3 Down...0 To Go?

It's true.
I finished.
Without NaNoing at all on the last day of the month.
WOOHOO!
Now this would be party time. *goes off to make lots and lots of donuts*

Oh wait, who needs donuts? I have Death by Chocolate from Rumpy's in Gainesville! *grins and goes off to eat more Death by Chocolate and other strudel delicacies*

Forums and 2 More Days!

My mother finds them strange and entertaining.
I was reading some of the topics and replies out loud to her...

For everyone who has not finished NaNoing yet -- you have two more days! You can still win!
(Oh. Right. That includes me. *grin*)

2 Down, 1800 Words To Go -- Plus a Pep Talk

As of last night, I have been the winner of my English NaNoWriMo novel, Memory.
So I have finished Memory and Mil Voces, leaving me with just Le Mouton to finish. I'm looking forward to finishing it. (Notice how confident I'm being? Notice? Notice? I have 1800 words to go. Uhuh...I did 1700 today plus I had to type up another 500...so that should mean less work tomorrow and Sunday, right? Oh yeah, but I have some homework to do. Oh well. I can finish that.)

And now for the pep talk, because I was inspired by the 25 or so that participants have gotten this November.

This is the 10th anniversary of NaNoWrimo, and Sunday will be the 10th anniversary of the Last Day of NaNoWriMo.
This was my 3rd NaNo, which, in comparison to some people, makes me fairly inexperienced.

But really, after 3 NaNos, I must know something, right? Maybe. At the very least, I know what I have learned.

1. I can write with or without an outline. I can write with or without any idea of where I am going. Thank goodness.
2. I can write good stories. And I can write bad stories. And I can write good parts in bad stories and bad parts in good stories.
3. Don't edit right after writing.
4. Don't edit while writing.
5. If you can't remember a character's name, give him/her another one. Let it be George, if you must.
6. The past participle of the verb dire is dit.
7. The past participle of the verb metrre is mis.
8. A series of short stories may be easier to write than a complete novel, but easier does not increase your chances of finishing.
9. November does not always cooperate. But then, sometimes it does.
10. Winning and finishing are both nice. Doing both is better, though doing both in November is not necessary.
11. Whether your word count bar shows it or not, in some ways everyone wins NaNo.
12. That means that in some ways, everyone loses too.
13. But despite all that, there is still an unlimited supply of virtual cookies available.

1 Down, 2 To Go

I just finished my Spanish novel with a word count somewhere between 3,137 (according to Word) and 3,145 (according to NaNo).

Which means I've finished 1 out of 3. The shortest one.
Now I get to write for the rest of the day and all of Wednesday and for about three hours on Thursday (on the way to my grandparents' house) on my French and English nanos. Plus off and on for about an hour Tuesday night at Bible study where one of the girls would be very angry with me if I wasn't writing and I hadn't won yet. She's really gotten into me doing this. Which is good. I like encouragement.

If I'm not finished by the time we get to my grandparents' on Thursday, then I guess I'll have time on Friday and some driving time on Saturday. But I really want to get done before that, because the website is atrociously slow on the 29th and 30th.

Off to write...

Academic Team

Yes, yes.

We had a competition yesterday. We found out about it on Thursday. Which was somewhat difficult. But we have now won three games all year. And lost...nine.
3-9. That would be winning 25% of our games.

We played four games in the round robin part...and we won one of them. Woo, 2nd game we've won this season! (not counting that game we won by forfeit)
Never mind that both of those wins were against the same team. That doesn't matter so much.

But anyway, we won one and lost three. One of the teams we played won all of their games. I'm not sure about the 3rd team we played. The first one we played lost all of their other games.

But, because the tiebreaker to get into the DEs (single elimination tournament...using the fencing term) was based on points and not head to head, we got into the tournament and that first one we lost to did not.

Then we lost again to the team that we had already played who had won all their games. Curiously, they're our rival in football. We beat them in football every year.
Well, they certainly made up for that yesterday.

Still Behind...But Less So

Well, now not only am I ahead by 255 words on my Spanish, I'm ahead by 141 words on my French.
Still behind by 3000 or so on that English...but hey. I see one of my NaNoing friends tonight, so at least I can tell her that I'm behind on me English, not one of my non maternal language ones. Besides, now I'll almost certainly be not as behind as she is.
I'm not sure how well this is going to work, though, because I'm refusing to sleep tomorrow night until I have 30,000 words. Except I don't refuse very well.

Behind

The title is probably an understatement.
So today I'm supposed to hit 28333.3 words on that English NaNo...I'm sitting at less than 25000.
Oh wait, I wrote during lunch today...I might actually be up to 25000 now. Yay!
But I'm behind by about 1000 words on my French NaNo.
I'm ahead by 255 words on the Spanish.

So, total, I'm behind by somewhere around 4000 words, but since I'm ahead by 255, that makes it slightly better.
Note that slightly. It's important.

I also have solutions for a math competition due next Monday, so for two days this week I'm officially abandoning NaNo. Just for two days, though. Really.
Besides, week two is always the hardest. And week two is OVER. Welcome in week three, where things get interesting again.

And the ideas are coming in and lightbulbs are coming on (unfortunately, I can't draw lightbulbs) and I'm making random charts all over the place that no one else seems to understand...but guess WHAT!
That's okay. When everyone stares at me, that's okay. I NaNoed during three of my six classes today, plus lunch, and I told one person about NaNo.
*goes to update stats sheet*

It has a lot of tally marks on it now...especially in the people I told about NaNo column and the early mornings column. Though compared to some people those mornings weren't that early.

Anyway...that was just a NaNo update.
I love November. NaNo, Thanksgiving, Nutcracker rehearsal (this year, that means marching a lot-- go soldiers!), my mom's birthday, heart of the Academic Team season, Advent getting close, winter trying to come or fall being nice (that winter one this year)...

Oh yeah. It's a great month. The best.

Guess What!

Okay, this is about that fine arts meet last Saturday.
We finally won our first game!
(Actually, it was technically the second game we had won, but that other one we won by forfeit. Cause the other team didn't show up. So yeah...no. This was our real triumph.)

It was our very first game of the day, and we dominated. Between me and another literature geek, we DID IT. (the other two kids on the team answered a couple of questions and really did well for us in the freakishly hard written round. But in the oral, it was all LG (literature geek) and me.)

After that, we proceeded to lose the other two games in our round robin and our first game in the single elimination bracket, in other words, our ONLY game in the single elimination bracket.
But hey. The team we beat ended up as the 4th seeded team, and the other two teams we played ended up 1st seeded and 2nd seeded. Since we were 7th (of...yes, that's right, 7), we had to go up against that 2nd seeded team...again. I don't remember which time we did better. It didn't really matter, cause we felt like total winners anyway. It was GREAT.

I mean, how can you not feel like winners after (a) getting up to be at school at 7:30 am, (b) realizing that because the bus barn is locked you have to smush together in a teacher's car and you also have to wait out in the cold and wind for said teacher, (c) you win your first game of the season, (d) you eat at Steak & Shake instead of delivery pizza, and (e) you laugh way too much?

OH yeah.