Novemberish Snippety Things

I had a "Snippets of Half NaNo" post all planned. I did, really I did.  All nicely laid out, with my favorite bits chosen and organized... in my head.  And here it is almost mid-December, practically Christmas,  A STEP AWAY FROM 2013, and I'm only JUST getting around to it.

C'est la vie.

Anyways.  Snippets of The Rochesters, from November.  Nothing from December yet because I'll do that in January... besides, I've barely written anything this month.

“She doesn’t need this job, Sylvia.  She’s saving to go to beauty school and she doesn’t even have an interest in libraries.  She’s just working here to save up money so she can learn how to curl hair.  She could do that at the grocery store, for Pete’s sake.”  Celia was fuming now.

Mark snickered from the other side of the shelf. “I’ve never seen anybody curl hair at the grocery store.”

“Omelets are not uncivilized,” said Francie indignantly.  “Sylvia, did they ever serve omelets at your school?”

Sylvia, glad to be asked a question and not merely left to vegetate while everyone else did all the work, scrambled for an intelligent reply.  “Um?”

Francie plopped on the sofa beside them.  “Sylvia, where should we start?  How much do you know about the wedding and how much do you need to be filled in on?”

“Don’t say filled in on,” pleaded Alice.

Sylvia tried to remember if she had, indeed, been told anything at all about the wedding.  “I know Alice and George are getting married,” she volunteered hopefully.  “And I know from Francie’s part of the letter that the wedding’s going to be later this summer.  And… I think that’s all.”

“Goodness.”  Alice sat back against the sofa cushions.  “I really am awful at writing letters.”

“Do tell,” said Francie.

She had never seen a wedding dress up close and personal.  Even shop windows stuck an impertinent piece of glass between you and the lovely things, and most shop owners frowned upon teenage girls who came into the shops and requested permission to try on the bridal things.  She knew this for a fact because she’d watched Nancy Broderick and Claudia Willet do it once on a dare.  They had, of course, been kicked out, without an overabundance of ceremony.  

Celia thumped on the door.  “Sylvia, I hope you’re not washing your hair.”

Sylvia put her warm thoughts aside for the present and dropped her washcloth back into the sudsy water.  “No, no, I’m not.”
Did they have a rule about hair washing around here?  No one had mentioned it, and she had thought the girls’ heads all looked pretty clean. 

“What is this mysterious substance, anyway?”  Sylvia had wanted to ask since Celia had opened the evil-smelling pink bottle, but hadn’t had a chance to get a word in. 

“Yeah, what is it, anyway?” Francie inhaled a suspicious sniff.  “Celia, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Never you mind what it is.  You always make fun of me for ordering things from catalogs.” 

“This is from a catalog?  Sight unseen?  Not even recommended by the all-wise and all-knowing Janie Bassett?”  Francie pretended to swoon onto the bed.  Timmy, charmed by the idea of a new game, promptly swooned onto the floor.  

Half NaNo... The End

*coughcough it's December 5th already coughcough*

Technically this post should have appeared on Friday the 30th, but I was having a really crazy day that day... finishing the last-minute bits of the P&P95 Forever Club (a six-month project with a certain best friend that took a tremendous amount of time and of which I'm unashamedly proud) and racing to get 3500 words written so I could finish Half NaNo on time (more on that later), preparing for ten overnight guests (I kid you not) and dissolving into sobs of frustration over the waistband of a skirt I was making for my aunt that just wouldn't lie flat, only to find that I'd misunderstood the directions (I still maintain it was the stupid pattern's fault for printing confusing diagrams).  This is why I like to draft my own patterns.

So that is why I didn't get the post up until now.  Part of the reason also may be that I didn't want to admit defeat.

Yeah, defeat.

I fell 1,300 words short of my goal.  Thirteen hundred measly words.  Words I probably could have cranked out in under two hours if I had just had the time.  Which I didn't.

And yet, though I didn't make my goal, I don't feel like I failed.  This can mean one of two things-- a) that I simply refuse to admit that I couldn't do something or b) that the point of Half NaNo was more than just accomplishing 25K.

I'm going with B. Because I really did accomplish what I set out to accomplish with Half NaNo.  The Rochesters finished November at a whopping 32,256 words, which is far, far more than I would have written had I not been working under the Half NaNo threat incentive.  I learned way more about my characters.  (Even though I didn't do Beautiful People every week... cough cough ahem.)  I introduced new plot twists (one of which I'm thinking of scrapping, actually... but that's not the point).  I changed a character's name (because the old one just didn't sit right).  I wrote scenes that had been giving me trouble even just in the outline.  I wrote when I felt like it, I wrote when I didn't feel like it, I worked through a head cold and Thanksgiving and schoolwork and a computer crash.

And now, even though I didn't "win" Half NaNo, I feel pretty much invincible right now.  The feeling will pass, Lizzy, and no doubt more quickly than it should, but for now I'm enjoying it.

How'd you do?