Swamped

I'm a terrible, terrible person - and I didn't even attempt NaNoWriMo this year. The truth is, third year law is hell on earth and although I love it, I barely have time to do all the other extra-curriculars I'm involved in, let alone read books and write reviews. So, my apologies that there's been no new material on RMMR in the last three weeks.

I do have a review or few in the pipeline - it's just getting the chance to sit down and finish writing them and get them up to scratch. Unfortunately, my multiple to-do-lists only get longer no matter how many items I can tick off. This has been a fairly mild week in terms of crazy-ness (relatively speaking) and though I'm only going to get busier before the week is out, I hope to (fingers crossed!) have a review up soon. No promises, though.

And for the fun of it, here are some epic things from Buzzfeed that made me laugh this week:

- Tesco Mobile twitter conversation that escalates exponentially: http://www.buzzfeed.com/scottybryan/this-is-the-best-twitter-conversation-you-will?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=buzzfeed

- Student live tweets break up #roofbreakup #teamrachel!: https://www.hellou.com/blog/2013/11/student-witnesses-a-break-up-and-live-tweets-what-he-hears-hilarious-0

- And just the cute of this cat and his human sister: http://www.buzzfeed.com/meganm15/toco-the-cat-and-his-human-sister-are-the-most-adorable-trou?sub=2752443_1974263

Checklist

Criminal law unassessed essay - tick
Victoria Fisher essay competition - tick
Merlin episode round-ups - tick
NaNoWriMo - not so much ...

I may not have finished NaNo, but I'm pretty pleased with my progress overall this month. November has been beyond hectic and I just capped the week with a 10-4pm Fair Trade Market where I did not quite as well as I would have liked (you never do) but generally very good. And it's not even Sunday yet!

NaNoWriMo 2012: Halfway there time-wise if not in wordcount ...

Day Fifteen. I should have 25,005 words by 23:59pm tonight but that's not going to be happening. For one thing, I'm exhausted after staying up late almost every day this week if not every day, trying to bang out the words and I have a full weekend of SIFE/Enactus revelry starting tomorrow with an estimated 3 1/2 hour drive up to Grantham. 400 SIFE students, PGL camp and undiluted SIFE cheesiness? BRING IT ON.

Still, I'm on 22,607 which I consider to be pretty respectable considering the amount of work that I've got to do besides NaNo. Thankfully, my Equity seminars are finished for this term, but I've still got two essays I should be writing, three other seminars to prepare for, notes to catch up on, textbooks and cases to read ... and that's not even including my SIFE stuff. Boy, am I behind.

I'm pretty pleased with myself for making it this far and now that I've got past the 20K mark (the 25K one will feel even better) I don't want to stop. It will be a huge shame if I don't finish now and I'll be pretty pissed off with myself. It looks like I've got another fifteen days of little-to-no-sleep ahead of me. Joy.

Keep up with my NaNo daily wordcount on the sidebar on the right. Isn't it awesome? You'll find out in fifteen days time whether or not I've reached 50K or not. Until then, don't expect any reviews. Bonus if there are any. Why is one day only twenty-four measly hours?

Admin update

The Favourite Books tab has been updated a little to include some of the fabulous books and authors I've discovered this year. I have a feeling that I might overhaul it again soon to list alphabetically by author rather than title ... when I have more time.

I've taken the plunge and started NaNo. For the first time ever, I didn't have a detailed plan of exactly what was going to happen and a full list of character names etc and I'm sort of liking it. Even in hte years where I had a plan, there were some areas where I would just let my characters take me where they wanted and that's exactly what I'm doing now. For my whole, 50,000 word novel. Apart from a vague idea about the general plot and where I want Marissa and Josh (my protagonists!) to end up, I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen the next time I open up my NaNo document. And you know what? The thought thrills me. I'll be updating my daily total wordcount on the right between the 'About Me' and 'Blog Archive'. As you can see, I had a brilliant day yesterday with 3,205 words bringing my total to 4921 which is just below on target. Let's see what today brings.

NaNoWriMo 2012

For those of you who don't know (shame on you!) NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's a global event that takes place every year during the month of November where participants are challenged to write a 50,000 word novel during the space of 30 days. Yes, that's right: 50K. In 30 days.

I participated in NaNo during the Novembers of 2008, 2009 and 2010. I won in 2008 and 2009. I think I was something like 2K short in 2010 and I didn't bother trying in 2011 because I just had way too much stuff to do.

So will 2012 be my year? About a month ago, I got the sudden urge to take part again. I'm a subscriber of the newsletters and slowly over the last month or so, there's been a steady trickle of official newsletters that has got me increasingly excited for something that I know that there's no way that I will finish this year. Yet I still want to do it.

World Book Night 2012

A friend told me about WBN in 2011 and I promptly forgot about it, being the attentive friend that I am. When I remembered, I'm not even sure if I registered correctly, because I remember having to re-do my application over and over again, getting a funny message each time I tried to submit it. The site was as slow as the NaNoWriMo site the first few days of NaNo season each year, evidently crowded of people like me trying to register at the last possible opportunity.