Friday, November 12, 2010

Out of My Hands

Oh, the nightmares that are funding applications. Having to do two of them at once for very different things is not a good idea either!

The PhD funding application is in, however. There are two others, but thankfully their deadlines are not until 2011 and that just sounds so far away. I have calculated my odds of getting it as 50/50. This is really a glass is half full/empty sort of situation and I have never been great with those. I usually fall to the later side of things.

After more than a year and a half of researching for this thing, though, I will be something akin to heartbroken beyond repair if I can't secure at least some funding. I am willing to put myself in dept to do this PhD, but there is a limit to how much dept I can reasonably carry, knowing how much money I will not be making ever after I graduate. I need some help and now I really really really want that help!

I hope this doesn't turn out like St. Andrews did.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

One Third of the Way

Or What I'm Supposed to Be At.

In reality, I'm nearly 5000 words behind right now. Of course, I had two days without a computer AT ALL and therefore lost 4000 words right there. Yesterday was also much more exhausting than expected and I lost another 1000. Of course, this time last year I was into day 2 of 8 without a computer. In theory, I'm ahead. And I managed it before, I will do so again. Today's project is to catch up to where I should be (which is 33.33% done).

The novel started the way I expected, but then dropped in the interest department for a few thousand words. To restart the thing I invented a hunting trip that I hope will be important later (much later). This annoys me, as last year I had nothing planned out and yet each invention made sense. This one was just to glorify the word count. I'll need to make the trip integral to the end of the story (or probably the middle) to justify it and that screws with my plan a bit.

On the positive aspect, my characters are more or less listening to me. As a whim I invented a character without meaning to, and though only important to the first third of the story, I sort of love him to pieces. He emulates my favourite characters from a lot of books and is so blantantly important it's almost ridiculous.

The naming thing is getting easier. At least where people names are concerned. I still have this problem with place names always sounding like I stole them from another book. Last year was easier because all of the names were English and all of the places actually existed. But Nano is supposed to be a challenge, right?

Wake me when it's December.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

It is November.

That is all.