My whole November and the first couple weeks of December can be basically summed up like this:

• - start NaNo
• - get two days ahead
• - put in moving notice
• - house hunt
• - struggle with word count
• - find house, start packing
• - more struggle with word count
• - lots of packing
• - pack and send out NaNo swap packages
• - finalize new house
• - packing?  Yep still that
• - word count finally caught up
• - NaNo ends
• - call utilities
• - packing done

Yes I'm moving again.  The place we're heading to is a really nice place and I'm way excited.  I'm more excited about where we're moving to than when we moved here.  Don't get me wrong, this house is a nice house and it's in a nice area, there's just something about this new place we're heading to.  I'm hopefully going to take pictures, providing I can get a camera.  My goal this time around is to have a less stressful move than the last one - so far about 95% achieved.  The truck is booked, we have friends to do the heavy lifting (some of this furniture is pretty freaking heavy, no lie) and the place is for-sure.  And we have a move-in date, we'll be able to celebrate Christmas there.

NaNo so far can be easily summed up like this: I got ahead a few days, fell one day behind, caught up, fell behind some more, lost a couple days' of writing and managed to just make it on the 29th.  Rewarded myself for managing it, Magnum ice cream is the most amazing thing ever.  I had a hard time about week 2 with this story, I started hating it.  And it wasn't even like it was work-through-it-fix-later kind of hate, it was I-don't-want-to-be-here hate.  Normally I'd take a break to something else but I wasn't going to allow that during November.  I ended up rewriting chapters 2-4 until I got them going in a way that made me like the story again, and I created a dump file for everything I've written but decided is not going to go into the story.  That way I hadn't lost words I fair and square wrote and managed to preserve my chapters.  In eight chapters my two M.C.s had three bad spats and a new character materialized around chapter 4 with some timely conversation.

Well I needed the word boost.  Dialogue is good for that.  Besides, it's not the first time a new character has shown up out of nowhere, and won't be the last either.  We'll see how he shapes up as the story progresses.

I realized what a tricky main character I've designed here, though.  She had some of her memories locked away and starts the story that way, but along with those memories she's forgotten two significant things: the man she loves and the reason for the whole thing in the first place.  She's reunited with said love interest in chapter 2 and has to deal with emotions her heart remembers to a man her mind can't recall.  Pinning down what that would make one say, do, feel and think is interesting, although difficult because it's something I'm having a hard time connecting to.  I've never been in such a situation so what would be a realistic reaction?  When would you follow your heart and when would you follow your head?

It's a challenge.  And I love it.

I'm going for a story with some didn't-see-that-coming kind of twists near the end, and the whole truth of the situation comes out.  Everyone has their piece of the story, or what they think is the story, and with my M.C. acting as sort of a catalyst for the truth it's going to come together nicely.  Plus her mother's going to get into some serious battle action.  It was a topic in the Fantasy forum on the NaNo boards, I think the pet peeve topic, and one commenter's peeve was about how older women never seem to do any of the 'fun' stuff (fight, have adventures, love story, etc).  I didn't add it with a specific goal of bringing that to light, but the point kind of stuck in my head.  Because you know what?  It would be rather fun to see the 'mother' figure kick some butt here and there.  And I was kind of taken by Rene's role in Thor and the scene when she picks up the sword to defend her husband.  I was a little disappointed that she only got one strike off before being knocked aside; I mean come on, this is Lethal Weapon's Lorna Cole and the character comes from the Norse mythology and gods.  Let the lady kick some ass!

Goodness, what a mess I'm surrounded with.  Guess break time is over, I should get to cleaning house.  Again.

Movie night was so much fun!  Except for the stomach ache afterwards haha.  Too many rich foods all at once but damn if it wasn't a good night.  We watched Paranormal Activity 2 and Halloween H20, neither of which were scary per se.  Paranormal Activity 2 had some great jump scares once the movie really got going, but it was kind of drawn out in the beginning.  H20 was...shorter than I remembered.  It was like here's Jamie Lee, here's her new life, here's Michael, here's some dead kids, here's Jamie killing Michael.  The end.  Well it never did compare to the first few originals (Halloween got crappy from four onward).  This weekend we're going to hopefully watch the first Halloween movie and Nightmare on Elm street.  On the menu we're sticking to a simpler layout - pizza, veggies and dip and some sweets from Bulk Barn.  I'm not planning on a repeat of last week thank you, worst night I've had in a long time.  But homemade bruschetta is the most amazing thing ever I got to admit.

Thanksgiving as always was good.  Mom actually cooked instead, but we both did the cheesecake.  OMG the cheesecake...there are no words.  It was beyond amazing.  I can't really stand the taste of pumpkin but in cheesecake it's sweet enough to really enjoy.  It really must be tried even if you hate pumpkin pie.

Of course, all that food means a serious detox is in order.  I need to flush all that out of my system before it decides to hang around, so it's been mostly soups and salads and apples all week.  And twice the water intake.  I might start double-walking Dalila too, although that's hardly inviting right now.  It's so cold out holy geez!  There's been a giant wind for the past couple days which usually means something is on its way (a storm in most cases) but aside from some rain yesterday morning there's been nothing.  Wasn't the best day to do yard work but it had to be done and the front lawn looks so much better now.  Not sure what we're going to do tomorrow, we're still wanting to take Dalila to the falls (not Niagara Falls, these are more local) but tomorrow's too busy a day.  My fingers are crossed for Sunday though!

Time to get my butt moving on writing.  Still about 8k behind.  I'm having flashbacks of my first NaNo experience!

I've had this week to myself, no obligations that require my time, so I'm trying to take advantage of it as much as possible. This sort of feels like the final lap, I have to get done the things that have been sitting around needing to get done that have been bothering me. Since my personality doesn't let me just ignore them and push them aside (though I think they've been pushed aside long enough) then I need to get them done. So far, so good. Monday Review will be back on Monday, I'll be reviewing Liquid Story Binder and there'll be regular activity from here on in. Since I'm kind of out of helpful writerly stuff to review now, I'll probably hit my bookshelf and review some of my favourite authors. I'll have to get back one of my books that I want to review, it's out on loan. Come to think of it, it's been out on loan awhile now...

Finish line, here I come.