Looking Back

Just for fun, I decided to go back through my blog postings and reread everything that I’d posted since I started this blog just about 2 years ago.  Boy has it been a busy 2 years. 

1) There were the births of the babies in Aug/Sept of 2007.  Now the babies are toddlers, walking, talking and developing great personalities. 

2) My pseudo Brother Ben was deployed to Iraq with his unit and they served our country and the world honorably and returned to their families safely. 

3) I wrote 2 novels through the National Novel Writing Month.  I spent my “vacations” in 2008 and 2009 at Sturdy Memorial Hospital, but have made a resolution NOT to continue that trend!

4) I’ve been in my home for two and a half years now.  WOW!  Over the past weeks I even decided to invest in my back deck, so I bought some planters, and I’m now trying to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and parsley.  (Plus I hung the Topsey Turvey Tomato Plant grower up, and filled it with dirt, so those tomatoes can be donated to the local food pantry.

5) We had another family wedding, which is leading to another birth (a boy), which could happen any day now.

6) The United States went through an election, unlike any other, which in the end gave us President Barack Obama, and California being in the middle of the battle for gay marriage rights.  (And yes, Jason and Chris’ marriage is legal according to the court in CA!)

and finally

7) The kids are getting bigger.  Addie is 9 and her family is expecting a baby brother for Addie in August.  Varnai is 6 1/2 and just finished first grade.  I went to her end of the year dance recital.  She was too cute up on the stage dressed as a can-can dancer.  Seth is 7 and also finished first grade.  He is a total Star Wars fanatic.  He can’t grasp that Karen Marie was around when episode 4 first came out in the movie theater.  (He thinks they were made in order 1-6.)  But he is highly impressed that I can name Luke’s friend Lando.  And Bella is one of those babies born in September of 2007.  Every time she sees me, she says “kay ree, chip eeezz”  which means, “Karen Marie, chips please.”  Too cute.

So hopefully life will be good enough to allow me to write about more things for another couple of years.  Thanks to all of you for coming back to read what I’m writing.

love you all lots

karen marie

Hit 50,000 Words Today!!!

I’ve been writing like crazy and just before midnight on Sunday (going into Monday) I hit the required 50,000 words so I successfully WON the National Novel Writing Month.  But there is still a week to go, and my story is NOWHERE near being complete, so write, write, write I’m going to do so that maybe I can actually complete it this year too!

Middle of November

I’m so glad that I can see the end of November coming.  I’m about to hit 40,000 words with the National Novel Writing Month.  (and the novel is actually not as bad as it was about a week ago)  Thanksgiving is coming up soon, and I LOVE turkey.  I’ve found out that a couple of different friends of mine are at different stages of pregnancy. And the Boston Bruins hockey team is on a major winning streak.  So all in all life is not so bad!

NaNoWriMo 2008

My writing is going well this November.  I’ve really been serious about blocking out time to write, and then blocking out time for the rest of my life.  So this is making me very happy!

It’s NaNoWriMo time again!!

For those of you who are new to my blog, I’m doing the National Novel Writing Month project again.  (Also known as NaNoWriMo)  The goal, and the pride of winning, is if you write a novel of 50,000 words during the month of November.  It averages to be about (for me) 3 writing hours a day and 1667 words a day.  It think with the font I used in Microsoft Word last year it turned out to be about 120 pages or so.  50,000 words is about the size of “Catcher in the Rye.”  I was successful last year, and I’m hopeful that I’ll win again this year.  My friend K, turned me onto this, and I’ve been waiting and plotting all year to do this again!

So wish me luck, and if I tune out for November, you’ll know why.  And if you think that this might be something interesting that you might like to do, let me know and we can do this together!

50,000 WORDS COMPLETED!!!!!!

I did it!!! I did it!!!! I did it!!!! Yeah, go me!

I actually wrote a novel (it’s not completed, and I’ll continue to work on it) of 50,000 words in a month!!! The count right now and was unofficially validated at 50,275.  As of tomorrow, I can get it officially validated which means that I can say that I won the National Novel Writing Month Challenge of 2007!!!! and NO ONE can ever take that away from me!

I am not a person who likes to brag, although having a blog means giving out information about yourself that sometimes is seen as bragging, but this time I really don’t care.  I am so proud of myself that I could shout it from the roof of my house that I actually wrote (and created a whole story too) of 50,000 words.  That turned out to be 84 pages of Microsoft Word using the font Veranda in 11 pt.  I even used the regular margins for an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper.  So if you were to make that into the size of a paper back novel, that would be around 160 pages of book.

So many thanks to everyone who loved and supported me through this month, I really do appreciate it!

49,178 Words

It’s now Saturday, November, 24 th at 7:10 pm.  I just did a word count on the novel and I’m over 49,000 words!  I really can’t believe it.  I am going to hit 50,000 tonight.  I have to say that I am really proud of myself.  I went into this project not knowing if I was going to reach the goal of 50,000 words or not.  I told myself that I was going to pace myself accordingly and not get too hard on myself if I got too tired.  Like last night, one of my writing buddies was catching up on her word count and I knew that if I pushed myself I could hit the 50,000 late last night because I could e-mail her online and get support.  But I decided that it was better for me to go to sleep and get a good night’s rest and write today as much as I could.  and I feel so much better for it, because I am rested and refreshed.  So I am going to grab something to have for dinner and then go back and write some more.  I’ll post when I reach the big 50,000 words and I get my novel unofficially verified by the Nanowrimo.

Home Stretch

Well ladies and gentlemen, as of right now, about a quarter after midnight on Saturday, November 24, My word count is 46,736.  That means that I’m 3985 words from winning the contest AND I still have a whole week to do it in.  SO I’m planning on reaching the winning number sometime today (Saturday) and then continuing until midnight on Friday the 30th at midnight to get my final word-count.  I am finally making progress with the novel, and finally yesterday, I brought all the characters to the week of the wedding, which for all purposes is “The Wedding Party,” the title of my novel.  So people are starting to sneak off and mix it up.  It has been totally awesome to write and I have enjoyed the whole process thoroughly.

Here is excerpt 2 from “The Wedding Party” by Karen Marie Hedlund

So the two girls ran to catch up with the group that included Lord James, Lord Wills and that busybody Lady Darlington.  When Lady Hannah caught up to her mother, she asked Lady Elizabeth if she and Lady Freya could be the ones to show their guests to their rooms, instead of her mother.  This way Lady Elizabeth would be able to rest and not have to miss any of the night’s entertainment.  Lady Elizabeth had made one and only one map of the floor plans of the inside of Morley Manor and she labeled reach room specifically for the guest that was going to reside in that specific room during their stay at the Morley estate.  With shaking hands, Lady Elizabeth gave her daughter Hannah the map, but she then strictly told Hannah that she had to immediately return the map to her mother’s hands after she was done showing the guests to their rooms.  Lady Hannah chuckled aloud, not only about at Lady Elizabth’s prudeness, but also her precise focus on detail, while the others managed to stifle their laughter.  Lady Elizabeth explained that there were not going to be any children other than her grandchildren that were going to be born exactly nine months from today and if she was the only one to keep the master map, Everyone’s safety and security could be insured.  Lady Elizabeth said this last sentence looking directly at her daughter.  That still was not doing to deter Lady Hannah from talking with Lord Wills, if that was what she wanted to do.  Lady Hannah was not married to Lord Henry Heathgrove, yet. 

Enjoy and remember we can’t edit it yet!

Happy Thanksgiving- 10 Reasons to be Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my family and friends out there.  I am especially grateful this year and I thought that I should make a list of 10 things that I am thankful for in 2007.  These are in no particular order and I’m just thinking off the top of my head.

1) That I have a beautiful roof over my head.

2) That I was able to see my family in Florida.  This was so much fun and I have pictures and great memories to help me remember Chad and Meridith’s wedding.

3) That all of my friends (so far) have had successful pregnancies and have beautiful baby girls.  And that it’s looking good for the last friend to have her child too.

4) That I have enough to eat and that I’ll spend Thanksgiving with family and friends

5) That I know how to read.  This may seem stupid, but in many other parts of the world, women are not encouraged to be educated, and I really value my education.

6) That medical science has progressed far enough to come up with wonderful medications and techniques to diagnose and treat things like breast cancer, arthritis and heart disease so much better than they did even 10 years ago.

7) That I have the privilege of being Aunt Karen to children so wonderful as Natalie, Veronica, Varnai, Grace, AJ, Katie, Hailey, Kaitlyn and especially Addy and so many other kids.

8 ) That I know that my God is there for me always and loves and forgives me because of a thing that we call GRACE!

9) That I have learned how to use my computer (to post on this blog, to write my novel on NaNoWriMo, to play games with the kids on Webkidz, to e-mail, etc.)  I am one of the lucky ones.

10) I am thankful for Ben being safe so far and even though he’s been deployed for 65 days so far, he and his fellow soldiers are in my thoughts and prayers.

So Happy Thanksgiving All!

36,810

Yes, it’s true I have passed the 35,000 word challenge AND I have had the novel validated so that I know that my words really are going to count in the end.  I decided to post an excerpt on the NaNo website, so I thought it was just as fair to post the excerpt here.  Now remember, we are not allowed to edit this until after November.  OK?

Lady Sophia Wentworth was less than thrilled to be going to the ball tonight.  She had absolutely no energy and no desire to try and put on a good face in front of her friends.  She was tired of pretending that everything was all right when it really was not.  Lady Sophia was angry, mad at herself and really angry at Lord Thom for treating her with such disrespect.  For an entire season now, Lord Thom had been at her beck and call, treating her as if she were the most important woman in the world.  Lord Thom always saved the first dance for her, but in the last couple of weeks, he had begun to turn his attention to other young ladies of London society.  How dare he use her and abuse their friendship, leading her on, making her think that there could possibly be a future between them.  But no, her hopes have been dashed by the self centered nature of one Lord Thomas Eastwood.  But she was going to show Lord Thom.  She was going to dress to the nine’s and flirt with every man that came her way, even if he was old enough to be her grandfather! She would dance every dance and find two, no at least three gentlemen to escort her to the supper that was being provided.  That would show Lord Thom that Lady Sophia really didn’t care!