Frosted Observations

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So, you know the way you all just come down to the flat and walk in the door?  Yes?  Best not to do that anymore...

So, I sneezed mid-walk last Saturday and put my back out.  Yup, an innocent little sneeze has left me in serious agony.  According to my chiropractor, I have sprained a joint at the base of my spine and possibly another smaller sprain slightly above the first one.  This is, she says, a freak occurance (no, really?) but a violent sneeze will do it to you alright.  Best of all, she says that I was extremely lucky, as people have done much greater damage to discs and such in this manner.  She sees a sneezing related back injury at least once a week and it has left her so paranoid that she practically dives into a ball if she feels a sneeze herself. 

I'd never heard of such things but a sneeze is one thing that puts enormous strain on your body, especially your spine.  I did some research today and will now recommend the following if you are going to sneeze:  bend your knees slightly and either lean back against a wall or some support or put a hand to your back for support.  It's like we're lifting a box.  A better piece of advice might be to sit down if you can but the most important thing is not to let your back slam forward with the force of the sneeze as it's this type of sudden movement that messes you up.

I don't recommend suppressing your sneeze in an effort to avoid injury as apparently this can also cause some nasty things to happen including damage to the ear-drum.  I'm less inclined to buy in to the theory that suppressing a sneeze might cause brain damage - presumably your brain rocks around in your skull.  This one seems to be an urban legend. 

As we're coming in to the time of year for snifflies, please be safe when you sneeze people.  :)

I've done NaNo a couple of times now but this is my first effort at Script Frenzy - the idea is to write 100 pages during the month of April, which should roughly equate to about an hour and a half of screen time.  Unlike NaNo, you can do this with a partner, so I have roped my_name_is_fiki  in to writing it with me.  Expect to be attending his funeral any day now.... 

( Untitled Action Movie )

Yes folks, time for a very rare update...

( Stuff I'm keeping busy with: )

... when you spend all weekend doing everything possible to avoid writing then spend all day at work dreaming about going home to write.  Only to get home and not want to do anything. 

In other news, despite only writing 'Chapter 1' on Saturday (as in, the two words, not an entire chapter), I have actually managed to stay on target with 5334 as of last night.  I'm flying by the seat of my pants this year.  I have a vague plot idea and a vague character but that's about it.  I'm making it up as a I go along which is slowing things down somewhat but at least I get to throw in ninjas whenever I want.  Incompetent ninjas. 

There will also be pirates, robots, monkeys and whatever other craziness I drop into the plot every time I get stuck. 

... when you wake up on November 1st with the insane urge to give out to my_name_is_fiki about the state of the bedroom, clean the kitchen, hoover the sitting room, clear off the coffee table, scrub the bath, cook that soup recipe you just discovered, do internet quizzes, check the NaNo forums and complete all tasks you've been putting off for the last three months.

Ah.. NaNo.  For the procrastinator in you.

Today I have solved an age-old question... what do you do when an earwig crawls into your laptop?

It turns out the answer is... put the query to the rest of the office, whereby they will all crowd around your desk trying to catch a glimpse of said earwig (who doesn't seem keen to go anywhere), until the sole male in the office decides to lift up the laptop and shake it out over your desk.  Then spend a few minutes deciding that it is not, in fact, an earwig at all but some super dooper new-fangled earwig-like creature we've never seen before.  Several moments of debate with the pro-lifers later (as far as I'm concerned, if this is some new species of earwig from abroad then he doesn't have a visa and therefore zero rights) and we have one dead earwig.

I can't remember who told me that earwigs don't actually go in your ears (my mother, I'd imagine), but if they can climb into a warm little port that is in essence the 'ear of the laptop' then they can damn sure get in your ear.  Time to get ear-muffs out I think....

... Seeing a woman in a violently pink meringue of a wedding dress stepping out of a baby-pink, Playboy themed stretch-Hummer-limo and knowing that, no matter how much I smoke, I will never have that few brain cells.*

If ever I was going to laugh myself to death, that was the moment.



*Not even if I'm dropped on my head from a very great height.

Oh Week 3, how I hate you.  Just when I thought I could go back to the computer, you spring all this lack of motivation on me.  I really shouldn't complain, because at a count of 30228 I am doing quite well, but I am 1500 or so words behind where I should be.  As usual, I am blaming Saturday, an evil day where I wake up filled with enthusiasm and then spend it all playing board games and smoking things I shouldn't.  For the last 3 weeks, I have managed the truly amazing total of 427 words on a Saturday.  (Nothing the first week, nothing the third week.)  I got ahead of myself on the second week to make up for it but failed to do that last week in all my general blahness. 

The Plot:  I have one?  How amazing.  It's completely different to what I planned but then you just can't legislate for that moment on a Friday morning where you wake up and discover that your characters have all joined a different plot and failed to inform you.  I had that moment last week.  But I took the lovely farfalla's ever useful advice and spent 20 minutes writing a new outline.  That does seem to have helped.  Oh, except I now have a cast of at least 4 characters to worry about plus extra fluff characters plus one skull named Jim.  I used to have 2.  What I planned as a lovely, thoughtful sci-fi romance journey thing has disintegrated into my main characters going "Can I blow this up?  Please?  You like explosions."

Why yes, my characters, I do like explosions.  I like the way your discussions of them let me watch my word count go up and up.  I like that you think it's the right idea and I know differently.  I don't like the fact that a large part of the story is now about an explosion that is never going to happen but if you're happy, we're all happy.  Right?  Oh wait no.  Not right. 

40% more to go and I'll be finished my 50K but there's no way this story will be over then.  I'm staring down the barrel of at least 60K but probably a little more than that.  I don't think I'll stray from novella to novel territory but I wouldn't be surprised.  I just have to decide if reaching the 50K in the month is enough, or if I want to finish the story?  Not sure if I'll stick with it in December if I don't finish by Nov 30, but do I really need all that added pressure?  Probably not but I do work well under pressure.  :)