Tag Archives: nanowrimo

wednesday reads: so full of failure

wednesday reads: so full of failure
Posted on November 23, 2011 by vicentine
Posted in books, etsy, nanowrimo Tagged , , , , ,

Oh dear, oh dear. It’s November 23 and can you all guess where I am with my word count for NaNoWriMo? Luckily, no, it’s not at zero. That would be pitiful.

I’m floating somewhere between 6 and 7 thousand words. I am supposed to be close to 40,000 by this point. Great. Good work.

Applause.

I’m not going to make excuses…

Okay. Wait. No. I am.

Do you know what happened about 3 days into the month? Yeah, Movember overload. Do you know what I’m selling in my Etsy shop? A super popular, little notepad that has something like 3,000 views and was the catalyst to my dropping NaNoWriMo somewhere around November 5th. I had so many orders flying in that it felt like I was constantly packing things up and heading to the post office.

Then, of course, Christmas inspiration struck and I started planning Christmas parties and wanting to decorate the house and design things for my shop and so, all writing efforts quickly went out the window.

That, and, well, I didn’t have an idea, and I thought I could jump into NaNoWriMo and fly by the seat of my pants, but, clearly, I cannot. I need more of a plan than that, I guess.

So, here I am with my original inventory having sold out yesterday and fully restocked as of today. I am working on this whole logo redesign that I am slowly implementing via various outlets and thinking, “Shoot, I haven’t updated that blog in a bit.”

I’ve been working on a Christmas-y craft that I’ve been photographing along the way and will eventually share that DIY goodness (read: it’s super lame) and will hopefully do some more food fun posts soon, too. It’s been pretty lame around here, what with lots of homemade pizza and nomming on a GIANT ham I bought for so cheap. It fed us for a week and we never want to see ham again (for now, at least). Needless to say, it’s not like there’s anything worthy of posting about a GIANT ham. Unless you want to know the various ways in which we consumed it just to break it up over the week (read: also lame).

Anyway. I added a new page to the site yesterday entitled Features. I’ve been lucky to find myself featured on some pretty rad blogs over the last couple of months and thought I’d share the love. I’m kinda proud of the whole thing. I’m goofy like that.

 

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wednesday reads: nanowrimo day 2

wednesday reads: nanowrimo day 2
Posted on November 2, 2011 by vicentine
Posted in books, nanowrimo Tagged , , , , , , , ,

November blew in like a whirlwind yesterday. With the start of NaNoWriMo and the start of Movember, the whole day was a delicate balancing act of packing up Mustache Note Pads that sold once every few hours, designing a new invitation for a local couple, planning for Christmas and getting those items off to print and trying my darnedest to get a word count started.

By the end of the day, I was at 748 words and effectively, just under 1,000 words shy of the daily word count.

Looks like I have some catching up to do. I have no worries, though, except for that my story is based off of one scene that I’ve been toying with in my mind for ages that doesn’t feel like it goes anywhere because I haven’t sorted out the whys for the scene to start with.

It’s going to be an interesting month, isn’t it?

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wednesday reads: go fresh

wednesday reads: go fresh
Posted on October 19, 2011 by vicentine
Posted in books, reading Tagged , , , , , ,

At the beginning of 2009, I decided to finally start a book blog. I had been no stranger to blogging, having done so for about 11 years by that point.Until then, however, I had mostly kept a very personal blog, writing grocery list type entries about the daily going ons of my life. Exciting, right? Not so much; especially when you’re an average gal and not some controversial socialite in a roaring metropolis.

That was never the point, though. Journaling had always been something I did for myself, stemming from my fear of never wanting to forget those little moments of life that ultimately fade away with time.

It wasn’t until 2007, after a move to Toronto, that I decided to start a blog with a little more focus: big city living.

Apparently, my attention span was about 3 seconds long at the time and it lasted one entry. Pathetic, right?

In 2008, I decided to try my hand at a fashion/bargain hunting blog, as well as a music/concert blog. Both lasted for about 9 entries combined. Having been able to write in a journal/blog daily for just about a decade, my inability to keep up with themed blogs was a touch out of character. I just didn’t seem to have enough to say about one topic. I suppose the 3 second attention span has something to do with that.

Finally, at the tail end of 2008, or maybe sometime in January 2009 after an introspective, drunken New Year’s Eve celebration no doubt, I realised that I was choosing topics that, sure, I had some sort of vague interest in, but wasn’t really in love with. Did I always love clothes? Only when they fit and hugged me with love rather than contempt. Did I always love concerts? Hardly. I hated crowds, rude, young folks because I’m practically 75, and wasting my time waiting around to go just a little bit more deaf, inching myself ever closer to that big hearing aid purchase.

Enter Book Bound, the only focus driven blog that lasted more than a handful of entries. Unfortunately, it, like the rest, eventually fell by the wayside, but only because I got sidetracked and, after too long of a lapse, felt painfully silly and awkward going back to it.

Regardless, Book Bound was more than just a book review blog. I felt book review sites to be too plentiful on the interweb and instead, opted to plainly talk about the books I was reading. I would highlight portions of books that stood out to me and discussed them at length, connecting them to personal situations or life moments at large. It gave me an outlet to talk about books as well as life, in a very round about way.

It went well for about six months. Then, I hopped on a plane, went to England where I was supposed to see one of those last Michael Jackson concerts ever (spoiler: I didn’t see the concert), and came home with one of the worst illnesses ever. Okay. Maybe not ever, but it was pretty awful for a few weeks.

I fell out of my routine and just like that, abandoned Book Bound. I’m sure it hates me by now and has resorted to a making a voo doo doll of yours truly. I guess that explains a lot of things…

HAVING SAID ALL THAT, here we go, starting fresh, with vicentinebooks. Every Wednesday I will either discuss what I’m reading, or what I’m doing in terms of the big, ol’ writing world. NaNoWriMo is less than half a month away and I have every intention to participate again this year, after a two year hiatus. It’s about time I fell back into all of this.

Sometimes, you just need some time to dust away the cobwebs, or clean up after some particularly messy metaphoric life and mental tornadoes. Those are always nasty, nasty storms, aren’t they?

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