We've booked our trip to Tokyo now - going in October. It'll be a long wait of course, but you have to have something to look forward to!

(Well, I think I will have a few good things in the meantime too, but anyway...)

You know you're doing something wrong when you first end a day with a draft of 10 000 words
the next day end with a draft of 2 000 words (in total)
and the day after that have a draft with a total of 800 words.

Now I'm up to 9 000 words again - but the text is completely different from those first words.

(I know that if I get stuck when I'm writing it's generally a good idea to delete a good chunk of text, a chapter or so, but this really was a bit extreme and I do hope I'm not making a habit of it.)

So 2012 is over now - a new year has begun. By now it's after one at night and we've had a good dinner with a friend over and now we are all listening (and watching) bad music from Youtube from the 90's. Hysterical!

Anyway, time to look back a little at the year that was, 2012. I don't do New Year's resolutions so I can't say if I did well. Well, I DID take a pledge to read 26 books after having several years of reading much less than I have been doing - and I DID manage to read 54! I am quite proud of that! I will try for 60 in 2013 - I did most of the reading in the second half of the year so it should be possible. I've written two complete stories this year - finished three. Want to write just as much in the year to come, but I have to work more on the editing. Seriously, I HAVE to. I have people waiting for it...

Getting married was quite fun, and having my husband finishing his PhD was another important moment in the year that was. Nothing we'll be repeating - and considering the amount of effort that went into those things it's just well. And I had a great trip to Italy for a month where I could do quite a lot of work. But the heat.... Italy in July is never to recommend, and it was unusually bad this year. Still, it is hard to remember how that felt now, and I can look at all the pretty photos I took and feel a real longing to go back there. (But if I do, I'll be aiming for the winter months, no doubt about that.)

All in all I hope 2013 will be just as nice (but with better health, admittedly), but perhaps a tad bit calmer!

(And we've left the bad music and turned to Tom Lehrer instead. Just as well - laughing with is much better than laughing at, in general.)

Have you ever noticed that if you start to think about how you do things, they suddenly become impossible to do. Like swallowing a pill. If you take it in your mouth and then start to analyse 'how do I do this?', then you will most likely start choking.

The same goes for walking your stairs. Though you won't choke (hopefully) as an end result. Just trip. Which can be quite bad enough.


Another weird (though to this totally unrelated) thing is my cat. Well, she's a cat so it's part of the deal, I assume, but most of the time I can [kind of] understand why. But she does a really odd thing in bed. My husband and I have a gigantic bed, and a fair amount of plush toys in it (we like them both so it suits us), and my cat likes to walk across the bed. But she never, ever, ever, steps on any of the toys. She jumps over them, tries to find some foot-hold between them and is very serious in her endeavour. And still she has no qualms what so ever to walk over me, jump on me or lay down on me when I'm in bed - no matter how much it hurts!

...but I thought the user pic added a nice touch.

Been out with the flu for over a week now. I can't really tell if I'm getting better, but since it seems to be... developing... I suppose something is going on. So fingers crossed. I mean, it's December, I have things to DO!

(thank god for internet shopping)

At the moment I have a terrible cough that made me spend the night in 18th century style - that is piled up against not just my pillows in bed but also a couch cushion so I didn't have to lay flat. I could sleep quite comfortably like that - not starting to cough all the time can do that to you - but oh dear! how my back hurts today. But once again, at least I got to sleep this night!

I haven't done much on-line, but I have read quite a lot (closing in on book 52 for the year, I'm quite proud of myself) and I am also at the end of the story that was my Nano for this year. Writing about the headaches of 17-years old seem to suit me (I did the same last year).

Writingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwritingwriting!

At least in a moment or two...

(Ended up at 19 974 last night, so at least I'm ahead of the program.)

Well, it actually started 15 minutes ago, but I was busy packing to get it out of the way before I sat down to do the fun stuff! Husband and I will go to the country for a few days - no Internet, not even a properly working phone, the perfect place to write (well, I'll be doing some proper work too, but there should still be plenty of time for it)!

So, anyone else doing the 50K writing marathon now in November (I know some of you are, and the best of luck to you of course, I'm just fishing for those of you I haven't added as writing buddies yet! ;))?

Though, admittedly, I didn't really make this - a friend of mine did. But I DID take the photo!