Bernadette Benda

IT’S OCTOBER. YAY FALL. *flings bats and leaves in the air* *catches the bats before they fall because if they fall on the ground they can’t fly up again and they die*

It’s October which means pumpkins and flannels and tea and pumpkins and leather jackets and adventures and moodiness and *really should stop talking about fall, but I think my fall obsession is growing steadily every year*

So let’s look back at my favorite month and September and uh…yeah, see how things went. (I mean besides the gall wasps and the world collapsing nothing dramatic happened.)

Writing

QUERRRRRYYYYIIINNG (which at the moment is…..waiting.)

I am ALMOST. SO CLOSE, to being done revising OWWTSF. I have GOT to finish it so I can focus on NaNoWriMo in November (I have somehow multitasked editing a novel and NaNo before but this year my brain is just, “please, don’t do that again.”) The draft was originally 85k words, and now is barreling past 117k words. *yikes*

And that’s ok. It is fantasy so I get more words to play with. But….even now I’m like, “Oh, I want to add more of this in, and this character and these creatures need to be in the story more. And maybe I can add a scene…”

STOP. JUST STOP ADDING THINGS TO THIS STORY. Or I will never, ever, ever, EVER finish it.

Which, fun fact, I’m an typically an underwriter. I’m usually scrounging for word count and constantly needing to flesh a story out. But with OWWTSF I just can’t seem to stop adding things to it. *frantically looks up what is the reasonable max word count for an adult fantasy novel* *like 120k with wiggle room*

Reading

Haha. So sad. I finished The Fellow of the Ring, started Two Towers, and FINALLLY finished Indianapolis. That’s it. That’s all she read.

I definitely recommend Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic. It’s amazing story because there are really three stories; The Indianapolis carrying the plutonium that would be used for the atomic bombs, the actual sinking, and then the court martial and then exoneration of Captain McVay.

Life

I HAD A PERFORMANCE. Sad fact, I hadn’t performed since Nutcracker 2019. And that is just…..terrible.

Anyway, here’s me in my firefly costume:

(Yes, it’s a lot of eye makeup. BUT LISTEN. Usually I have blush and red lipstick stuff and this time it was just slap some foundation on my face and eye makeup and then….I’m done?? It was weird!!!) (Yes, we performed in masks) (Stupid COVID)

The Great British Baking Show is back on (yay!!!), Black Widow got delayed again (NOOOO), and I’m slowly making my way through all the regency/victorian/dickens/austen-ish movies because fall. Vague but makes sense to me.

NaNoWriMo

AHHHHHHH. It’s now less than a month away. I’ve kinda given up on a SUPER detailed outline (I had a lofty dream about writing a serious, in depth, chapter by chapter outline which is ridiculous because I write nearly everything by the seat of my pants). However, I have other planning to do (names, place names, creature names, all the names) (perhaps draw a map), and I will do an actually announcement of my novel once November gets close (though I have mentioned it in passing on here). And there will be aesthetics (which, I typically I’m not big on mood boards for writing, but with this story I just. can’t. stop.)

As I mentioned earlier, I’m planning this to be my only writing project for November. Last year, I seemed to be possessed by some unnatural power and was writing 1k words per half hour. I’m honestly not sure if I’ll be able to repeat that this year because….just feeling like a potato if you know what I mean.

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AND that was September! Have you been feeling like a potato? A sad potato? A mashed potato? A baked potato? Does anyone know where this phenomena of associating ourselves with root vegetables originated from?