I ended up with four good non-fiction essay drafts, four blog topics, two bonafide novel ideas for next year’s NaNoWriMo, and a caffeine-monkey that I need to get off off my back. My experience closely paralleled Chris Baty’s book.
- 11/1 – 3 – enthusiasm. I was sitting in the corner of Cafe Allegro and just stared at my screen for half an hour trying to think of where to start. (“At the beginning,” the crowd yelled. I asked, “WWQTD?” “We meant: Somewhere in the middle, then flip around a lot,” they retorted.)
- 11/4 – 8 – Cosmic angst.. Two of my characters were despondent about the election,
seriously considering emigrating to Canada. It didn’t help that the third character gloated. When she did an obnoxious butt-wiggle and tossed around the m-word in casual conversation, I had to enlist a fourth character to talk everyone down. That worked, but they didn’t want to be around each other for a few days…. - 11/9 – 12 – The Author hits the wall. See above.
- 11/13 – 15 – It’s all about volume! I felt bad that I started falling behind and wrote two large bursts of stuff. (Thank goodness for Star Trek syndication.)
- 11/16 – 19 – Work gets in the way.. I was very busy with work and getting only 4 hours of sleep a night. My spouse suggested that, given all the other things I have going on right now, NaNoWriMo wasn’t a good idea
- 11/20 – 25 – Time to Confute. Having written so much bad stuff already, I didn’t want her to be right. Ironically, this was my best material.