else is listening: morning pages should be done every day, particularly during periods of heavy creative production. We need the rest they provide. And if you don’t believe me, just try sitting next to me on the bus one morning before I’ve had my coffee and talk on your nonexistent cell phone.

I might even invent a new word for you.

~typity~

NaNoWriMuse

A Catherine Noon

This is actually kind of fun! I write and I write and then I get to post my word count! Zoom!

I’ve learned something about the writing process in the process, too. Yes, that’s process in the same sentence twice. ~shrug~ That’s what editing is for, right? Ah, grasshoppa, you just stumbled on something there…

See, I’ve found that the internal editor isn’t really my friend. I mean, sure, it helps me fix things once I’ve written them, but it does a piss-poor job of actually WRITING itself. In fact, you know what? The editor doesn’t write a lick of sense! It doesn’t even write a lick of nonsense! (Maybe if it did, it would be more prolific…) But as I work to accumulate word count, I have to get around the urge to perfect as I write and just be willing to tell the story.

Which, I suppose, is like any writing.

But I’m continually amazed, and this is my fourth day at it, that I make my word count so fast. When I actually write, I write … well, I write a lot more than when I don’t write, that’s for sure!

So, friends, I hope my disconnected post-NaNo-daily-post babble makes some sense, because the important part is this:

Just write.

It’s a helluva lot harder to edit it, if ya ain’t written it first!

Take THAT, editor!

NaNoWriMo Word Counter Thingie

A Catherine Noon

NaNoWriMo Word Counter Thingie
So, of course, I want to know how I’m doing, right? So, I set up the NaNoWriMo word count thingie on the NaNo site. But that’s not enough!

Must.have.spreadsheet.

(Hey. I work in Finance as a day job, what do you expect? Excel is, like, cool, man!)

So, I set up an excel sheet. Nothing enormous, just a few simple calcs. Targets, cumulative totals, that kind of thing.

~techgeekglee~

Date; Goal; Cumulative Goal; Actual Daily; Actual Cumulative; Notes.

MUST have Notes.

After all, I am, like, a writer.

But that’s not enough!

No. In today’s day and age, must have widgets!

Ergo, I went to a really interestingly named site, too: language is a virus. Which, when you think about it, really is true.

But, I digress.

I got mahseff a widget! Yes, folks, a brand-spanking-new widget. ~preens~

Go see for yourself! Look right, young man, look right! It’s even – gasp – updated for today’s word count!

Which accounts for the paucity of sense but overabundance of exuberance of this post.

Time now, for a NAP.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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