...13795 .....

i'm still working away at my nano writing .... the weekend was a bump in the road ... too many responsibilities and not much writing ... but luckily, last week i got myself ahead of the game in projected word counts .... so ... i'm still ahead .. and on track ... but not way ahead ... i'll try to remedy that this week early, cause next weekend seems like it will bring about the same lack of minutes to write.... 

i've been a good reader lately ... finding some new favorite blog spots ... 

here's a great article ....i'll be curious to see how many of you FIT this topic ... i know quite a few of you who do ..... 

here's another site i've been reading back articles on .....

and its companion site ......

and here's one more ... an old fave with a new name .... happy reading ... and writing (if you are so inclined) ... and art .... i have a plan to paint this week .....

happy week to you!

10,374...

i sat down to work on my nano novel ... but decided to give you some quick bloggage first .... 

i've broken the 10K wordage .... a couple days ahead of time even .... 

my oldest child, girl.beck.artist, comes home from school and first thing asks me my word count and then asks if she can read a bit of it ... it makes me completely and totally nervous to let her read it ... but so far she likes it .... 

i've learned something about myself in my four days of novel writing endeavor: i do not need an m (as you can see above) ... but i do need diet coke .... my m has been missing for ages ... i no longer miss it ... i had cut way back on diet coke and my caffeine addiction ... but i've amped it way back up in these four days ... i really, really, really, really like diet coke .... so there .... 

and... above is another page of the journal due in early december ... tra la la ... life goes barreling along ...

freak? or freaking happy?

i am so freaking happy i don't even know what to do with myself .... 

i've signed up for this write a novel in a flurry of novemberness and i thought i was going to go crazy or kill myself... come to find out, three days into it, i am crazy happy .... i feel smart and strong and organized and yippeeee ... if you've never tried yippeee, you should .... 

somehow, having such a big goal, to write 50 thousand words in a month, and promising myself to not let it make me fail in any other parts of my life, is not just working, it's invigorating.... i've done loads of laundry, played tennis, exercised, walked the dog, made meals for my family (nutritious and delicious, if you don't poll the youngest) ... and written almost 10 thousand words ... and re done my novel outline TWICE .... today felt good cause i didn't change the outline ... i'm sticking with what i have ....

there are only two things that have slid down the list of things i do in a day ... watching tv and wasting time on my computer .... 

today at tennis, a pal asked if i'd seen vampire diaries this week .... i said no, i've quit watching tv ... are you kidding me? i love tv ... i have loads of shows i follow in the evening .... i don't watch any tv til 8, but my evenings are tvful .... and then computer time? i turn off email and safari when i'm typing my story ..... so i don't get too distracted ... no online  sudoku ... no endless blog surfing (though i've been haunting some writer blogs and nanowrimo stuff .....)

so, with the promise of not neglecting other parts of my life, i still have pottery tomorrow ... i still have some canvas ideas in my head that need to get painted .... i still need to blog ... if not for the multitudes of faithful followers, then at least for my mom and the few others of you that there are (yes, i know YOU are one of my faithful) .....

the pics in this blog post are in a journal i'm working on .... with a submarine (bizarrely) theme .... 

i think the old adage of the more you try to do, the better able you are to do it ... incredible motivation helps too ... i'm way motivated .... in fact ... my next blog post, i'll give you some info on the book i'm writing .... so i don't have to speak about it all abstractly ... ok? 

as of day three at 6.22, i am on word 9217 ... so close to 10 percent of my goal .... here's my nanowrimo link if you want to follow me there .... tra la la ... 

4524......

.... 4524 words on day one of national novel writing month .... so i had a good start yesterday .... 

today, i am writing from 9.30 to 11 ... i think an hour and a half is how long i need for the 1667 words that i need to do each day ... so i'm doing it by appointment ... setting up my time for each day ahead of time (and crossing my fingers that life follows the plan!) .... you can check up on my progress at this nanowrimo page .....

my weekend was exciting ... i was really intent on getting a grand start to my novel .... mr.e.beck.artist is being very supportive, giving me all the more incentive to not just successfully write 50k but also to write something remotely worth while .... so ... my relaxing build up to nano kickoff included a trip to the ER after the-great-pumpkin-carving-incident ... and then gaggles of girls spending the night on halloween .... 

in hindsight, the sugar buzz might have helped me hit the good numbers in my writing ... good think i walked that extra mile this morning ....

as i write this, it is 9.10 ... so i have 2

0 minutes to do the dishes, switch washer to dryer, fold the dryer load, start a new load, and take a shower .... so ... maybe i won't take my shower yet .... interestingly, i walked an extra mile this morning ... i think it was some passive aggressive procrastination .... not sure .... i'll letcha know in .... um, 18 minutes now .... 

so, on top of the novel that i am writing this month, i have a journal project due in the first week or so of december ... and here are two pages i have going for that .... i think i'm going to color them ... crayons, craypas, color pencil, watercolor wash, marker ... not sure how i'm coloring them yet .... when i know, i'll tell you ! ... it might not be til december, huh? 

12 minutes til i'm meant to be sitting and writing ... gotta go .... 

what are you doing today?

nanowrimo obsessed

national novel writing month is imminent ... and i have become a bit obsessive ... i follow blog and article threads across the internet to glean every morsel of information out there ... heaven forbid i miss the most important tip ... the one that's going to get me through 50K words (or more!) in a mere 29 days (it's really 30 days, but i hope to have at least one day off) .... 

but ... i shall take a break from my obsessive novel thoughts to show you ... well ... to show you the beautiful journal i'm using right now .... um .... to take notes in for my novel ... ha .....you, yourself should dash off to the nanowrimo site and sign yourself up for some novel writing .. i could use the company! .... it will also explain that in 30 days i won't be DONE with my novel ... just done with my first draft ... or so they say ....
here is another journal .... not beaded and lush like the one above .... it is a plain brown rapper kind of thing .... but it is for a journaling event ... i'll send in back in when i'm done .... to be in a show ... and eventually in a gallery library ....

and they gave me a topic ... yellow submarine ....and here's my first page below .... i think, given the impending novel writing, that i am not going to make this extraordinarily artsy or collagey ... rather ... it will be doodliscious ... more of a sketch book and words ... still artsy ... but with some sharpie love going strong .... 

and, lest you think, i've given up on family life all together (girl.beck. artist has this fear) ... here is our halloweeniness on our porch ... we still need to carve pumpkins ... but this was a fun start for the kids ....

this is my favorite one .... 

so ... what have you got going on in your part of the world? have you carved pumpkins?

coulda, shoulda, woulda...

i should be blogging every day because i am SOOOOO behind ... i just downloaded 35 photos that i COULD be posting here one at a time and writing lovely, informative prose for you .... but instead, i'm hoarding them in my camera .... 

here's the first one .... my kitchen wall ... the only white wall in my whole house ... kept white for the sole purpose of displaying art ... (soul purpose seems like appropriate spelling too)

those painted chairs are some of my favorite things in my whole house .... at dinner i always try to sit in a green one ... my kids don't know that! ... i don't let them pick and choose where to sit based on color ... ha ..... and lately while i've been working on my outline for my novel (eep!), i have been sitting in a sunshine yellow chair ... it seems like the good cheer should be helpful .... 

can you tell i painted those chairs to go with my art?

the next pic .... three 12 inch square canvases .... did them last week (or the one before that?) at allison's ..... nice shot of my doodle clogs too .... 

 the trouble is, now that i have these tree pics ... i don't know what to do with them ... or how to finish them ... for now, they look like they were painted by one of my kids .... oh well ... they felt nice while i was doing them .. maybe they were just about the process and not the product ... and i can just paint over them and reuse the canvases ... we'll see .... 

but ... three tree canvases wasn't enough .... i did a larger one too .... 

also incomplete ... and i don't know how to finish it ....

but, i'm skipping out on these paintings and switching to christmas paintings ... i think i've struck on what i'm going to paint for my pals ... and maybe teachers .... and i need to get going on that, to make sure it really gets done ... particularly since november is being taken up with writing a novel (can you tell i'm a bit obsessed with that?) ... but, before we can move onto christmas paintings, we have to get on with the joy that is october: 

little e.beck. artist was having trouble getting the pumpkin from the garage to the front porch ... but she ended up being quite clever .... 

i have pumpkin pictures, journal pictures, journal entries.... all sorts of things to blog about tomorrow ... oh ... and pottery tomorrow ... so blog hop yourself back over to see ..... or drop me a comment and let me know what to do with all those trees .... 

book .... book ... book ....

book book book book book book book ... 

i just finished a book (love the one your with)

i want to write a book (nanowrimo.com)

and i've just seen a book that has my art in it .... 

the crafter's devotional is a substantial book .. hardback and fat ... full full full of artsy goodness ... there's nothing quite like the thrill of seeing your art in a book .... other people are going to be looking at it too!! rah .... 

so ... bookbookbook ... what are you reading writing and doing?

NaNoWriMo

hooray, i got the journal in the mail ... the one that i mentioned in my last teeny tiny blog post .... the sketchbook project  .....

the interesting thing is that i got it in the mail and it is about a tenth of the size of the  journals i usually work in ... not size, dimension small ... but number of pages small .... which is really truly great for me ... cause it is due in december ... and it is much more doable with fewer pages... especially because,  before even starting this journal project? i found another project ... that i have signed up for ... and even started doing the prep work for .... i've either lost my mind or will lose my mind .... i'll letcha know! 

be forewarned ... blogging might be light! unless i really can do this and post snips of my writing on the blog .... wish me luck ... november 1 is just around the corner ... eek!

coolness ...

who wants to do this groovy thing with me???

go here ... read about it ... sign up ... k? i did....

um.... huh?

so ... a picture is worth a thousand words ... 

here's the pic ... 

any questions?

i'm wearing orange shoes ...

today is an orange shoe day .... i love wearing orange shoes ... it makes a bad day good ... and a good day better .... an ordinary day just a little less ordinary .... 

that said, i've got a small afternoon sh

ow

 ... my things have been delivered and set up ... with the help of mr.e.beck.artist and little.e.beck.artist ..... so hopefully the show will be full of orange shoed goodness .... 

here are the paintings i mentioned on yesterday's blog ....they've dried and i photo'd them after church today ... just prior to delivering and setting them up .....

i believe the pears are my favorite ... but i'm always most partial to my pear paintings .... 

art sales have been slow ... i don't have high expectations for today ... but hopefully will sell some ... i'd most like to get some commissions ... i like letting someone else think up what i'm going to paint! what are you doing this afternoon?

quick post on a busy day ....

i have a small show tomorrow .... 

i've just finished this painting ... and three others ... all wet at this very moment ... so no great photo ... just an in situ studio shot .... watching paint dry, as it were ....

tomorrow i should have four good pics for you ... and maybe shots of the show as well ... 

hope you are having a lovely weekend .... i am .... my pal dana's birthday is today, so we have a night out planned ... i bought her battery operated slippers (among other things) for here birthday .... just what every girl needs ... what do your slippers look like? are you even a slipper sort?