Aagh no internet access

What have they done to me? They have cut off my communication to the world.
Yes, my ISP has decided that I'm not to be on the internet at home at the moment and because things are so tight money wise there is nothing I can do about it.

The good thing about having no internet connection and no TV, aargh! is that I'm getting stuck into the writing. I have surpassed the 60k word mark now and hurtling towards the finish line. Have reread what I wrote in Nano and some of which will need to be rewritten. Especially the fact that Matt has morphed from drummer to keyboardist to guitarist but that's cool.

There'll only be sporadic updates here (with no piccies) as I need to go to the library to find a broadband connection. We only have one computer at work that allows us internet access and that's on dial-up so you are lucky to even pay one bill during a tea break. Sites such as blogger and blogexplosion are not accessible from my normal work computer! The forbidden zone.

Happy New Year everyone!

Missed it by that much!

Moving Pictures poster from Dolly magazine (1983?). Signed by all of band (in pen, so you can't see it in this small pic) after a gig at Campbelltown RSL which I forced my father to take me to because I was only 16. Maybe you can see Alex's autograph scrawled across his neck in the close-up below.

57,856 / 75,000 (77.1%)

Where does the weekend go? It's 8.30 pm Sunday evening and I'm facing a 5 day working week with two 12 hour days in there. Am I a glutton for punishment or what? I'm afraid not. I just need the money at this point.

Every second week at work, our social club holds a Lotto game. $2 for 4 entries. Pick 4 numbers out of 15, and you've got to get all the numbers to win the dosh. On Friday, it was $500 and guaranteed to go off. They would keep drawing until they had a winner. So, because I knew someone had to win, I put in an extra 4 games, in addition to my regular entry.

The first numbers were drawn 1, 4, 7, 15.

Damn! One of my extra games was 1, 4, 7, 14. As Maxwell Smart would have said, 'Missed it by THAT much!' Anyway, someone finally won the $500 after 9 draws.

Shame, it would have more than paid my excess on my insurance to get the replacement TV, DVD player etc that was taken out by lightning weeks ago. So instead, I'll keep working the overtime.

Oh well, instead of TV watching, I've been writing so it's all good. But I've been writing about the one night, the last night of the tour, for so long now, that surely this one night has gone for more than 12 hours. And the characters are showing no signs of even being tired. I suppose they're hyper after the gig. But guys, you will have to check out of the hotel in the morning. You will regret this!

Teenage Musical Obsession

Signed by Alex Smith in August this year.

56,500 / 75,000 (75.3%)

Thank god, it's Saturday! After two 12 hours days of work this week plus the usual 8 hour plus days, I'm thankful to have the weekend to concentrate on writing. The characters are talking to each other in my head, entertaining themselves when I'm not at the keyboard or with notebook in hand.

I have transcribed the last couple of days writing, will surrender the computer very soon, read the papers and go back to the long hand.

Perhaps I wasn't such a Moving Pictures obsessive in my youth after all? I don't seem to have much Moving Pictures stuff. Sure I had the two L.P's and some piccies but maybe my 'stuff' just didn't survive the last twenty years. I've got an poster (from Dolly mag) autographed by all the band members after a gig (will post pic later), I have most of the singles still, but I don't seem to have many articles. I can't remember having a scrapbook on Moving Pictures though I might have had one and it's now a black hole in my memory. I definitely remember having an Abba scrapbook which probably went to the tip when they were so uncool. And I also went through a rather obsessive John Lennon phase and had loads of John Lennon/Beatles stuff. Aside from that, my other musical obsession would be the Eurythmics, whom I have seen in concert four times.

As for the lack of Moving Pictures memorabillia - well, there's always Ebay to make amends. I won an 80's Oz music mag which I hope to receive shortly and I've just bid on an 80's Rolling Stones mag. Perhaps Smash Hits wasn't around that far back. More likely, I just didn't have the fundage to collect as much as I could.

Back to the writing....

Who was your teenage musical obsession????

Surprise

12 hours of the day job today. It was dark when I finished so it kind of defeats the purpose of referring to it as the day job. But at least I've got the day off tomorrow. During which, I do the unpaid job of my father's accounts. Maybe I need to find myself a rich arts patron.

The other day while browsing through the bookshop, I found Working Class Zero by Rob Payne. I'd been looking for it for a while, and it had been discounted. So when I caught up with my partner I said, 'Have you got a spare $5 to buy me a Christmas present?'

So he gives me $5, and tells me to go and get the book.

I said, 'Don't you want to go get it for me?'

'No,' he says, 'I want it to be a surprise.'

Okay then. I'll probably have to wrap it too. Can't have him knowing what he's bought me.

55,860 / 75,000 (74.5%)

Update

The day job got in the way again today but I managed to write some more during breaks and while waiting for my lift home. About to be kicked off the computer so this is only a rough word count:

55,304 / 75,000 (73.7%)

And I really like the phrase 'sex-lit smile' in the lexigram!

Alex Smith - Lexigram

same smile

I melt

his tale

heals time

lithe lies

steal heat

his sex-lit smile

let him steal me

Googling the past

Do you ever google people from your past to find out what they're up to?

So today I googled an old boyfriend and found a site that very much sounded like him, especially with the computer programming background. Okay, so he's still around.

I googled another: a theatre producer who hated having his photo taken. In fact the only photo I managed to half-snap of him, he was covering the top half of his face with a newspaper, and you can only see his smile and his beard. So it did not surprise me at all, that google yielded no likely results.

Then I googled the name of a lady who was my boss 10 years ago. To see what position she's now in, which roost in the arts world she's now ruling. The first result that came up was an obituary from 7 weeks ago. It was definitely her. I recognised her children's names. But the link took me nowhere. No further information as to what had happened. I wasn't expecting that result. I'm feeling sad. For her, because she wasn't old. For her adult sons, for losing their mother. I didn't always get on with her, she was a pretty tough boss, but I admired her for her toughness. Something I've never been able to achieve.

As you can tell from this post, I'm still sucked into the net. I blame BlogExplosion. It's all so tempting to surf blogs to earn credits for their Christmas competition and to do battle in Battle of the Blogs. So, not many words have been added. Although I have been playing around with lexigrams which I will post later. And writing a report which is due tomorrow.

54,863 / 75,000 (73.2%)

And Christmas has finally arrived in our house. After my cat's complaints that there was no tree on his blog Diary of a Mad Cat, the tree is now up, giving him a great ambush position. There are presents under it, and the Chrisco has arrived, so the cupboards are jampacked. I wonder how long it will take for the cat to unwrap the presents. A week, perhaps?

sucked into a black hole

I love the internet. Sometimes I love it too much, and get sucked into the black hole, to be spat out hours later with little memory of where I've been and why.

The other night I googled Moving Pictures & Alex Smith to see if I could come up with some inspiration. It lead me to a website on Countdown which listed all the old episodes. I remember seeing some on Rage early in the wee hours of the morning and they're so funny to look back on now. Wonder if they will ever release any of it on DVD.

Yesterday, I tinkered with this blog, adding the blog explosion logo, the blogshares logo, the stats counter into the new template. And then I surfed Blog Explosion for far too long.

But I did listen to a lot of CD's yesterday very loud including the Homebake CD which came free with the Sydney Morning Herald. I think I'm showing my age here, but some of those songs sounded like a cat was being strangled.

Did I write? Not a lot. Although the line I ended on late last night was interesting: Stu can go fuck himself.
Mmm, Kat, that's a lot of anger y0u're carrying around.

So progressive word count

54,425 / 75,000 (72.6%)

Not a huge increase considering its the weekend. But I am now going to ban myself from the computer for a couple of hours and write some long hand, that should get me back into the swing of things.

Enough heat already.

Going to work is respite from the heat. And then at lunchtime it was sunny, twenty minutes later, the rain poured down, and thunder struck. Shame, they had to take us off the phones during the storm, so more words were written.

The heat is bringing out all the critters. Spiders, ants, cockroaches. Just had one crawl across the computer screen. I would've taken a picture and posted it to the blog but someone nicked my batteries out of my digital camera. But at least the cat is on cockie patrol. Although he prefers chasing grasshoppers. It's starting to cool a bit now - it has been really hard to sleep the last couple of nights. And I need some sleep after the weekend trip. I was finding it really hard to stay awake at work today.

And this shoddy place I live in- double storey townhouse - air conditioning downstairs, nothing upstairs, not even insulation. Dumb or what? But nothing is built to last! We moved here in March. This morning I bumped the towel rail with my elbow and the whole thing fell apart. Cheap as shit landlords!

Enough complaining! Now for the progressive word count:

53,205 / 75,000 (70.9%)

The 75,000 goal is arbitrary. I don't know how many more words it will take to tell Kat's story. I'll let her be the guide. She was just singing at the final gig with the band, and her hubby turned up and tried to drag her off the stage, so she kicked him in the nuts. Now she's wondering where she's going to spend the next week, because after that, it probably ain't a good idea for her to go home! AVO, anyone?

I'm back!

Back from Sydney, back from the rat race. But there is no escape from this heat.

The drive on Friday was fine, pleasant temperature, not too much traffic, good timing, and although we arrived in Sydney in peak hour, we took roads that crossed the middle of the metropolis and seemed to be travelling against the main traffic so that was a bonus. It's sad that I can visit Sydney without going into the city, without crossing the Harbour Bridge, without gazing at the Harbour, but with only two days in town, there was no time for anything but the wedding and a bit of browsing in the suburbs.



The wedding was lovely. First church wedding I've been to in over ten years, but it was a lovely service and my cousin the bride looked stunning, along with her sister, as a gorgeous bridesmaid.

The drive back on Monday was hideous! The temperature was making the mercury pop and I thought I was going to collapse with heat stroke. We tried to get some respite at the National Motorcyle Museum but at $11 entry each to gawk at a bunch of bikes, we headed back out into the heat. We then had some respite when we stopped in at Gladstone to visit my father, at one of the popular watering holes, before arriving back home at around 9.30pm. And it was back to work the next day.

As for writing, I mused and I scribbled. Trying hard to keep the write every day habit up, even if it's only 500 words. But the inner editor has emerged from the cupboard and has been screaming in my ear, that it's all crap. I have to somehow lock her back in the cupboard under the stairs. Then when I've finished the first draft she can come back, and tell me why its crap!

At this point, I'm another 2,500 words along, but not transcribed. Word count update will happen when I've transcribed, although I'm not sure how much more there is to write! 30,000 words perhaps?

Creativity inspires creativity

No new words today. Took a break and treated myself to a new hair colour and cut. Feeling good, and ready to tackle the family wedding on Saturday in Sydney.

Friday will be around eight hours in the car - plenty of thinking time. Musing time for the muse. With the return journey on Monday.

One thing I have noticed in writing this novel - this is the first time that I have written much of the work with headphones on, and the music turned up so loud I think I'm at a concert. It has helped to get into the mood of a lot of the scenes.

What have I been playing? Moving Pictures (of course!), Chris Wilson (what a voice!) , Alanis Morissette and Deborah Conway. Actually, Deborah Conway's last album gave me the title of this blog. The first song is called Stay on Track (stay on track, don't look back) and I thought Write on Track would be an appropriate name to focus on writing . I purchased the Deb Conway album at the Byron Bay Writers Festival in August - Deborah was there for the launch of a book called Songwriters Speak, and had done a gig the night before at The Great Northern which was fabulous. Don't worry - I also bought books at the Festival!

I went to Byron Bay Writers Festival in search of my writing mojo, as it had taken a holiday or something. I came back totally inspired, and a day later, saw the Moving Pictures gig (which inspired the Nano work) and now I have another 50k words and a novel to finish!

Creativity inspires creativity! I've got to get out more - music, film, theatre, art. Sometimes I miss living in Sydney for that reason - the huge selection of culture. But on the other hand, when I lived in the middle of the rat race, I was so busy soaking up the culture, I was rarely home and I hardly ever wrote. Now, in regional NSW, the selection of culture is limited, so I'm writing. So, it's a mixed blessing.

I would dearly love to catch some culture this weekend however with only two days in the city devoted to family, it's not going to happen. And two days in Sydney will probably be enough to convince me (just by the traffic) that I don't want to live there again.

Be back after the manic weekend.

I'm a winner

50,113 / 50,000 (100.2%)

I'm a Nanowrimo winner! Yay! First time in three years of the challenge and I'm really pleased.

The story is far from over and I still have no idea how it will end but to have written that many words in a month. Cool! (Plus the 5000 or so finishing off the other first draft).

I didn't think I was going to get the validation. Still having shocking thunder storms here so I didn't think I'd get the words typed up in time. But I managed to type up the last remaining words I wrote today, validated, got my purple winner bar, my 'winner certificate' and the icons.

And here is the winner icon!

One of the reasons why I have not written so fast previously is because I don't like letting go of the story, and I'm frightened that 'that's all she wrote', that I will never have another decent idea again. This month, I wrote without a plot, with just a vague feeling I wanted to capture about reliving youth through music, and from that the charactes and the situation developed.

'If you build it, they will come.'

If you face that blank page and just start writing, it will happen. Trust the universe!

Finally Kat gets some action.

47,193 / 50,000 (94.4%)

I said to my partner tonight that I needed to do his computer work before I started typing up today's writing, because if I started transcribing tonight, I would have to keep writing the scene until Kat gets laid. Yes, that's the direction we're heading in at the moment. And it's only taken nearly 50,000 words to get there, and that includes skipping scenes.

I'm sure that this is the longest time that it has taken for any of my main characters to have sex. Usually they've jumped into bed a long time before now. But she had some issues to sort out first.

It's 10.46 pm and yet again I have to work tomorrow, but I'm determined to make that 50,000 words and beyond.

So currently Kat and Matt (man I've just realised that rhymes so I'm going to have to change his name) are at a teppanyaki restaurant, then they're going to the observatory for some stargazing. It's been a long time since I have eaten in a teppanyaki restaurant - I may have to put it on my own agenda soon next time I'm in Sydney.

Sprinting to the finish line

45,395 / 50,000 (90.8%)

Closer, closer, closer. I can do this. Shame I have to go to work and talk to customers. But I'm nearly there. Just under 10% to write in two days. Course I can.

The good thing is that all 45,395 words are transcribed, so I won't have a mad rush typing the last 10,000 words of the challenge in a couple of hours - although I can type faster than I write, I can't type THAT fast!

And yes, I did write myself into the book as a character. It was strange writing about myself from the main character's point of view. But it was also fun.