Wonder and awesomeness: an ode

I don't think I ever really appreciated Dan, patiently waiting up with me as I struggled to finish an essay, staying up as late as 1am, reading my textbooks for me as I wrote my essay, trying to get that last-minute reference I needed, reading up on a subject he'd never heard of before that day. Going to bed finally, exhausted, on a work night; telling me to wake him up so he could drive me out to Massey to drop my assignment off, even though he knew it could be 5am before I was done, because he knew I didn't like driving when I was that tired.

I find it hard enough, tonight, waiting up till 11pm for Dan, although admittedly I have a raging cold in the head which is making my focus fixate on (a) sleep and (b) my head. My nose, thanks to lozenges, several boxes of 3-ply tissues and a lemon/honey drink, isn't too much of an issue.

He does so much for me, but as I say I have a raging cold and got very little sleep last night, so I don't want to ramble on in some overtired ode to the Wonder and Awesomeness of My Boyfriend.

Just: I never really appreciated him. He does so much for me. I tried helping him tonight, trying to find some fact about accountability in accountancy, and was amazed at how quickly my mind drifted to the Scrubs episode I watched earlier tonight, how difficult I found it to actually focus on the task at hand — helping my boyfriend in the same way he's always helped me. (Now, having finally given up and accepted that even if I found what I was looking for, I probably wouldn't understand the damn thing, I choose rather to blog while I wait either for him to finish his essay or for me to fall asleep at my desk.)

I'm so lucky I found him. He's so good to me.

Evil Editors Unite!

OK, forget NaNoEdMo. Some Kiwis are doing a shorter version of it which they're calling "Evil Editors Unite" — twenty hours' editing during March. Fifty hours, I almost certainly can't do. Twenty, I almost certainly can, although it'll still be a big effort. But I think I'll go for that one, now.

In other news, hadn't recovered from over-tiredness as well as I thought I had. After dinner I kinda stretched out on the couch until Dan gently got me up, walked me down the hall, into the bedroom, lay me down, pulled off my boots and put the blanket over me. With a vague murmur of "OK I'll have a quick nap... but only for twenty minutes...", I pretty much instantly lost consciousness and refused to be woken for an hour and a half.

But this week should be a lot easier. I didn't do overtime today, and probably won't the rest of the week due to other commitments.

And I still, of course, need to fit in about an hour a day of editing. I'm actually quite looking forward to it. I think I'll go back to my first novel rather than my most recent one. My first one's much more absurd — mostly because I had planned very little for it and was making a lot up as I went along (I don't know what my characters should do now. Oh, I know, I'll make them magically disappear and go into another realm by mistake). But I don't think there's a huge amount to go to finish it.

I wonder if finishing counts as editing? I suspect not, but no matter; it's finishing that I need to do. I want to get these two stories done so I can get the hard copies of them, and time's rapidly running out for that; my first voucher expires in April. There's no point to me in getting unfinished stories printed. Even getting unedited stories printed will be annoying; printing an unfinished story would just be pointless.

Tomorrow, I need to actually put my money where my mouth is, though. We'll see how that goes.

NaNoEdMo

May I have a few extra hours? That would be great. One more every day for sleeping in, a couple for hanging out with my boyfriend and other friends, and of course an extra two hours or so every night for writing. Plus a few more hours during the weekend would be just spiffy.

But that's OK. I can make it fit. I'm recovered from last week, and am happily looking forward to all the extra moolah I earned with my overtime.

This month I'd really like to complete NaNoEdMo (Editing Month — fifty hours of editing time), simply because I want to get two of my NaNoWriMo novels finished (just a first draft — but I want the stories finished, no skipped scenes or cut-off endings). Getting a first draft is one step closer to getting a novel ready to be submitted to a publisher, though I'm starting to doubt I can get that done in time for my 101 deadline — 18 February 2010. That's less than a year away, and I haven't yet finished the first draft, let alone reworked, rewritten, rewritten again, edited, line-edited, shown to test readers, rewritten again, line-edited again....

Still, that's a few steps down the road for me yet. For now, focus on the next: fifty hours of editing in March. (And painting the house on the good days. The breakfast bar is now nearly finished, thanks to the rainy weather on the weekend making exterior work impossible.)

But ye gods, fifty hours in March — that's nearly two hours a day. I don't think I actually have that amount of time. And you can't exactly push yourself to do it faster like you can with NaNoWriMo.

I don't go into NaNoEdMo aiming to succeed. Just hoping to get closer to my personal goal: finishing the first draft of one itty bitty novel.