One Abnormal Girl

The other night I was poking around for some new Evan and Jaron, and it turns out they’re about 6 weeks into a 52-week project where they release one new track every Sunday for a year. Looks like some of the first ones were free for a bit, but they’re now 95 cents per track, which I really don’t mind, as I know most of the money is going directly to them. (Not to mention the note where they encourage fans to get the tracks from a friend if they can’t afford them, which just makes me want to buy them all the more.)

Crazy for This Girl is still one of my most favorite songs in the history of ever, but I love them for all sorts of other reasons, too. For one, they’re identical twins, and they sure are pretty. Two, they just make honest music. They don’t sound like they’re trying to ride on a gimmick just to appeal to the greater American public. Even their more melancholy songs avoid being emo. I feel like I’m actually listening to them, not their label. I also just like the sound of their voices. They’re nice-guy voices? Likable, lovable. And their songs are very catchy.

Furthermore, they’ve somehow merged in my head with the Winchesters, I guess because they too are brothers, and the twins kind of look like Sam–other than that, I got nothin’. (It’s an especially difficult comparison to resist when they sing lyrics like

I see a shadow, it’s getting closer / I’m barely breathing, who touched my shoulder / Look in the mirror, but I don’t see me, just the writing on the wall behind me [...] I see monsters, screaming in my head / they’re underneath my bed / I’ve had enough, they’re out to get me )

Anyway, I’m really excited for the tracks they’ll be putting out over the next year. They’ve been taking on some non-musical projects (including hosting some show I’ve never seen?), so I’m happy to see they haven’t moved on from their music entirely. Fans for rockstars are normal, but fans for screenwriters are a little weird. I’d rather fangirl them from the safety of rockstardom.

So much love. <3

So in my usual habit of playing with progress tracking rather than actually making progress, I made a tracking spreadsheet for NaNoWriMo that helps keep track of your daily writing and lets you know if you’re on track or not.  The usual goal is 1667 words per day, but that’s only if you actually get to sit down and conquer that goal every day.  If you skip a day, or if you’re a little short one day, the spreadsheet will redistribute your remaining wordcount over the remaining days of the month, which helps you to compensate much better than having to make up those lost 1667 words the very next day.

Here it is as an xls file: NaNo Progress Chart

If you don’t have Excel, you can upload it to Google Docs and use it from there, which is where I made it to begin with.  You only need to update your overall wordcount (the white column) for each day, and the spreadsheet will do the rest.  Your “daily quota” is how much you can expect to have to write every day for the rest of the month in order to reach 50,000 words, dependent on how much you’ve written so far.  The “words to go” is how much more you’ll need to write on a given day in order to keep a quota consistent, but if you stop short of your “words to go,” the next day’s daily quota (with the red circle) is your new goal for every day of writing.

 So if you miss a day, or are short for a day, it will help you plan how to get to 50,000 words anyway, rather than reminding you how dreadfully far behind you are.

\o/