they won’t give my car back unless i give them 18 thousand dollars.
how many people here think i have 18 thousand dollars?

i wrote 5,989 words today! i’m up to 18,772, and for the first time since i’ve started, I’M ON TRACK TO FINISH ON TIME!! yay me!! i wrote a little bit this afternoon, as previously mentioned. but then i felt stuck. but i sat down and started typing. and typing and typing. and i got through that stuck part.
whooooooo!!

whooo-hooo! i broke 15,000. i wrote 2,252 words today. i think. 2 thousand two hundred and something. i’m at 15,037. trucking along. of course, there are reasons i was able to spend more time writing today. but we’ll get to those in a minute.
as you can see, i changed the color scheme a little. it’s more fall/winter, don’t you think? also, i colored my hair, so i thought it was appropriate that the swing babe go red as well.
so, you wanna know why i’m stuck home today? i don’t know if i want to tell you. i’m not proud of myself. i went downstairs this morning to find my car gone. and no, “stolen” was not the first word i thought of. i knew what had happened. i was still shocked. i’ve hit a new bottom, in terms of financial screw ups. this has never happened to me. i’ve never had my car repossessed. i don’t even know anyone who’s had their car repossessed! i knew i was behind. but i didn’t know i was that far behind. the thing is, it’s all my fault. and some of it is really stupid, because i had money for part of the bill i owed! i just kept forgetting to send it! that makes it even worse. i’m such an idiot.
i felt pretty crappy this morning. but then, i sort of felt relieved as well. which may seem odd. but if this had happened to me last year, i wouldn’t have handled it as well. i would have turned around and gone back to bed and not dealt with it. i would have stayed in bed for a couple of days, forcing myself to sleep because life was too overwhelming to deal with. my depression was at it’s worst this time last year. but today, even though i feel like i complete loser, i got on the phone and called the bank. and then i called the repo people. i can’t do anything until tomorrow morning, so i spent most of the morning punishing myself. i made an appt. to talk with a financial councilor and deal with my debt. i downloaded and installed quicken, and put my checking account into it. and i did two loads of laundry. i explained to pru how her mommy is a “deadbeat” and a “financial risk.” but she wasn’t impressed. so eventually i got bored with it and started to work on the color scheme. and then i wrote.
so, it may not seem all that great, but it’s a huge relief to me, to see that i didn’t completely curl up in defeat. not exactly worth getting the car repossessed tho.

i am changing the color scheme on the blog, as i type. so if things seem a little kittywampus, that’s why.

sorry… no time for updatey today. busy busy busy. had to a: do my job b: go to the movies after work and c: come home from the movies and watch angel. all terribly terribly important. and now d: i’m tired.
word count is at 12,000 something… i don’t remember what exactly. i just know i wrote 1420 words at lunch. lucy’s getting good and depressed now. should be fun. soon she won’t leave her bed! and, after a lot of brainstorming with dr. stevil, via AIM – even tho he sits two cubes over, the cat has a new name. Stanley. it fits. trust me. now i have to go back and replace all the other names i used with stanley. hope i can remember them all. i just kept trying names out to see if they fit.
speaking of cats, i have to go spend some quality time with pru. talk to you tomorrow!! be good, dear internet friends!

so you want to hear something weird? i went on that diet for one day. one day last week, right? and after that, about all i changed was i quit having dr. peppers and baby chocolate donnettes for breakfast. and i haven’t had any bread. that’s it. well… i’ve lost 10 and a half pounds. what’s up with that? it’s that scale. it’s the instrument of the devil. seriously, kids… i haven’t changed that much. i already was drinking water, and i haven’t even made it up to the goal of 64 ounces a day! i’ve had numerous snapples, and i drank dr. pepper friday afternoon and all day saturday. i’ve even had candy and oreos!! i think that scale is lying to me. it’s mean. except, i do have old jeans that wouldn’t fit before on right now. i think the jeans and scale are in cahoots. i don’t understand it. but there it is.
word count is up to 11,363 now. currently, lucy is having a family dinner, it’s still the day after the fire, and she’s getting drunk. hilarity should ensue, if all goes according to plan. however, in a strange turn of events, lucy is letting it be known that she does not want to turn into a regular old writer at the end of the book. she wants to write comic books. so now all the sudden she draws! i don’t know… it’s just want she wants. this is hard for me because i don’t draw and i don’t know anything about comic book creation. i’ll have to make it up, for now. i’ve asked for mr. moon’s advice. but what can i do? if she wants to create comic books, she’s going to do it. i’m at the mercy of her desires.
the other problem is the cat. the cat doesn’t like his name. phinnigan. but he’s not letting me know what his real name is. so what… am i just supposed to call him Cat? i guess all will be revealed when he is good and ready. even in stories cats are always in control.

the end of the world is coming, and you are screwed no matter what.

so it seems everyone has food issues. and i am not the biggest freak in the group. or, at least, the only freak. although, what wicked does to a rib eye should be declared illegal. wicked, stick to sirloin and give all your rib eye steaks to me. i’m sorry [not very] to say that i have not had a chance to work on my cooking issues, as i can never remember to defrost any of the meat that is in the freezer. there are just SO MANY STEPS to cooking. i don’t like it.
nano word count is at 8,368. way behind goal. lucy has been laid off in a blaze of glory. she made a brief visit to her friend ashna’s hippie store, so that we could introduce that character. then she went home and fell asleep in pajama pants, on her couch, not long after that, she lost her home and car in a blaze of glory. fire fire fire, smoke smoke smoke… after that, she wakes up at mo’s, her grandmothers. talk talk exposition exposition discussion discussion pancakes pancakes. mo’s friend bertie has just stopped by, so we meet bertie. who is a coot. or hoot. i’m not sure which. and that’s where we are. lucy’s about to take a bath and sink back into depression. fun!
i need to pick up the pace. but i do have that whole last week of november off, to write. according to the weekly pep talk, the 2nd week of wrimo is called the Week of Fatigue. that’s when everyone gets tired, and wonders why they are doing this. they’ve progressed far enough along to see that their plots are not going anywhere they planned, and they are afraid that it’s all going to fall apart. but, if you get through the Week of Fatigue, you should be ace’s by week three. everything’s good in week three.

i need this so badly… it makes my heart hurt that it’s not already on my wall!!

people say to me, “hey jodi… how come you are doing this nanowrimo thing? you are incredibly lazy, and this sounds like a lot of work.” let me tell you, you are right on both counts. it is a lot of work. a lot of hard work, it’s not just getting words on the screen, either. i could type 50,000 words today if i had to. i’m not saying they’d make sense, if you read them, but i could do it. however, it’s just not that easy. why not? it just isn’t. it isn’t about word count, well… it is, but it isn’t all about word count. you want to have 50,000 words of good stuff. personally, i want 50,000 words of shear genius prose. but i’m not getting it. and boy there is a voice in my head and will not shut up. sometimes it goes on and on about how i am fooling myself, for ever thinking there was a possibility i could be a writer. it compares me not only to my favorite published authors, but my favorite fan fiction authors… brave, prolific, people who post their writing for all the world to adore or rip to shreds. sometimes, when it’s bored, the voice just sings “crap crap crappity crap” over and over in a sing song voice, while it hand stamps it’s own christmas cards. it’s then i realize that i have put a persona to that voice. that voice is very much like my ex-best friend tina’s more emotionally punishing moments. that voice doesn’t like my kandinksy prints, so i hang them in the bedroom, so we can hang her water color prints of cowboys. which are perfectly fine, but absolutely NOT representative of me in anyway, and it’s my living room too.
and so i say to that voice SHUT THE FUCK UP, TINA!!
but that wasn’t the question, that was the reason it was hard. the reason i want to do it, and the reason i like to blog as well, for that matter, can best be summed up by a famous quote:
“A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.” ` leo rosten.
i don’t even know who leo rosten is, but that statement right there sums it up. and blast it if i don’t wish i were articulate enough to have said it myself.