Monday, April 23, 2012

Diana the Trustworthy

Hello, hello!

Alright, is it just me who seems to walk around with Dr. Phil tattooed on my forehead, or does it seem to happen to some of you, too? I mean, I don't know what it is, maybe it's just the way I talk or the way I look, but it seems like people are just drawn to me and feel like the can open right up around me. Don't get me wrong, I love that you can do that and that you trust me enough to do it, but why? What makes everyone with problems - not even problems, sometimes it's just something that they're really just bursting to tell someone about - turn to me. I'll be walking around or sitting somewhere, and people will come up to me and say something along the lines of "You know what sucks?" and then they'll launch into their entire life story up until that point and pour their heart out to me. After that they'll say "Oh, by the way, my name is Jane Doe. Nice to meet you." and continue on requesting advice. Am I the only one that that happens to? I can't be. Surely some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's honestly really cool, though. I love that I can do that to people and that they know that they can come to me with anything that's on their minds; that's just amazing that people trust me like that.

I had a real eye-opener today, actually. It was really great. I learned that a lot of people had behind labels because that's where they feel safe, but that labels can also prevent us from seeing the greatness that we have in common with people because we all refuse to share it. I learned that it's okay to step out of your comfort zone and that it can make a world of difference to someone if you do. Ghandi once said Be the change you wish to see in the world, and I never realized how much that was true until now. Today, I learned that we can all make a difference if we first start by changing ourselves and by changing the way that we act and that we see people. It can be life-changing.

Okay, enough with the sentimental stuff. Diana. Did you actually work this week? YES! I DID! I actually hit another huge milestone this week! Sixty-thousand words! I never thought that I even knew sixty-thousand words! Although, admittedly, about twenty-five-thousand of those are words like a, the, she, he, and said, but in my defence, that's still a lot of words.

You know what's even crazier? The fact that I have typed  307,853 characters including spaces. Do any of you realize that that means that I have hit 307,853 keyboard keys? And that's not including all the times that I've had to delete things and start things over, and that's not counting all the different parts that I typed up but that didn't make the final cut. That's a lot of keys.

Let's have a look at the progress of this novel since February, shall we?
February 25, 2012: I was bored one night and realized that I hadn't tried working on my novel in the last little while, so I decided to open up the file and see what I could do. At worst, I'd waste my already boring night staring at a blank document on Microsoft Word. However, when I opened the document, I realized that I was only a few hundred words away from 18,000. So, with the help on my friend urging me on over Facebook chat - it was around 11 o'clock at night - I decided to string together a couple sentences, and voila: 18,000 words!

February 26, 2012, 1:41AM: "Well, you've already got 18,000, Di; why not go for twenty?"See, what you need to know about this one, is that my friends are crazy. Most of them cannot understand the concept of a good-night's sleep. "Oh, it's only midnight; you can do it. I'm sure you'll have twenty before you know it. Come on, Diana; finish it up. I'll let you sleep once you have twenty-thousand." Yeah, well, there's 20,000 words for you. Let me tell you that I slept pretty well after that.

February 28, 2012: Now I really had the ball rolling. Paragraph after paragraph was pouring out of my finger tips and out onto my Word document. It didn't take me long to add another 11,001 (I really didn't feel like deleting the one word so that it would look like a perfect 31K). I already had my climax written - for the most part in bits and pieces - and all that I had to do was make it fit into the story. Already, within a three-day span, I've almost doubled my word count.

April 1, 2012- Luckily for me, this 40,000 wasn't an April Fool's joke. Once month - it was a really busy month and my inspiration kind of lacked- and four days after pulling inspiration out of nowhere, I've doubled my words count. And there is still much more to come.
*Just a side note here, want to know why my inspiration lacked? Looking back, it's kind of a funny moment, although at the time I wasn't laughing. When I'm really busy, I carry around loose-leaf paper with me and write things out by hand so that I can just go home and type them up later. Well, one day, I'd written near 2,000 words out by hand, and I'd folded up the sheets of paper and put them in my back pocket. A few hours later, I decide that I really needed to use the bathroom - the 8 glasses of water recommended in a day in order to be healthy? Yeah, I drink those before breakfast - and I was more worried about my iPhone falling into the toilet than anything else, so I didn't even think about the sheets in my back pocket until I saw them floating in the toilet. I was upset, to say the least, and I didn't want to think about rewriting every single thing that had literally gone down the drain so I kept putting it off.

April 7, 2012- This one I took just for fun because I was happy that I'd finally reached two-hunded pages. I added 118 in a month and eleven days.

April 8, 2012- I really wanted to finish everything on my Easter holidays, but my body had a plan of it's own. Did you know that the human body requires sleep in order to function? No matter how motivated you are, do not try to stay awake for three days.

 April 19, 2012- Finally, here it is: 60K. Only about three thousand more words until I cross the finish line. Can I get some Tweets of motivation? @DianaK_books

This week is a crazy busy week! I don't know how much work I'll be able to get done, although I already have some written out by hand, but I will try to get done soon. Hopefully before the end of the month. Hopefully. To think that a few months ago, I was doubting that I would finish before the end of the summer. Now, I'm contemplating taking the summer off before I begin work on the sequel.

I hope that you will all have a good week and I hope to see you all on this page same time next week. Send those encouraging Tweets! Love you all,
Diana

P.S. here's this week's song. It's Lullaby by Nickelback. Now, don't jump to conclusions because this is Nickelback, it's not like their usual music. Take a listen, and keep your ears and hearts open.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vImhVg74Gc&feature=related

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