I got a new laptop!

gratuitous picture of my face

Yep, this lady got a brand new laptop courtesy of the love and generosity of my wonderful boyfriend.  I am so excited! I have missed having a usable laptop to work on. Desktops are nice but I like to be able to write/blog/tumblr/watch hulu anywhere in the house I feel like it. Plus I can take it with me places (you know if I want places.)

I have been having lots of fun personalizing everything and getting used to using Windows 8 as I have been using 7 for quite some time. The apps threw me off at first but now I really kind of dig it, mostly for the 8tracks and mahjong apps that I installed, haha.

On top of playing around with my new computer I am trying to get my writing done as we are in the final week of Nanowrimo -only a few more days! Currently (as in right now while I'm typing this and before I go back to work on it) I am at 41.6k words out of the necessary 50k. So close! Although even when I hit 50k I won't be anywhere close to finished with the novel. Right now I'm probably half-ish the way through, maybe less. I tend to write my novels kind of long and slim it down in the editing process.

Aaaand Thanksgiving is this week for me and my American readers. I am going to be eating with my grandfather and some of my family, which I haven't really done in a few years. I'm not super close to a lot of my family but I love my grandfather and am happy to get to spend some time with him.

Welp, this has been a random update about my life. Hope everyone is having a good week!

Manda Rave

Nanowrimo

It's November, which means it's Nanowrimo time -National Novel Writing Month. I know a few of my readers are also participating this year, so good luck to you my dears! I am already a bit behind as I didn't write at all on Sunday because I had a hangover and didn't want to do anything except for watch Netflix and eat. Which is exactly what I did.

The night before said hangover -went to a party as Zoe Benson.

The novel I am working on is unique because of the way the ideas for it have come to me. Usually I get characters first and a general plot idea which I can then write a good first few chapters for. Then as I continue to write more characters develop, as does the story line and everyone's background. For this I got the setting first and ideas for minor characters. My main character and plot were some of the last things to come to me. And because everything came to me so backwards, I am also having a hard time with the beginning. Right now the scenes are kind of a mess and there isn't enough dialogue. Although this is in the beginning and it's not too bad...

Maitland grew up knowing two things for sure. One, she was a perfectly ordinary human girl. Two, her parents were perfectly ordinary human parents. It wasn’t until after her mother and father got sick and died when she started accidentally raising small rodents from the dead. It was then that she realized she might not actually know anything at all.

Right now I am just powering through it, writing what comes to me even though I'm not particularly satisfied with it. The first few chapters are going to need a lot of work. But editing comes later, and in the mean time I am just going to keep going until I get to the stuff I actually want to be writing -witty banter, accidental zombie raising, monster hunting, that kind of stuff.

I know I have been on-and-off with this blog lately. That will probably continue to be the case throughout November as I am focusing most of my attention on writing this novel, catching up on my reading, and dealing with my personal life. his space is very important to me, but I can't afford to put it first right now.

As always, thank you so much to my loyal readers, you guys are great and never fail to put a smile on my face.

Manda Rave