I Won NaNo!

I'd love to tell you all about NaNo this month, but I have no brain cells left to create more words today. So see this picture instead:

See me chase the line all month? TIRED!

This is how the calendar looked--green are days I wrote at least 1667. Yellow are for when I fell short of that. Orange is for the day I wrote 35 words. :) I think there was a different color of green for really, really awesome word-count days, but I never got one of those, so I don't know.

Then when I thought I was done, it turned out I was 200 words short and I had to sit down and pound some out before I could certify. TIRED!

And now I need to go figure out which three of the awesome Pitch Wars mentors might most like the novel I'm querying. Wish me luck!

Pitch Wars!!!

I'm still struggling through NaNo, as you can see in my sidebar. I'm a little behind, but I'm catching up. I can do this!

Of course, it's made harder when awesome contests pop up toward the end of the month. The good news is that November 26 is just the start of the information-gathering stage. December 5 is when the real fun starts.

It's....

Go here for full deets

This is another awesome contest by the inestimable Brenda Drake. It's gonna be awesome. Well, I hope. There's also a chance I'll be outta-luck when none of the mentors pick me. I'm just not gonna think about that. Of COURSE the mentors will love me! They'll be fighting over me! (It could happen.)

So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?

It's Captcha Craptcha Day!

I had to join this blogfest, too, mainly because it's really easy to just say:

Turn the captcha off on your blog! Blogger has wonderful spam filters that snag all the stupid spammers and ad-bombers in comments and that don't require me to stand on my head while chewing gum and auditioning for Rain Dance. It's annoying for me to compose a brilliant blog comment, click submit, and then have to spend 2 minutes puzzling through 5 rounds of captcha codes just to justify the 30 seconds I spent composing said comment. (Okay, that's an exaggeration. Sometimes my comments only take 5 seconds to compose.)

Go here for instructions to turn the dang captcha code off.

That is all.

Back to NaNo. (Which really needs its own hate day.)

UPDATE: Shelly's post today included a TED talk from one of the guys responsible for the Captcha codes--and some of them are helping to digitalize books. He doesn't mention the stupid blurry pics of numbers, but he's really doing some amazing things with the hours we're all spending puzzling those codes out. Also, check out Duolingo. And watch the video (I've never met a TED talk I didn't like):

Thanksgiving Blog Hop

I'm a sucker for just about anything Brenda Drake does these days. She has tons of awesome contests and is an all-around awesome person. I am in awe of her awesomeness. Truly.

So when she starts a Thanksgiving Blog Hop during the month when all my creativity (and some I'm siphoning from my kids as they sleep) is going to NaNoWriMo, I figure this is a no-brainer.

And the first thing I'm thankful for are online friends, like Brenda, who critique my stories and queries, talk me off of ledges, kick my butt for NaNo, and are just all-around awesome. I'd list them all, but I'd forget someone and that would ruin it. Basically, if you're reading this: thanks. :)