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Welcome back!

I had planned in September to try and blast through the first of three months of NanoWriMo-style draft creating goodness, however, within the first couple of days I was blindsided by a couple of events in my personal life.

It’s amazing how a couple of things can throw you off entirely. For a good chunk of the month, I felt as if most of my creative energy had been siphoned off to deal with the problems assaulting me. At the end of most days, my mind was too frazzled and exhausted to even think of my novels.

But, instead of beating myself up over it, I’ve decided to get up off the ground, dust off my clothes and keep going forward, beginning with the next month. I don’t view it as a postponement, but as a re-affirmation of the goal I had set. I will get my three months of writing done one way or another.

All right! I made my writing goal for the first day and things are looking good.

Now I just need to repeat this for the next 30 days for the next three months…. Good, lord, what have I gotten myself into?

Seriously though, I’m looking forward to the end result of this orgy of productivity. Even if it may end up killing me, I’ll have a lot more to re-write, edit and get out there.

It’s both exciting and scary.

To keep track of everything, I’m using the NanoWriMo Report Card spreadsheet to track my progress and other stats. It’s a definitive must if you’re going to be pumping out words on a schedule like I’ve given myself. It’ll tell you nifty info how much you can produce in a given time period and just how much as a percentage you have left of your novel. You can find it here, and if you want to undertake NanoWriMo or decide to do your own personal NanoWriMo, then I recommend you get it.

As of now, the second day isn’t off to as good a start since I’m off to a career fair in the morning in order to secure some extra income to keep the lights on and the Internet flowing. But just like yesterday, I know I can make it up later in the day.

As I sit here in front of my keyboard looking at my novel’s template within Scrivener, I’m gripped with the that fear I haven’t planned the story enough.

I’m using a template someone created in Scrivener based on a program called Power Structure. The template has quite a bit of fields you can fill in with all sorts of information and while I’ve filled in quite a bit, I can’t help but feel there’s too many of these fields left empty. It makes me feel like I haven’t planned out my novel and if I continue forward with it I’ll be doomed to failure.

The rational part of my mind tells me this is just my perfectionism asserting itself and arresting my ability to continue forward. On the other hand my irrational fears are screaming that if I don’t fill the template completely, I’ll be writing myself into a corner I can’t escape. After which I’ll need to perform extensive re-writing and perhaps an outright scrapping of what I’d written so far.

So what’s the solution? As always, the truth lays somewhere in the middle. Some planning is needed to ensure the project is successful, but over-planning can stop it before it starts, miring yourself in too many details. In my case, I’ve decided to fill in only the parts of the template I feel are absolutely necessary and leave rest to either fill in at a later date or to forever stay vacant.

Like someone had once told me, planning is writing, but if planning keeps you from writing then it’s just wasting your time.

Well, my ambitions plan to start on September 1st on my 3 month personal NanoWriMo got off to a rocky start.

The night before I was to start I contracted a flu that knocked me off my feet. Only now am I going through the last of it, but still I had the affect of throwing me off my start. No matter how I tried I couldn’t concentrate much less avoid going through a coughing fit.

Instead of letting this event go by the way side, I’ve decided to re-start it either on Sunday or Monday (depending on how I feel tomorrow morning). I’ll instead add the week I missed to the end and continue forward. Of course I will try to make up as much as I can during the month but I also want to give myself some leeway since I know things can happen during this time and the last thing I need is added stress.

Either way, it is on!

A couple of months ago, I asked:

Is Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee really worth it?

At the time, the answer I came up with was that it was not. I was ready to write it off as another coffee which couldn’t live up to the hype. That was when Jerry from Jamaica Blue Mountain Traders dropped me a comment that I may have had a bad batch and that I should really take a look at their coffee.

After agreeing to give their coffee a try, I received a package of their Dauphin Kaffee Peaberry Roast on Demand, and opened it up. The scent of the beans were a welcome surprise. When I had opened the last Jablum bag, they really didn’t have too strong of aroma, these practically screamed for attention. A very good start. But, the true test would come after putting them in the burr grinder and then through my brewer.

Wow, what a difference. This coffee was excellent. It had a mild taste, with a faint sweet and bitter flavor, but the two balanced each other perfectly. There were some citrus overtones, but not enough to overpower the core flavor of the coffee.

In the espresso machine, I found the coffee performed just as well as through the brewer with the difference that it was sweeter. However. this natural sweetness didn’t affect the flavor and instead offset the harsh bitterness you’d normally find in some lesser roasts.

Just to have a control group, I had my sister pick up another bag of Jablum coffee and see how it stacked up once more. There was no comparison. Even with a newer batch, the Jablum coffee didn’t stack up against the Dauphin coffee. Then again, the Dauphin coffee was a peaberry roast so it was going to be higher quality but even putting that aside the difference in taste was night and day.

So, at the end of everything, I can now say that some of the hype for Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is indeed justified, but like with all coffee, it depends on who roasted it and what the quality of the bean is. Sometimes taste can be a subjective thing, so the best thing I can recommend is for you to go and get your own bag and see for yourself.