Tag: hobbies

My inner editor must die.

Seriously.

As I continue to get encouragement emails from the main NaNoWriMo people as well as my regional leader, I keep finding myself doing all the wrong things which they said would happen anyway.

I can’t just keep writing things out; I go back and rework things as I go.  And that’s not really the point of NaNoWriMo.

Being a blogger also doesn’t help as I try to rein things in to keep you folks interested.  It has become a second nature for me to start cringing when what I’m working on started to get lengthy.

And the biggest obstacle of all: time.  I have been doing great typing away on the bus on my way to work.  As a matter of fact, I think I’m going to keep up with this productive habit so my blog would not lapse this much ever again.  Writing at lunch was also good now that I have an office with a door I can close.  When I have a time schedule set up, I’m on it and productive as heck.

In comes the weekend.

I thought I would do all sorts of catching up and making great ways on the weekend and in the evenings.  Oh boy have I been wrong!  By the time I was done with dinner and cleared a show or two out of the DVR, it was time for bed.  The weekend rolled around and because of my social life, I would find myself with a couple hours break…which, selfishly, I would rather watch the Graham Norton Show than work on the computer.

And in a way, I guess there’s a part of me that’s still doing the emotional running away. You can’t possibly imagine all the time I spent on the couch watching TV after mommy died. It was crazy.

The more I write, the more I become aware of how much of my mom’s last few years I had missed.  The guilt of having been away the entire time is nipping at my heels every time I turn on the netbook.  That is probably why I never quite gotten far. Damn guilt.

But I’m aware of it. And I’m trying to work through it. At the end of the month, I will definitely have 17,000 words written. I will make good of that promise. I really want to see what I kind of book I’m going to end up with at the end.

For sure, there are all these holes in the draft I must fill in from all those times I wasn’t there.  Hopefully, doing so will also fill the corresponding holes in my heart.

Thanks again for being here for me!

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Haven’t read about my NaNoWriMo effort? Read this and donate.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

It’s been an entirely unexpected and interesting journey only one week in.  4,869 is the word count I have on the 8^th day of this challenge. Ideally, I should be around 13,300 words.  I start to wonder if I could ever make 50,000 words.  But I promise you, I’ll at least write as much as your donation. That I will do.

First of all, balancing the time between my numerous hobbies and activities, as you all know, during USC football season has proven to be challenging.  Secondly, my inner editor won’t shut the hell up.  I guess that’s a major pitfall of someone who writes short and concise pieces for a living.

And finally, typing through tears is kind of hard.

I know going in that writing a memoir about my mom is going to be difficult.  Band-aids are definitely being ripped open and healed over in almost an instant.  The physical pain in my chest still needs a little getting used to.  Thank god that I have an office now so nobody has to see my occasional bloodshot eyes.  But the warm and fuzzy feeling when I got the words out is quite rewarding.

Then came the news of a dear friend who has recently been diagnosed with lymphoma.  He has just begun his treatment and has a long road ahead of him.

Real life and memories meet on the pages of my Word document, and bring with them feelings I’ve long since put away or learned to live with.

Expecting the best and the worst at the same time was something I perfected when my mom was sick.  While I never gave up on her treatment options, at the same time I resigned to the fact that she might never make it.  I guess so I wouldn’t be disappointed with either outcome.

It seemed I’ve applied that to everything else since then.

So, while I know I might not make it to 50,000, I’m not giving up  NaNoWriMo effort.

I’m also not giving up on the friend.

(And yes, I’m adding this to my word count. So we’re at 5,209 now. It’s a preface material, no?)

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Haven’t read about my NaNoWriMo effort? Read this and donate.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

We’re in October now and I’ve realized I’m not doing entirely well on my 2010 goals.  Determined to accomplish something this year and inspired by my friend Irena, I’ve decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month – NaNoWriMo, in November.

NaNoWriMo is is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. So, staring November 1 and wrapping up on November 30, participants are aspired to write 50,000 words or about 175 pages novel.  It doesn’t have to be completed. It doesn’t have to be edited.  As they call it, “It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

That’s right. 50,000 words in 30 days.  For scale, one page of single spaced Times font size 12 has about 525 words.  That’s about 95 pages of written word I have to crank out.

Hopefully, by November 30, I will have a draft of a memoir on my hands.

“Folder of Fortune” will be a memoir based on a folder full of notes my mother took from her visits to fortune tellers, numerologists, and psychics of Thailand. With mom’s due diligent in checking to see the accuracy of these readings, the folder full of little pieces of paper and torn pages of notebooks hold the key to my family’s past, present, and future.

Now, to keep me motivated, I’m going to raise fund for this pursuit.  $1 for every 100 words.  That’s $500 for 50,000 words!  The more you pledge, the more I will write!

NaNoWriMo is put on by Office of Letters and Light so naturally folks would raise fund for them.  You can too.

However, since this memoir will be in the memory of my mother, I’d like to raise the money for her and my grandfather’s foundation back in Thailand instead.

The General Mangkorn Phromyothi Foundation was founded in my grandfather’s name but with my mom’s love for education in mind.  My grandfather was Thailand’s Minister of Education back in the days so the Ministry of Education asked to use his name for the newly established foundation for their Teacher’s Training Program.  Essentially, the GMP Foundation funds the development of the training program for teachers with a goal to better prepare them to teach children in the rural area of Thailand. The Foundation also provides scholarships for those seeking training in this program.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

And you will have to trust me with your dollars as the donation is going through PayPal for me to hold onto until I transfer the chunk to Thailand at the end of NaNoWriMo.  And more importantly, US dollars are weak right now (29 Baht/$US) so to maximize your donation, we will have to wait for the rate to go back up…at least 32 baht.  (I’d rather prefer 35 baht, but who knows when we’ll get there at this point!)

So, here’s what I’ll do for you, donors.

1. Every single penny is going to be donated. I’ll pay for all FundRazr and PayPal fees incurred on my end.
2. On December 1, if currency is about/above 32 baht/dollar, I will send the donation home.
3. On December 1, If currency is still below 32 baht/dollar, I will continue to keep watch and give weekly update on “In Memory of Khun Noi” Facebook Page.  The moment we get to 32 baht/dollar, I’ll make the transfer.

I hope you can support me through this journey!