I don’t know why, though I am sure a psychiatrist could lay it out for me, but I get more writing done when I report my status on my blog. Lord knows, I am reasonably sure that those of your reading don’t care about my current words count but it makes me feel weirdly accountable so I am going to keep doing it if its OK with you.

Unfortunately, though, while NaNoWriMo gave me a simple measure of how much I had completed, there is no good way to report editing other than from me to just say, “Finished Chapters x thru k today” or whatever so I think that is what I will do. I am really eager to stop mucking with it and just hand it over to my readers to start moving the thing towards a done state.

Yes I am a control freak and yes this is my baby but enough is enough. Let’s finish this thing.

Here is the wall I have hit with my book. This book is huge, the biggest thing that I have ever written. This is causing me massive problems because whenever I get interrupted and have to take a week or two off of writing, I totally forget where I am. It’s not just a matter of “Did I stop at Chapter 10 or 11?” It’s an issue where I don’t know which draft is newest or don’t remember whether I explained such and such. Exposition has been a huge problem because I end up explaining things multiple times or not at all because I forget if I already explained it.

I know what I need to do. I need to be able to sit down and work non-stop on the book for a good chunk of time and then I would be able to knock the whole thing off. Unfortunately, time is something I don’t really have an abundance of.

No one has just a solid amount of time to work on one thing (be it their book or whatever) in real life, however. Even professional writers have a million other things on their plate including raising their families and whatnot. If I am going to do this for real, I need to just figure out a way to keep track of all the balls I have in the air at the same time as doing everything else. I don’t see myself ever having the luxery of working on nothing but my book.

So I am creating a new spreadsheet. I am hoping that if I have a little chapter summary of each chapter and other info, it will be easier for me to pick the book up mid way rather than having to go back and re-map out. Anyone have a better idea, please feel free to share it.

I am going to work for a little right now on it using my new system. Let’s see how well it works!

My pace has slowed down some now that I’m back to normal work flow but I am cool with that. Yeah, I am still reading that Peter Rundoon book. It’s boring as heck. I am almost done, I should finish it soon.

I only finished 3 more books this time out, I am pathetic, I know.

That said, I just got a ton of books in the mail from PaperBackSwap so my hope is to do a whole bunch of reading next week while my husband is gone on a business trip to Germany. Of course, I also plan to get a ton of work done that week as well as to finish my novel and lose 25 pounds so I may be biting off a bit more than I can chew here. I got a lot of books about writing which I hope I will be inspired to read during Script Frenzy.

I must say, I really like the Myst series based on the computer games. I owe that series a whole blog post at some point.

Anyway, here is where I am currently. How about you?

We haven’t had a good psycho rant on this blog for a while so this is probably overdue.

I know that there are plenty of people older than me who like text messaging. But as soon as I think about it, all I think of is, I am too old for that crap. The whole way they write it without the “e.” F that man. This has got to be the stupidest trend since they started inserting rappers in the middle of what are otherwise perfectly good songs and I am seriously counting down the minutes until this ish is OUT.

I don’t like text messaging. I really cannot stand it. The only times I see it being an acceptable form of communication is if you are in an emergency and cell phone calls are not allowed, IE in a hospital or if the person is in a meeting.

When my little cousin or my brother sits there and is staring at the cell phone screen while they are supposed to be at a family gathering, that is just freaking rude. And, seriously, with all the wonderful ways to keep in touch like video chat and telephone and even instant messanging, would anyone want to thumbcramp their message into 140 characters so that its barely readable. Yeah, man, nothing says you value my time like making me read “ttyl8r mn i luv u lol c2ur mom.” I just had to waste 5 minutes of my life trying to figure out if you have developed brain damage or if that is some kind of code and you are trying to warn me that you are being spied on or something. That is 5 freaking minutes I will never get back!

Even the people who speak relative English in texts, I still don’t understand the appeal. If your at work and you cannot do a full phone call, email me or something. With how long it takes to write with your thumbs, it would take less time. Unless you are one of those freaky people who can text really fast. When I see little kids doing that I just pray this trend is over soon or we are going to be a race of mutantly large thumbed freaks in a few years.

But even people who don’t have the cell phone attached to their eyes at all time still drive me nuts. Don’t text me to say, “I miss you, we should chat.” Freaking call me if you want to chat with me. This happens all the time and it kills me. I always call people back. Why can’t you just freaking call me? The fact that you texted me instead of calling in the first place tells me you don’t really want to talk to me.

My biggest issue with this is that I get charged 25 cents every time someone else texts me. WTF? I don’t get the option to refuse the text so how can you bill me for that. This drives me insane, especially when someone sends me a 2 letter text like “OK” or “Hi!” Or when my little cousins text me a chain letter. I want the option to have anyone who text messages me get a message before they send the text that states, “Understand that you will be causing Hillary to be billed 25 cents and that she will probably really start to hate you after about 50 cents of inane bathering so don’t you think you would be better off calling her instead?” This way, people with legit emergencies would still get through but the people who are sending me stupid crap might actually think about their actions for a second.

Yes, I know that some people have the cash to burn on unlimited text message packages. Freaking woop-de-doo for those people. I don’t see the point in wasting my money on an unlimted package when I don’t send text messages. Having to buy an unlimited package because the people in my life get to, essentially, bill me 25 cents whenever they get the whim is freaking stupid. Don’t assume everyone gets unlimited texts just because you do.

I don’t want to be an ass but its gotten to the point where I have to just level with people as politely as possible. I straight up sat down with my cousins and told them that if they want to send me forwards, send it to my email or gmail chat via SMS so I at least don’t get billed for it. I told my brother he owes me a quarter for every “k” he texts me. But my real problem is with the cell phone companies who bill me for other people’s stupid habbit.

I cannot wait until we are a few decades down the road and we have to explain to our kids how we used to get billed if other people wanted to use this ineffectual method to communicate with us. You see kids, instead of seeing or hearing the person you wanted to talk to, back in my day, the preferred method of communication was to type a few random letters and numbers with your thumbs so that the person on the other side had to guess what words they really stood for. It was wonderful!

You know what set this whole tirade off? This message someone sent me:

Njoyd the ltrs. Its about time!

It took way too much time out of my life for me to figure out what the hell that meant. If it takes me so long to figure out WTF you are talking about, any benefit to your communication is lost to me. At first I thought njoyd the ltrs was some kind of fantasy character like Gimli the Dwarf or something. Then I thought maybe it was a new insult all the hip kids are using today.

God I feel old right now. . .