Writing in My Sleep

As many of you already know, November is home to an event called "Nanowrimo" during which individuals of varying levels of insanity attempt (and sometimes even succeed) to write 50,000 words during the month of November. (I won't get super into detail about the event in this post, so be sure to check the link out if you want to know more-- despite my flippant tone, it's actually a really cool event and the organizers do a lot of neat community outreach things).

I started doing Nanowrimo back in middle school, but my participation started to peter out in college-- there were a lot of years where I'd start, maybe write a couple thousand words, and then let it go because I had so many other things on my plate.

But I decided to give it a try this year. Probably a silly thing to do, because I am about as busy as I've ever been in my life, teaching orchestra classes 8 times a week and attempting to run my music therapy business. (which, quick note, is doing surprisingly well; I started working with another dementia facility this month) Despite my busy schedule, I decided it was worth making this a priority for the sake of my mental health: I love to write fiction, and with so much on my plate I decided I need to make time to do something just for me, something that makes me happy. And as far as that goes, I think this has been the right choice.

So I'm writing a truly horrendous rough draft of a novel about a werewolf detective solving mysteries based around fairytale retellings. It's a great time. And I've got two mini stories to share on the subject.

The first is one of those cool things the Nanowrimo organizers do: they get a bunch of graphic design artists together, have them pick (through a somewhat mysterious process) 30 in-progress novels, and each day of the month an artist will make a sample cover for someone's novel. To my surprise, I actually got picked for Day 8: a designer named Kevin Perry designed this cover for my story.


And there was much screaming.
Anyway, you can read more about that whole thing here if you're interested.

In more "weird funny stuff that you usually see in this blog when it's not bad selfies in different costumes", here's a little writing adventure I had.

One night when I was working on this book, I was really struggling to keep my eyes open. But I was determined to stay at my keyboard until I hit my word goal, so I kept writing. When I went to bed, I was pretty sure I'd written about my detective character tracking down a couple of missing kids. What I found when I opened my laptop up in the morning, however... well, take a look and see if you can figure out where things started to go terribly, terribly wrong.
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I’m not sure about this,” I warned him, “But I think they might have gotten into an ice cream truck.”

“What are you supposed to be, psychic?” Gladstone asked in his nasal voice.

“Yes,” I growled, “I can see a broken nose in your future.” He was starting to really irritate me.

“OK, calm down, both of you,” Hunter said, sounding like a long suffering father with a pair of squabbling kids. “Gladstone, why don’t you take a walk about, ask about the ice cream truck, see if anyone remembers one coming by. Red, see if you can find us anything else.”

I nodded and crouched back down to where I could catch any smells in the asphalt but OK, I’ll admit it, I’m barely keeping my eyes open and I’m stuck. I don’t even know for sure that her sense of smell would make it something brain english. Um. OK, I don’t know what happens next. OK, yes I do, we cut away to the kids for a little bit. I don’t know how to make the narrator shift but i’s the best thing. We can see what captivity is like for our kids, get some insight into their personalities and. I’m so tired right now I can’t even think in a straight line.

OK, so the kids went out for ice cream and got kidnapped instead. Not a great conversation starter.

    So what is the next tstop? Bain too tired to look at or see or something. And I kind of what to write fanfiction about the last episode of Warehouse 13.  And I am feeling so hungry and so tired that I can't even tactic tac Tired braille, can’t inglish. Brain can’t keep up with anything, I need to get to sleep. But I’m so close, let me try to finish this. Let’s not try out each other’s medicines, that usually doesn’t end well. I don’t care, I just want to finish this and get some sleep.

`IIt was going so well, too.” OK, brain, elt’s the stretch program. There can only be one something doing stuff that       

I feel like I keep losing my cursor.

OK, what’s the climax here? I think the old lady has a few kids hiding in her basement. So tired. Brain tired. Crickets in shoe box for cricket farming. I don’t know why but I feel compelled to type a lot of nonsense words. It makes me sound psychic but I’m just doin good guesses.  Butterflies are awfully flighty. I am so sick of the aches in my legs from restless leg syndrome, is there a medicine I can take or a good home remedy for it? My brain is just so very tired. And increasingly incoherent.

OK, there’s not so many words left before I can get to bed. Let me just try to focus long enough to finish chapter five. YEs, this is blatant word count padding but I’m just trying to write every day; tomorrow will be better.

A little more coherent now. Let’s think this through a little. Red comes to find the missing kids, but they aren’t there to brain brain brain. Look at the horizon, ask for three books instead of four. Legs hurt all the time. Two fou ix eight. Can I go to bed now?

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 So, yeah. There's a little insight into my subconscious, I guess. And a lesson to me to make sure I'm getting enough sleep.

Costume Challenge #44: Halloween Proper and Followup

Costume #44: Your Halloween Costume

No, really, that was the theme.

Anyway, after well over a month of putting on and washing off crazy costume makeup, finally on Halloween I started washing my makeup off and my face just came right off with it:

OK, OK, obviously that's not what actually happened, but I thought it made for a pretty funny explanation.

I went simple on the clothes-- a set of skull pattern pajama bottoms and a black t-shirt-- and put my hair in a simple bun to keep it out of the way.

I wanted something a little bit spectacular to finish the challenge off, and when I found the tutorial I used I knew it was the perfect look. As it happens, I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel of my cosmetics by the time I got here-- I'm out of a lot of things now-- but I think I still managed to pull it off.

The basic idea is to have one part of your face made up nicely, then use eyeliner to draw the drips and black spots to make it look like the skin is starting to decay. Then on the rest of the face I went for a slightly more realistic approach to doing a skull than my Day of the Dead makeup (which was more stylized and ornate). The teeth came out kind of funny, I'll have to practice those more. 

Time: 45 minutes

Unexpected or Notable Reactions: This didn't get a huge reaction at the thrift store, but I did wear the makeup for the rest of the day-- and this led to one of the best reactions I've gotten this whole challenge. I was at the grocery store, looking for something in produce, when one of the other shoppers turned around and saw me. He gasped a little and jumped about two inches. Then he laughed and said, "Oh, right, it's Halloween today."

Would I Actually Wear This For Halloween: Um...

Most Appropriate Halloween Song: Look What You Made Me Do, by Taylor Swift. (Though, really, what you should be watching is the Hocus Pocus Version: Look What You Made Me Brew. Just trust me on this, you need to see it.)

The old Jennifer can't come to the phone right now.

Why?

Because she's really tired.

Follow Up:

Well, it's been a couple of days since Halloween now, and I'm kind of sad that the costume challenge is over. I had a lot of fun doing this, and I learned a lot of techniques for hair and makeup that I can use even in regular, non-costume styles. I got lots of compliments (always a plus) and all in all had one of my best Halloweens ever. Now that it's over, my thrift store job is quite a bit less fun. Also, I keep having to remind myself that it's OK to scratch my face.

So would I want to do this again next year?

Hahahaha--NOPE.

I'm glad I did this. But I am also very tired of dressing up, of getting up early to do insane makeup, of trying to figure out how to work in impractical clothes-- it's been a lot. And now I have a lot of cleaning up to do: my bedroom is littered with costume accessories, I have a lot of borrowed items to wash and return, and my bathroom currently looks like the site of a chalk-and-glitter explosion. My current acne level is roughly high school. Long story short, I'm ready to be done.

I am desperately hoping not to have this job come the next fall-- because while the thrift store job really isn't a bad gig, it's definitely not my dream. Or what I got my degree in. No, that's my music therapy private practice, which isn't exactly thriving but is still (somehow) managing to stay afloat. You know, the kind of afloat like an iceberg where it's mostly sunk but there's just a tiny part still above water. We'll see where it takes me, but hopefully it takes me somewhere a little different from here.

Anyway, before I head out, I've got a follow up to my Halloween edition of "Strange Things You See In A Thrift Store".

They all came back.

...

I'm really glad that I don't have to work at this place after dark.



Anyway, I hope you had an enjoyable Halloween. Probably there will not be any blog posts for a few weeks because 1) sleep, and 2) November is Nanowrimo and apparently I have a death wish. But failing the chance of me falling victim to a hostile store takeover by demonic porcelain figurines, you'll hear from me again soon enough.