NaNoWriMo Nonsense: Beginner's Jitters

Three days ago, I started NaNoWriMo, and I am having issues. For those of you that do not know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. During this month, November to be exact, people all around the world take the challenge to write a 50,000 (in my case 30,000) word novel during the month of November.

I first discovered NaNoWriMo after my ELA teacher, who we will call Miss G, told us that we would be doing it as a class. Miss G mentioned this to us at the end of September, which is very nice of her since I know some teachers who would tell us the challenge on October 31st and expect us not to be mad.
Anyway, I was not happy about this at all. I do not have time to write a novel. I have to read 30 books, do homework, play field hockey, play softball, study, try to get into high school, not get fat, you know? I actually have a life outside of school and did not want to have to fit novel writing in there somewhere.

Weeks passed and November began to approach. NaNoWriMo had completely exited my mind for a while, until I came across some archives in my friend and fellow Nerdfighter Dom's blog. She had done NaNo multiple times and had fun with it. Then I thought to myself, "Mary Rose, you totes got this." From that day on I began planning everything from the plot to the name of the duck in my story (its name is Ringo, by the way). In my pre-NaNo excitement I found this video by italktosnakes/Kristina Horner and an old John Green VlogBrothers video from 2007 (back when it was Brotherhood 2.0) where he talked about the challenge. Soon it became October 30th and my class and I were briefed on what we would be accomplishing this month. Miss G said that we would only have to write 8,000 to 10,000 words and they had to be hand written in a blank notebook. Yee-Haw.

Now that it is November 3, the third day of NaNo, I am frightened. My goal is to reach 30,000 words by the end of the month and I have not been following my pace. I blame this on the handwriting. It is so hard to count every individual word, and now I am wasting time typing them on Google Docs and pasting into Word after I've written them to get an exact word count. In the previous 2 days I have written a total of 1,462 words and I still haven't written anything today. I should be at 3,171 by today. I need to speed up my pace and find more time if I want to complete the challenge.

Ugh, but so many words.

If you wanna check out my NaNo Profile, my username is modonnell13. Add me as a writing buddy!

Write On,
The Real Mary Rose

Sandy Should Have Stuck Around, or maybe not...

I don't want to go to school tomorrow. I really don't. Having a five day weekend is such a spectacular thing, why let it end? Why should we have to start the week on a Wednesday, have off AGAIN on Thursday, and come back to school on Friday.

Not to mention Wednesday is Halloween. HALLOWEEN!

I do NOT want to take a
Science Quiz
AND
Social Studies Test
on Halloween.

I mean, Sandy should of stuck around. We were just getting to know each other.


Happy Halloween, internet.

Softball, Lilies, Hurricanes, and Over Exaggerated Problems: Weekend of 10/26/12

Hello, Internet (a.k.a: Sam, the only person who reads this blog)! Another busy weekend has passed and it is time to recap and share with you all the crazy shenanigans I was up to.

On Friday, since I was off, I got to sleep until 9:00 before my mom came in and said, "Girly, you must arise" (we talk like early 20th century englishmen in the morning). I then proceeded to get ready for the day and head to school for parent teacher conferences, which I was dreading. Even though I don't have to be in the room during the conference, I hate having to sit in the office and wait. But luckily, my brother did not want to leave the house, so I got to stay home and watch him. So, for about an hour I got to read my book (Boy21 by Matthew Quick) and catch up on the "Adventure Time"s that I missed. Overall, I would say a pretty successful day.

On Saturday, I had softball. Now I am not the biggest fan of softball in November, but the day wasn't that bad. I only had to wake up at around 9:00am (a blessing for a travel softball player), and we only had to be there an hour early instead of 1 hour 45 minutes early like in previous years when I was on "the-team-who-shall-not-be-named". At 10:00am my dad and I left for Oxford, which was where we were playing that day. And since my dad won't let me sit in the front if I fall asleep or have my headphones in (which is all the time), I had to sit in the back, which was actually quite pleasant. We arrived a few minutes early and the game started on time, which doesn't happen very often in the world of travel softball. My team lost both games to a 16u team that could be mistaken for a 12B team. That is a problem that I will rant about to my dad later. Anywhoosle..... WE WENT TO THE AMISH FARMERS MARKET!!!
For those of you who are not familiar with the Amish farmers market, it is basically a South-Eastern PA food heaven. They have the BEST soft pretzels, whoopie pies, sammichez, EVERYTHING! My dad and I ended up getting 7 pretzels, 2 pretzel dogs, a bag o popcorn, and three chocolate chip cookie whoopie pies. Typing that down makes me feel like I gained ten pounds. We got home from Oxford at around 5:00pm, so I had time to work on my NaNoWriMo plot and finish Boy21.

On Sunday, today, I did basically nothing. I slept for more than half the day, prepared for the Hurricane, and stared at the lilies that are growing in my room. I've never really witnessed a flower grow before, and I really enjoy watching them. About every 2 days a new one blooms. They smell great and are extremely beautiful. Two are fully bloomed, one is about to bloom, and another is still all scrunched up. After my long nap and lily watching, I went downstairs, watched the news/weather, and did some homework.

The weekend is now over, and I don't want the week to start. It's all too stressful. There is so much to do, and not enough time. And a stinking hurricane is coming!!! A hurricane!!! I know I'm only 13 and am probably over exaggerating all my problems, but still. All of this is what is important to me now. At least I have my lilies to take care of.
Have a great week, Internet!! Stay safe!!!

- The Real Mary Rose

Hello, there. Fancy meeting you here...

Well, this is the official first post of my blog. If you do not know, I am Mary Rose. The real Mary Rose. I am presently in 8th grade and am dealing with the perils of everyday teen life, kind of. I play travel softball and field hockey (both are a blessing and a curse). I play guitar and electric bass and am a music nerd. I also love learning, going to school (bet you don't hear that too often!), and spending time with my amazing family (I bet you don't hear that too often, too!). And just to set the record straight, I did not start this blog because I want to become Jenna Hamilton from Awkward and complain about how two hot guys are in love with me. I did it to just relieve some stress and share some thoughts that I have. And if it does come to the point where I start to complain about two hot guys that are in love with me, someone needs to find me, slap me in the face, and say, "MARY ROSE, WAKEUP!!" because I'm probably just dreaming or I fell asleep on my keyboard.