so, final word count during the month of november = 37, 841 of not total crap.  but still not an official win.  darn you, christmas show, for having tech week right after thanksgiving!  i think i might post parts here and maybe also some commentary about what was going on during the writing of those parts.  but don't hold me to it cause i might not do that.

well, here it is day 13, and i am about 2,000 words behind if you go by the 1,667 words/day formula.  i feel like i'm in a tiny slump but this morning's writing went all right but i obviously didn't get enough words.  i have a production meeting this afternoon and should totally be writing up my shift plot right now, but i am stalling because i sort of hate doing shift plots.  i like having them, they are kind of the representative "stage manager" piece of paperwork and really very helpful, but  i hate having to do them.  they always end up getting redone like 5 times - they are NEVER right the first time and usually not the second or third.  probably sort of like a novel but way more boring to read.

so between the election (whew!)  and rehearsals (which carry cumbersome daily reports and production meeting notes) and the important everyday things like child care and eating, i have fallen behind where i should be on my word count.  but i'm happy with what i've written so far.

word count = 6099!!!  i only need to get up to 8335 to catch up!!!

here it is, the first 1735 words of my nano, and proof that i can make word count every day!  and the day isn't even close to over.

( chapter one starts behind the cut )

so, it's good momentum to start with, and we'll see how the rest of the day goes.  i have rehearsal most of this week, so hopefully i can keep it up.

O. M. G.

there is a game online, i guess made by some computer/biochem people from the university of washington where you FOLD PROTEINS.  it's called "foldit."  the cool part is that they use your results from playing the game to help computer-model the way proteins they are researching actually fold.  so when you play, you are helping science :)  or you can feel all right telling yourself that.  there's also a competitive element to it because they rank you based on a point system - the lower the energy in your conformation, the more points.  so you can go smack-talk the other science geeks.

fold.it/portal/

because it's the only way i could actually get through the month of november and have any hope for winning at nano.  seriously, it's like an extra 4 hours a day to write.  luckily my daughter still takes a nap in the afternoon so i can take a nap too if i get in the weeds.

so, nano.  how the heck am i going to write 50 thousand words?  i made myself enter a fanfic challenge-type thing so i had practice at a deadline and writing a bunch of words.  but that's like 5K, a mere 10% of 50K.  how????!?

on a completely different note, i have to go to concord mills mall tomorrow.  actually, i have to go to the honda dealership in concord tomorrow afternoon and there's no way i'm hanging out at the dealership with my 3 year old while they do the regular maintainence thingy on the car, so i'm taking their offer of a shuttle service to the big scary mall.  we will be visiting build-a-bear and hoping the stuffing machine will not make weezy cry this time like it did the first and only other time we went to build-a-bear.  it is kind of creepy, when you think about it.  sort of stepford/frankenstein bears.

ETA: she totally cried, but got over it quickly.

the nobel prizes are starting to get announced and i was happy to see that robert gallo (who essentially bogarted a strain of a virus from the pasteur institute in france and then declared he had discovered HTLV - which was the name for what ended up being called HIV - forgive me if the details are not exactly right) was NOT included in the hysiology/medicine prize.  that is what you get for stealing other people's research.  not to mention that little stunt cost out government 6 million dollars or so when it came out that he did it (after he got a patent on the virus for an antibody-based test; we had to pay the french government back royalties).  punk.

i love to think things through before doing anything about them.  so i am currently making little cards with plot points on them for my nano.  lots of little cards.  it reminds me of doing research term papers in college, only i have to make the stuff up instead of find it in big science-y books.  the best part of these little cards is that they can be re-organized if needed.  right now they're in a zipper bag, but they may graduate to a cork board if i can put it up high enough that a certain set of grabby 3 year old hands can't reach them.  but all these little cards make me wonder if i won't end up thinking myself into a corner, that i might lose any desire to change up major parts of the plot even if it would serve the story just because it's not in the cards, so to speak.  or i could be brilliant at little cards and do just fine, who knows.

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snag away, just credit, please!

you meet the most interesting people at the theatre...one of my running crew for godspell is a biology teacher, as it turns out, and tonight she was lesson planning before the show started and i walked past and was like "the Krebs cycle rocks!" (well, it does) and we subsequently geeked out about biology and i actually ended up starting the show like 2 minutes late because i was too busy talking to go call places...oops.

anyway, now i'm worried i'm going to burn myself out on my nano if i plan too much.  it's very like me to worry, but not very like me not to plan if i have the opportunity to plan.  i love a good plan.  and sometimes i'm mostly okay if my plan crashes and burns, so why not plan, right?  i just have to remember that its over 30 days left till nano so i might need to pace myself.

and i would like to take this opportunity to express my love for daytrotter, super-cool music site; they might be able to take credit if i make it through nano.  they have free downloads of their own studio sessions with bands i heart.  here:  www.daytrotter.com/  

apparently i'm going to be using the month of october to do some hard-core biochem research so i don't look like an idiot when i try to explain all my lovely fancy ideas about hemoglobin.  i made it harder on myself, i think, because the person/people explaining are research scientists and the person they are explaining to works in hematology...hmmm...maybe i should put some non-science person in the room with them so there is a valid reason for the explanations to be less technical (= boring and wordy and really requiring diagrams).  i can't imagine it would be interesting to read a bunch of overly technical science crap about how hemoglobin works normally and then how my people can manipulate it.  that's right!  manipulating hemoglobin!  my main plot point is that there are people who can either manipulate someone else's hemoglobin (and for god's sake, i'm going to start abbreviating it - Hb = hemoglobin) or interpret electrical/electrochemical impulses from some else's Hb.  so these fancy people can do things like "hear" thoughts in close proximity, change someone's blood to rust goo by oxidizing the iron in their Hb (or maybe stanch massive bleeding in an emergency), keep them from carrying oxygen in their blood (or increase the amount of oxygen if they're being helpful), speed up the breakdown of Hb to build up catabolites and make someone light-sensitive, cure sickle-cell anemia, maybe even rework some of their Hb so the iron is replaced with magnesium and turn it into chlorophyll so they can make their own sugars for nutrients.  farfetched, yes.  but it amuses me.  i just have to figure out how to make it not boring!!

anyway, maybe i will try to post some simpler explanations of the science-y aspects on here as i go and try to get it nano-ready.  it would probably help me clarify and keep unnecessary words out of my nano.  and i can't believe i'm already trying to keep words OUT of  my nano.  how silly of me!

i started doing character sketches for my nano characters and it seemed to jumpstart me.  but that could've also been adrenaline from actually committing to doing nano in print.  either way, 2 of the 3 MCs have names now and some details worked out, so yay, me!  i also think i found a title that will work for what i want to write.  it is hard to think up good titles that other people haven't already used.  i first got the idea for my nano from this here poem by edna st. vincent millay, who rocks the sonnet like nobody since shakespeare:

From Fatal Interview
VIII

Yet in an hour to come, disdainful dust,
You shall be bowed and brought to bed with me.
While the blood roars, or when the blood is rust
About a broken engine, this shall be.
If not today, then later; if not here
On the green grass, with sighing and delight,
Then under it, all in good time, my dear,
We shall be laid together in the night.
And ruder and more violent, be assured,
Than the desirous body's heat and sweat
That shameful kiss by more than night obscured
Wherewith at length the scornfullest mouth is met.
Life has no friend; her converts late or soon
Slide back to feed the dragon with the moon.
                                        --E. St. V. M.

did i mention i heart her?  i do.  and i think i am going with "Blood to Rust" for my title.  i call "dibs" if anyone else was thinking of using that.  and, no, it's not about vampires.  just blood.  and rust, conveniently enough.  and other stuff, including some UST between 2 of my MCs that i am hoping will be thick enough to cut with a machete.  i am getting pretty excited about this nanowrimo idea; the possibility that i could crank out 50K words about the same characters, much less in a month, makes me sort of awed, in the scared to death way as well as in the potential reams of pride way.  we'll see!
--Hb

p.s. so on a "weird coincidence" note: i am listening to a LONG playlist that i made a while ago and as i went to post this, "honey and the moon" by joseph arthur started playing.  it's a lovely song, but the reason this is exciting is that one of the lyrics goes: "we're made out of blood and rust, looking for someone to trust without a fight" - spooky.

all right, so i'm the first to admit that hemoglobin is kind of a weird quasi-obsession to have for a person who is not a scientist by degree.  i do consider myself a scientist by virtue of love for the subject matter, also for a moderate amount of coursework in the subject of science.  i have a theory that most things that tend to bemuse people (and i think i probably mean non-scientists here) can be boiled down to proteins.  really.  i use the words "theory" and "most" because i'm sure there are plenty of things that can't be explained by proteins.  but i don't care much about those things.  i am all about proteins, this one in particular.  i may yet make a career of hematology for that very reason.

i swear i won't wax poetic about hemoglobin every post i make for days on end.  i actually have a "grand scheme" kind of purpose for starting this LJ.  more clarification later; i reserve the right to wimp out.