Still Not

Done.  Wrote, but only a few hundred words before I fell asleep.  It's maddening to be this close to the end and have this much creative constipation.

I've got one more day.  One more day to finish this damned thing.  If that last possible minute pressure doesn't do it for me I don't know what will.

Life Outside of the Teahouse

Gmail has different backgrounds you can swap out so your e-mail viewing experience is a little more enjoyable. My background is called “teahouse”. It features a little fox in a Japanese teahouse, living a quaint little life.

Every time I check my mail he’s up to something. Giving the birds a bath, tending to his garden, practicing tai chi with his friends, peacefully sweeping up the dust from his floor. He never frets, never worries, never wonders if his time might be better spent doing something other than what he is doing. I envy him that peace of mind. I don’t have it.

I spent my time this evening engaged in some (probably much needed) relaxation- not trying to bang out the end of my novel. The laundry got done, but nothing else.  If I were in the teahouse, I might be at peace with how I spent my evening. But I am not. And I think the fox would’ve taken the time to finish his novel.

Coming Home

After a long drive home in holiday traffic I decided to take the night off to enjoy a warm welcoming.  Coming home is great.  Coming home to a boyfriend and a puppy who both missed you a heck of a lot is WAY better.

Full Steam Ahead

So I'm still not finished, which is not surprising.  But I know almost exactly where I'm going, what's going to happen, and I am extremely confident that I can get it done by November 30th.  Current word count is an even 52K, I'm hoping I can finish out with 55K and get to the end.  If I keep writing as I did today- little over par that I've been aiming for for the month- I'll be done right on time.  NaNoWriMo 2011- still going strong!

Won and Ever So Close to DONE

Yes, it's true.  And I must, even though it is oh so self-serving, take a moment to say...

I won!  I won! I won!  I hit 50k!  And you know how?  By writing nearly 7k words in one day, that's how!  (And yes, for those of you keeping track that is my second largest single-day word count ever!!!!)  50k!!  Yay!

Ahem, what I meant to say is- yes, I have crossed the word count goal and it is very exciting.  Regardless of what comes next there is a warm, fuzzy feeling right now that nothing else aside from hitting 50k can produce and it's too yummy not to revel in.

But speaking of what comes next, I have a bigger, more important, more significant milestone to pass tomorrow.  Actually finishing my novel.  That's right- actually being able to, for the first time in the three years of doing this fantastic event, actually be able to write the words "the" and "end" on the last page after having come to a satisfactory conclusion for the story.

There have been far too many pep talks saying that the creative satisfaction one feels from actually finishing a story is far too incomparably wonderful for me not to push myself to that ultimately more important goal.  Especially because with two other novels that are both so much larger than 50k still incomplete it's impossible for me to not crave a completed (at least in first draft form) product.

So tomorrow, I will dive in once again to write that elusive last scene- the final battle to end my story.  I know where i'm going, I have a pretty good idea of how to get there.  Now it's just a matter of writing the damned thing and finally, for the first time in my life, finishing a novel.  Stay tuned!

Thanksgiving

I’d like to think that I practice gratitude on a daily basis but honestly, I haven’t paid enough attention to know that definitively.  Taking things for granted is, I think, a state that one slips into whenever one isn’t paying attention.  When you’re not putting conscious energy into acknowledging things it’s easy to fall into that trap.  Which is why people put so much effort into trying to remind others of the actual purpose of days like today.

I know, unequivocally, that I have a lot in my life to be grateful for.  And I know that I am more aware of that fact now than I ever have been.  I’d like to conclude from this that my regular state of gratitude and my ability to be grateful for everyone and everything in my life is growing as I age.  Of course I can’t know that for sure.   But it seems like there is reason to suspect it.  Because I know that the little moments that make up gratitude- saying I love you, choosing not to complain, answering 'How’s it going?’ with 'Pretty good, all things considered'- happen pretty damned frequently in my life.  And I am grateful for that.

I am also grateful for having gotten out a little over 3k words today and being only 6k and change away from my goal for this month.  Definitely giving thanks for that.

Back to Work

Two pies, way too much time spent watching a Portal 2 playthrough and 1,868 words later I've got forward movement again.  God willing, tomorrow there will be much post-turkey semi-comatose writing and a larger word count to attest to that.

More Stress

Worked a full day and then drove down to Virginia.  In the dark.  In the pouring rain.  Did not make word count today, either.  BUT there will be much NaNoing tomorrow with the joy that comes from writing in a group.  Strength in numbers.  Massive word count boost.  Oh yes, there will be NaNoing.  And pie.

And, it’s Pre-Vacation Stress time

Went grocery shopping, made dinner, packed up many cooking supplies, bags of clothing, meds and other necessities and then passed out on the couch at 11pm.  No, I did not reach my word count goal today.  But 550 or so is better than nothing.

Another Day, Another Pep Talk, Another “Ah-ha!” Moment

So, I got another pep talk in the mail today and it reminded me of something that I have forgotten (or rather not thought of in the first place) each and every NaNo that I’ve done thus far: that I need to have an ending.  To recap: in 2009 I followed up NaNoWriMo with NaNoFiMo that December in hopes of finishing the story.  I maxed out a little over 70k with the end nowhere in sight.  Then this past summer I continued working on my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel during Camp NaNoWriMo in August with the same intent.  I maxed out a little over 80k with the end… well, somewhere in site but still very far away.

This year, I’ve been running into the same problems that I’ve encountered every other year: that I have the plot in my head, I know where I want it to go, and it progresses so slowly that I inevitably beef up the word count well before actually moving a substantial distance on the plot.

Well, this pep talk pointed out something that I have suspected all along: that it is far more creatively satisfying to finish a novel even if it is slightly rushed and not entirely fleshed out than it is to write every detail and end the month without the satisfaction of writing “the end”.  This, like all the other pointers I’ve received this month, seems like a really good idea to me.

What this pep talk suggested is that you outline the plot, figure out the four, five or however many scenes are necessary for you to get there, and write those without worrying about the transitions or intermediate scenes that don’t advance the plot.  You can add those in later, he argues.

So, not wanting to have yet another unfinished novel sitting on my computer gathering virtual dust I decided to follow this.  I have outlined what I want to have happen, I have identified the four scenes I need to get there, and I must admit that I’m already noticing an improvement in my writing.  You write differently when you have some idea where you’re going.  I can only hope it’s a good different.

Regardless, I’m happy to have a little bit of a road map in mind so I have some direction. 

(37,584 words and counting)

It's All Downhill From Here

Chris Baty (A.K.A. the founder of NaNoWriMo) claims that 35k marks the beginning of a “downward slope” in which the words flow a little easier, the ideas come a little quicker, and the process starts to gain speed as you race to the finish line.  Having finished for the day with just under 36k (35,905 to be precise) I’m really hoping he’s right.

Movie Review: Paranormal Activity 3

I started this review off by listing the things about this movie that don’t make sense and then I realized that there are far too many of them to list individually. Suffice it to say that as a purported prequel to the other two it doesn’t make any sense. The only similarities is that there are two girls who bear the same names as the women from the other movies and they, also, are being terrorized by some invisible thing. Any other events referenced in the earlier movies that you might expect to see don’t happen and the events that do don’t really fit into overall story arc. In other words: this movie makes it very clear that when they made the first movie they did not plan for there to be a Paranormal Activity 3 many years later so there are no cookie crumbs for you to follow back to tie this in.

More significantly- the areas in which the first movie succeeded are the same areas in which this latest one fails. For example- in the first movie they didn’t really try to explain what the demon was, why it was tormenting these people or answer any other questions you had about it. It was just there. No explanation, no deep back story- just this thing, scarring these people. That’s it. I think the biggest mistake that they made with this one was trying to explain the phenomenon we’ve seen in all these movies. Without going into detail let me just say that they fail rather spectacularly (see pevious “things that don’t make any sense”.)

On a final note what upset me probably the most about this latest (and I can only pray the last) installment of the franchise is that because it has nothing else going for it other then the same types of scares that we saw in the earlier movie it makes that movie (which was great) seem somehow less. It’s like Terminator 2.  Remeber after that came out and you saw that melting effect everywhere so quickly that the novelty of the original movie wore off and it became a cheap ploy for movie makers looking for cool effects? Well this is the same kind-of thing. The first one, as scary as it was, seems to have lost it luster now that they’ve used the scare tactics to death. And instead of seeing a genuinely creepy movie you see just another sad installment in a franchise that should have been put out of its misery after the second one crashed and burned.

My advice? Don’t waist any money on this, don’t even watch it. And if by some miracle you haven’t seen the second one yet, don’t see that either. This franchise got as good as it was going to get in the very first movie and all future installments only serve to milk the cash cow, not to provide any worthwhile scares to the audience.

Par For The Course

Once again I am proud to say that I made par today and am now at 34,224 words.  I have, and this is a true miracle, actually been making par most of the days so far.  There have been a small handful of days in which I was under par- but I still wrote.  And just writing everyday- no matter how tired I am, or how much stuff I have to do, or which relative is visiting- has been huge for me.  Regardless of what happens next I am proud of that fact.

It's Almost As If They Know What They're Talking About...

So, I got another pep talk in my inbox today.  It’s from Chris Cleave.  I must confess I haven’t read any of his work but I’m thinking that if it’s anywhere near as good as his pep talk is inspirational I’m gonna have to check him out.  He reported something that all of the week three pep talks, videos, blog posts and other media seem to be reporting: the magic of week three comes when your story goes in a direction you didn’t plan.  All of them seem to be talking about the same phenomenon- the week three phenomenon.

They say that new characters you never intended to write insert themselves into your story and become indispensable.  Other characters you intended to write about till the end suddenly become less important and even expendable.  Plot twists you could never have seen coming strike out of nowhere and drastically alter the course of your story arc.  And more over, they all give the same advice about what to do when you encounter this phenomenon: just go with it.  Let your crazy characters loose.  Let that plot you had your heart set on fly out the window as this new one takes over.  Let the ending be drastically different than you envisioned.

Well, wouldn’t you know it that I seem to be experiencing my own week three phenomenon and it's so ridiculously true to what all these pep talks said would happen that I can’t help but comment about it.  A character who I had never thought of, planned for, or imagined until two days ago suddenly popped up.  And within the course of only a few hundred words she has become primary to the advancement of the remainder of my plot and the eventual resolution of my story arc.  Kinda crazy, huh?

How, you may wonder, did she become so important out of nowhere?  (And I’m going to tell you even if you weren’t wondering.)  Well, my MCs discovered that the bad guy they’re fighting is not actually a millenia old vampire but rather a magic user with seemingly demon-like properties.  (Oh- and I didn’t plan for that, either.)  Given that none of my MCs are magic users they went out and found one to help them.  Within a ridiculously short period of time it became clear that if they were ever going to figure out how to beat the bad guy, it would be because of her.  And as if all that weren’t enough, my secondary MC seems to have fallen into smitten kitten mode in all of a paragraph.

I don’t understand how all this happened but I’ve read enough week three pep talks and the like that I believe I am on exactly the right track.  So I’m doing what they said to do- I’m going with it.  And the reason why I’m going with it is because I have a word count deadline.  And if this new plot is going to make those words flow then I will go wherever it may take me.  Full speed ahead!

(32,502 words and counting.)

On the Other Side of 30k

Alright, made it through the battle although by doing something I’ve never done before: skipping ahead.  I got my characters to the place wherein the battle would take place, didn’t know how to write the next part, and skipped ahead to killing my MC’s love interest.  The death and aftermath have been rewarding to write, emotionally tense as they are.  So rewarding, in fact, that I’m not even stressing about that gap.

Because in the end, all that really matters is that I’m moving forward, both plot wise and word-count wise.  I’m nearing the downhill slope that everyone says occurs during the later part of 50k (being now at 31,193 words) and I’m too excited about that to be anything other than thrilled with today’s work.

Updated Word Count: 28,708

Once again I was hoping for a big day word count-wise. And once again I squeaked out just over par. It’s not bad, it’s what I need. But I wanted so much more. It’s just hard to get out more than 2k words in a week day.

On a more positive note I am enjoying my secondary MC who is pointing out how thoroughly ridiculous my MC and her love interest are. And even better, he’s doing it by making Star Trek references which they, being so not as cool as him, totally don’t get. I’m enjoying it. And you know? I honestly don’t give a crap if anybody else would. It’s kind-of nice.

Made my daily word count, though I was hoping to sprint further ahead.  Maybe tomorrow...

Total is past 27k words now, 30k looms along with what promises to be one interesting fight scene.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll get through it and then open up the door for lots of new things my imagination can chew on.

Halfway to 50k!

So, at the end of the day, I’ve crossed the halfway point with 25,350 words. It’s not the 5k day I wanted, but it’s something. And ultimately I’m still ahead of where I need to be so that’s what matters.

Story wise (at this precise moment) I am having my MC describe the last time she fought big bad, right on the eve of fighting him in the keystone battle royal of my story arc. It is not coming easily. The words are not, ahem, flowing. All the videos I’ve been watching on you tube will tell me to skip past this part and go to the next phase of the story I actually think I can write. I’m not entirely sure how to force myself to do that, I’m more inclined to suffer through it. Having never edited one of these novels yet I can’t say whether or not it would be more or less productive to write something I hate or nothing at all. But for now that doesn’t matter.

What matters is pushing forward, one way or another, and just getting the story out. I think it’s going to be very important for me to not edit AT ALL- not one single word. Because my internal critic does not like what I’m writing and, unless kept under constant lock down, it will wreak havoc on my word document. I have to constantly remind myself that I’m doing this in order to suck so if it ends being terrible that’s not only ok, it’s good. If I can get through another 25k words, sucky or wonderful and everything in between, then this is gonna be one seriously worthwhile experience.

Big Mistake

So, I made a HUGE mistake yesterday.  I skipped a day.  I knowingly, with awareness and all reasonable ability to conclude what a horrifically bad idea it was to do this, skipped a day.  And now I am paying the price.

As I said earlier, I'm on the verge of something big and exciting.  I should be barreling into it with reckless abandon.  But instead, I've been sitting here for the past two hours occupying myself with just about every distraction I can find.  I've been watching NaNoWriMo You Tube videos (which there are a tone of, I've just discovered).  I've been writing e-mails.  I even updated my wish list for Christmas.  But I have not written more than a paragraph.  I have no idea why- why would you even ask me that?  There's no logic here, this is insanity talking!

I've got all the inspiration I could possibly need- knowledge that at this very moment, all over the world, people are sitting at their computers doing exactly what I should be doing.  I've got a keyboard in front me attached to a computer working perfectly well.  I've got a comfy chair and blanket and even a puppy cuddled at my feet.  There is nothing on my to-do list other than to write.  What more could I possibly need?

In all honesty, I could seriously do with one of those giant Roman slave drivers with a huge whip and booming voice telling me to type.  But I don't have one of those.  All I have is the knowledge that if I don't do this I am seriously increasing the likelihood of spiraling further down into a self-defeating vortex of doom which may suck the very possibility of hitting 50k right out of my soul, leaving me forever empty and lifeless.  If that's not motivation, I don't know what is.

Now, write!  WRITE LIKE THE WIND!!!!

Under Par

Only 1120 today, bringing the overall total up to 23,396.  But something interesting and unplanned did happen that will allow me to get one of my characters back into the action and hopefully lead me full speed ahead into the first big boss battle.  There will be fighting!  There will be drama!  Someone will die!  It's gotta write itself, right?  Right?  (*whimper*)

Skip The Doorway

So I got another NaNo pep talk today and I found it… disconcerting. Not because the author wasn’t displaying confidence in the NaNoist’s ability to write 50k in a month. No, it was disconcerting because it contained actual, real advice. Like advice that you might take if you were trying to write a real novel you hoped that someone other than yourself might read someday.

The advice was this: skip the doorway. Rather than describing your character walking into a room, just have them be in the room. We don’t usually go into detail about our characters bathroom activities, daily hygiene rituals, favorite method of channel surfing or chosen activity to kill time whilst sitting in rush hour traffic (unless any of those details are important plot points, of course). So why, this pep talker asks, would we spend time describing them walking through that doorway, looking out that window or slamming that car door? He advises that one should pare down the writing to the important points so that one’s reader doesn’t find themselves getting bored with exposition about mundane things which have nothing to do with plot or character development.

This is a good point. And therein lies the source of my discontent. I write about my characters walking through doorways, down hallways and into rooms. I’m pretty sure I’ve written the exact sentence “she walked into the room”, in fact. And I do it because I get caught up in the fact that those five words count towards my word count. I write a superfluous paragraph and am excited that I’m 32 words closer to 50k, rather than acknowledging that those 32 words are unnecessary and, in all likelihood, rather off-putting for a reader who might be trying to get into the story.

Now, I know I said that the point of this whole exercise was to write as terribly as I could possibly allow myself to which means that I certainly shouldn’t be worrying about what a reader might think. But that’s not actually why I’m concerned. I have a pattern in NaNoWriMo which is far more bothersome: I never reach the end.

Factin’s story, in 2009, toped off at over 70k words. Nowhere near the end of the story. Last year’s behemoth, after camp this August, is well over 80k words. (And I’ve already written about my frustration for not finishing the damned thing.) And now? Now I’m 22k words in- nearly halfway to 50k- and I haven’t even had the first big boss battle. (And there are a whole lot of really important plot points that happen between that first battle and the final showdown.) I haven’t written any of that yet.

I’ve been caught up in filler, trying to meet my daily word count by writing about the details of my character walking through that doorway, or closing that latch. And I’d really, really like to reach the end of a story for once. So I have a new task to focus on: write the story, not the word count.

I need to stop worrying about getting from point A to point B and start worrying about point B even being in there so that points C, D, E, F ad nauseum can be reached. I need to write for the sake of moving the plot forward, not for the sake of hitting 50k. I anticipate this being rather difficult, but that’s my goal. Wish me luck!

(22,267 words and counting.)

Day 9

So, the good news is that I have introduced my secondary MC. He is cute. He is geeky. He is insanely talkative. And he is perky in a way that irritates the living hell out of my MC so I’m already having fun writing the two of them bantering.

The bad news? All that banter only added up to 969 words and in the past five minutes I’ve fallen asleep twice while sitting here and staring blankly at the screen. So I’m giving up, short of the daily word count. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll go over and catch up.

Day 8 or Week Two, Depending on How You Look At It

Made my daily word count, with great difficulty.  I'm up to 19,403 words.

Potentially exciting news: my secondary MC has just arrived on the scene and and he's already surprising me with his abilities.  The oddly perky geek-boy nature of his was planned, but the supernatural abilities are coming out as I write.  (Upon first meeting him my MC watches him transform from an unassuming ficus plant into a human being- with no logical explanation.)  I have high hopes for him lightening the mood of what would otherwise be an annoyingly angsty MC-driven story arc.

Here's hoping.

The Right Fight

So, one of the things that my novel is going to have quite a lot of is fight scenes. I’ve already written one and, without going into detail, it was not what I would call good. And yes, I know this whole exercise is all about writing poorly with abandon, but it still takes a lot of effort to leave the scene alone when its suckitude drips down on the pages like rancid meat sauce. But I digress.

Wanting the next one to be at least slightly more readable I did a little research on how to write a fight scene. Have you guys all done this? It’s pretty interesting what advice other writers give you.

Study an actual form of fighting so you have some ideas for moves. Being a relatively advanced black belt I can honestly say that knowing the ins and outs of a particular form of fighting has not actually helped me in writing a fight scene. I mean, at least not that I’m consciously aware of. When I do try to remember a sparring match that I took part in I can never remember any detail that would be helpful. It happens too fast, your focus is too centered in the moment and more often than not when it’s over you don’t really remember the details of who’s foot went where or what move you did that got your instructor to say “yes!”. You just remember that you got that one enthusiastic response so you’re not as bad of a fighter as you think you are. No details or vocabulary that would be helpful comes to mind.

Know how it feels. Another piece of advice I don’t particularly ascribe to? That in order to know how to write what the character felt like when they got hit you should go out and get hit yourself. Really, one site I read said “get someone to hit you in the guts”. Now, due to the above mentioned activity I have been hit a number of times in a variety of unpleasant ways and again I can honestly say that this has not helped me. Besides the fact that, for this particular novel, knowing how it feels for me to get hit will not help me describe how it feels for my MC to get hit because, as I’ve previously mentioned, she is a centuries-old vampire. I’m assuming that her sense of pain is very different than mine.

There are some pointers that I think will be very useful, however. And I will sum them up here whilst recommending that for more comprehensive guides you check out some other resources.

Stay in the moment. Several sites stated how truly disappointing it is to read a fight scene the author obviously didn’t care enough to write and therefore summed up with one sentence. I.E. “He mowed down the angry mob with flaring fists and spastic kicks” or something like that. They all say to stay in the moment, describe the action blow by blow and try to get the reader to feel how crystallized the fighter’s focus is. This, I think, is great advice.

Build tension by using short sentences. The idea here is that since you are doing a play by play you want the timeline broken down to seconds and since your descriptions are only good for one second at a time they have to be short, direct and to the point. This is not the time for long, elaborate descriptions of setting or other visual details. Nor is it the time for thought or even emotion. This is action- physical movements, instantaneous reflexes and abrupt events. Again, I could see this being very important if you have any chance of the reader buying into the scene.

Don’t use fight scenes frivolously. Most of the sites have been recommending that fight scenes serve a very important purpose: to either move the plot forward or illustrate facts about your characters without directly stating them. This, to me, seems kind-of obvious. I mean, if fight scenes are so difficult to write then why would you go out of your way to use them if you didn’t need to? But then I realized: if I was a more aggressive person or were writing without thought-out intent I might start writing fight scenes just cause they look cool on tv or I like describing body parts being dismembered. So I could see this being an important point to make.

Like I said, there are a lot of other tools and advice out there, this is just a sampling based on my experience. For my part, I’m trying to figure out how to make a fight scene believable when I’m writing about a character with superhuman speed, agility, strength, healing ability and reaction time. If anybody has any pointers on that specific context let me know.

(17,703 and counting...)

Busy Day

Why, you may wonder since I only hit par on my word count today, was the day so busy?  I will tell you.  It's because I got up early to take a three hour trek up to visit my parents, spent most of the day with them playing pinochle and eating my father's heavenly made-from-scratch chicken noodle soup and then drove back home.  I am sleepy beyond reason and could so easily have passed out on the couch as soon as I got in the door.

But I didn't.  I pushed through the non-stop yawns and wrote out 1770 words.  New words, mind you.  My head start is finished and I am now 100% on my own with nothing to guide me but a whole bunch of grandiose ideas which may or may not ultimately end up having anything to do with my story. 

And that's the main idea behind this whole adventure, isn't it?  Writing when you haven't got time to write.  Piecing together a story from a mass of crazy ideas and images in your head.  Barreling forward like a blind man in an explosives factory and hoping for the best.  That is the nature of this particular beast.  So I gotta give myself credit for living up to the true spirit of the adventure.  Credit, and permission to go to bed early.

16,421 words and counting.

Update

14,651 words.  And a confession:
I'm cheating.  Most of what I have so far I wrote before now.  So no, I haven't been pounding out 5000 plus words a day.  I've been editing mostly, adding a few words here or a sentence there, reacquainting myself with my characters and plot from the extensive notes from before.

But, as a friend recently pointed out to me, they are still my words.  It's not like I copied them from someone else and am cheating for real (like with plagiarism).  No, this is my story.  Did I come up with it on the spot on November 1st?  No.  I had it fleshed out in my mind well before now.

But according to the rules of NaNoWriMo there's nothing wrong with note taking and brainstorming and plot landscaping before November.  So my notes are more like finished chapters than scattered ideas.  So what?  They're still my words, my prose on the page.  And very shortly I'll be entering into unknown territory when the previously written material runs out.  (Like a few more paragraphs very shortly!)  And then I'll be on my own, heading off into the dark, uncharted space of my imagination with nothing more than a vague roadmap of where I think (and hope) my plot is going to head and a bunch of characters crazy enough to tear up that map and get totally lost out there.

So you know what?  I'll take the head start even if it is bending the rules a bit.  I'll need it when everyone gets lost in the dark.  Here we go...

And Today...

... it's up to 10,021.  Are curse words valid dialog?

Day 2

Up to 8,434.  Struggling not to edit as I write.  But certainly living up to my goal of sucking.

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 1

Out of the gate with 4,598 words.  And so tired I can barely keep my eyes open.  I have earned a good night's sleep. 

Buddy's First Halloween

As a small dog owner there are certain things that you just have to do. No matter how silly you feel for being one of “those people”, or how much your dog may hate you for it you feel compelled to do these things because the sheer adorableness is too great not to. Posed picture sittings are one of these milestones, one that we passed many months back. Getting an adorable Halloween costume is one that we experienced for the first time last night.

I was a little nervous about the availability of said Halloween costumes given that this was last minute and that Buddy is so tiny that it’s often extremely difficult to find things in his size. Luckily, I found an extra, extra small that was just about perfect for him. His costume? A sock monkey. It was a little knit sweater with a sock money design on the back and hood with monkey ears. To say that he was adorable would be a severe understatement. He was painfully cute. Way cuter than any of the trick-or-treaters that came to our door. (BTW, slightly off topic, but my favorite costume of the night? One kid was dressed as a box. A plain cardboard box. And the best part? He couldn’t move his arms so his friend had to get the candy and put it in his bag. I could barely restrain my laughter till I closed the door.) He was so delightfully precious that even though he hated every single minute of wearing that costume we didn’t care- it was too cute to take off.

Now, with the hood down, he actually seemed to tolerate it. It was warm and he was getting a lot of attention with it on. But with the hood up it was bordering on animal cruelty. He couldn’t see and when he wrestled out of my grip and ran away he ran head-on into the couch, then backed up into the chair, then shook his head so violently that he fell over. We learned that the only time the hood could be safely up was when we were holding him. So we took a whole bunch of pictures and then put the hood back. Because even without the little monkey ears it was still an adorable little hoodie. And even though I’m pretty sure he disliked every single minute of it it was totally worth it. We’ve even discussed seeing if we can find a tiny little elf costume for him for Christmas! Poor Buddy.