Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Social Media Thoughts and Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone! I wish you all peace and joy over the holidays.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Blog’s question for this month was:

How about social media confessions? Do you twitter, FB, etc besides blogging? Why or why not?

I should admit first thing that I’m not a social person. In fact, I’m a borderline hermit. So social networking does not come easily to me.

I didn’t join Facebook because their insistence on sharing all our information horrifies me. Admittedly, we can opt out – with some difficulty, I’m told – but they’ve overridden that setting in the past. I simply don’t trust Facebook.

Tweeting? I’m amazed anyone has the time to follow in Twitter. I certainly don’t have the patience to read reams of everyday chatter. If I want that, I’ll go visit my mom. (Hi, Mom!) (Did I mention I’m a hermit?)

Blogging. Le sigh. I usually forget to blog. I feel I don’t often have anything interesting to say. I do read my friends’ blogs, though it don’t comment as often as I should. And sometimes when I try, Blogger acts up.
More sighs. ;-)

How about you? Do you find the time to Tweet? Do you trust Facebook?

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

I Survived NaNo

Better yet, I finished NaNoWriMo, though it was a close thing.  Now I have a cute little badge for the blog.

I didn't manage to write every day, though that was my goal.  Came down with a bug early on that laid me out for three days.  Le sigh.  ;-)   I forgot to add words to the counter until the next day a few times.  But overall I'm pleased with my output. 

It needs editing of course, but first it needs finishing - I expect the first draft to clock in between 90,000 and 100,000.  I'll need to cut or condense the boring stuff that currently contains nuggets I want to mine for characterization.  I surprised myself with the information that popped out of my subconscious when my characters were chattering away.  And that's one point of first drafts.  The writer can't fix a story until it's on paper or in a file.

I'm a layered editor, so I know I'll need several passes to add description and internal characterization, to clarify emotions, and generally add the sparkle to the story.  All of that has to wait for the completed draft and the cooling-off period.  Getting to close to a work makes it impossible to edit.

For now, I'll breathe one sigh of contentment, and dig back into my novel.

On a different note, I'd like to remind you that today was Laura's post for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Blog: Social Media Confessions.  This is a topic I'll need to think about!