06.07.12 Update

[Penguiduck]

Hello, all!

I've started my internship at a graphics firm, where I act as a marketing agent, an addition to the sales team -- I basically work on designing marketing campaigns, which by the way, is more challenging than it seems. I also do cold-calling every once in a while, which is pretty awful, although I apparently sound enough like a young girl to elicit some form of patience and pity because I've never been cursed out, yelled at, or hung up on (which has happened to all the other interns and my coworkers ).

Unfortunately, this place is about an hour away from my house, so my 9 hour day suddenly turns into an 11 hour one. But I do need to money and the experience, so it's worth it. It's just a shame that gas is eating up most of my paycheck. x.x

Takeaway? I want to stay in school forever. Working 40+ hour weeks sucks. XD

NaNoWriMo is also happening. I've never done NaNo before because November is always a terrible month for me; even though I'm also busy now, my schedule is a lot more predictable. I'm giving Camp NaNo a try for that reason. So far, I've been keeping up with the required word count, so that's good. If you'd like to support Penguiduck through her writing endeavors, please check out Singularity of Eight. Any reviews, criticism, and thoughts would be appreciated. Also, the faster I reach the 50,000 words, the faster I can return to updating my other stuff, so any encouragement is welcomed!

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear from you soon.

[Kerrigan Sheehan]

I didn't realize you'd never done a NaNo before.
-As someone who has done and won both NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy several times, I can honestly say that the trick is just not falling behind. She who falls behind stays behind because it snowballs very quickly. If you get stuck, skip it and fill it in later. Otherwise, you'll stay stuck unless you're one of those people who can just force it for a few days.
-The other trick is to do your word count updates through the site itself by using the verification tool. It may seem like a pain in the butt extra step, but it can save you in the end. This is because the same chapter put into different word processors will give you different counts. They use different formulas to calculate it. MS Word is pretty accurate and will either lose or gain a negligible amount, under 100 words difference by the end, but for those of us who don't own computers that came with it and didn't want to pay that much get different results. If you're using Works, congratulations. You both have a word processor that's incompatible with everything and a word processor that will give you extra words in NaNoWriMo because it underestimates your word count. If you have Open Office, be warned. If you use its count all month, you could end up with 1000+ words extra to write in the last hour, more if you write a lot of dialogue. This is because it counts smart quotes as words.
-For me, I found that it's easier to write chapter-by-chapter than to focus on the daily wordcount. Obviously, you don't want to follow the daily count to an exact. Otherwise, you'll be left mid-sentence most days. I'm sure you've written enough to get an idea of your average wordcount per chapter. (In other words, I've seen the wordcount stats on your stories on your profile, and you're just slightly ahead of me (the difference is under 5k), so I'm guessing you know how you average.) You can either try to hit just above the wordcount goal for each day or base it off of chapters and maybe be short one day but end in a place from which you can easily pick up. I found the latter works better for me, but it's all individual preference.

Also, good luck in graphics. I worked on the far other end of it in a print shop in CD manufacture, bindery, and shipping (and occasionally helping a family member in pre-press with plate-making and coffee runs) during the summer between my junior and senior year of high school and then periodically after that, sometimes from home doing shipper kits. I really miss that job because the people were awesome. My supervisor in CD preparation bred and showed (as in dog shows with crystal collars...) pit bulls, and one of my tasks was to accompany her on a 3 PM break to her house around the corner to let the dogs out to use the toilet, feed and water them, and give them love. (I was also working with my father, which meant that I had known some of these people since I was a toddler, so it wasn't very strange to me or very work-like. It was a lot of fun.)
The one thing I don't miss is cyan ink. For those who aren't aware -- it doesn't really ever dry. Cyan ink actually just hardens over time, but if you're in bindery dealing with it just off of the press, or even the next morning, that isn't close. You get much the same color on your hands handing navy blue folders as you would picking blueberries (done that too...), and cyan folders or leaflets make you look like an alien has started turning you into its own species from the fingertips up.

[Penguiduck]

Aw, thank you for the tips. ^_^ You're so helpful. I'm pretty on top of things as far as my word count goes. I tend to write more over the weekend because I have time, and those extra words serve as a buffer during the week when I can't write as much. And I write chapter by chapter, though I always check my word count as I go.

lol, I actually don't know much about print since I'm on the marketing side of things, but I find it really interesting. It's way more complicated than people think it is.

[Kerrigan Sheehan]

I studied it for quite a while, and I worked in it for a while as well. If you went to one of those walks for heart disease in 2009, there's a chance I put together your team leader's kit by hand in my dad's back room. If you've ever seen a WebMD (not the internet company...they're basically a city-by-city networking book for doctors) book at a doctor's office, my father either did the plates (a couple of years ago) or the bindery work (more recently) on it. If you bought New York Yankees grass seed at Home Depot right after they opened the new park, I was on the team that worked on the labels. (Whole company and every temp was...I was sitting next to one of the salesmen and the company owner.

Most of the other jobs I worked on weren't things most people would have had any chance to see. One was a pamphlet for a financial company's annual retreat. One was for a statewide fundraiser for JDRF. One was for an alternative school for troubled and at risk boys aged 12 to 18. One was for a co-ed prep school. One was a huge quarterly mailer for an investment company. I don't remember anything else in detail, as most of the rest, I was doing odd jobs or I was just helping my dad with the platemaker, so I didn't get to see the end result.