The End� but not

I finished. I finished 50,000 words anyway (50,694 to be exact), but I'm far from finished on my novel. In fact, I'd say I've only just begun on the real meat of the story, which means I wrote way too much crap to get there. I said at the very beginning that I didn't know what the hell those characters were doing besides living their daily lives. Well, the daily lives changed and had some interesting things happen, but it still didn't move very quickly. Once I'm finally finished finished, I'll be hacking away at the thing. I swear, I'll be cutting at least a third of what I've done so far. It's that bad.

The writing so far has been bad anyway. I still firmly believe in the story itself. I've run the concept of it by a few people, and they were all interested. One was absolutely fascinated by the idea and asked all kinds of questions. I thought that would hurt the process more than help, but I found it very useful to actually explain what I am going for. It helped me solidify the main plot, and that can be nothing but good. Now if I can just take the idea and tell it in an interesting way, I'm on the way to early retirement. Ha!

I took today off from writing. I plan to write a little bit every day until I'm doing, but I don't have to do 7,500 words a day or however many it was I did this past week. All I know is it was too much, and I was a complete zombie by evening. I was also grumpy, and nobody likes a grumpy mommy. I'll get back to writing tomorrow, but I needed a break after all I did.

Since I've been neglecting writing in my journal for writing in my novel, I'm going to join the group of journalists writing an entry every day for the month of December. I don't know if I can officially join the group at this point, but I'll be doing it regardless. I've been lax in updating my journal, so I thought it would be nice. At least it will be nice until I start bitching about how behind I am on Christmas planning. So far, I'm doing very well with that though, so this might be a whole new beginning for me.

I don't know if it's just me or if I was really bitchy last year. Maybe I'm bitchy this year too, and I don't know it, but I've been reading last year's stuff, and I seem to be whining about something almost every day. Good grief, it's no wonder nobody wanted to read that crap. I may be no better this year, but I feel like I'm a little more positive.

I think last year was a more rough, so that could be why. I was horribly behind getting ready for the holidays, and I felt intense pressure to do a lot of things. I overcommitted like I always do, and I'm sure that's part of it. There was also a ton of misery caused by John's obsession with his band that doesn't exist anymore. The job situation is looking better for us now, but even if it weren't I would say I'm a lot happier this year than I was last year at this time. Now I wouldn't expect jolly Cindy to be here every day of December by any means, but there should be less grinchiness.

I think I'm going to go make a wreath now. Making wreaths and cookies were my two stress reliefs the past few days while I was writing. If I ever have a working digital camera again, I'll take pictures of the two wreaths I created thus far. Guess what lots of friends and family are getting for Christmas this year? I wish they didn't cost so much to make, or I'd try selling them. As it stands, I'd have to charge $50 or more for the things just to turn a small profit. I think I'm spending too much on materials, but I like the pretty matte Christmas balls over the shiny ones. For some reason, matte costs more. Don't ask me. I think it's a rip, but there's a lot of that this time of year.