11/4/10: HOW IS IT THAT I USED TO ENJOY BEING PROLIFIC?
11/5/10: It seems I've forgotten how to spell. Just the interesting words, though. It's like forgetting long division.
11/8/10: WAIT. Wait: So it's actually going to be harder to make time to write during the weekends. Aw, man...
11/9/10: I find it strange that the good folks at NaNoWriMo offer SO MANY DISTRACTIONS when you sign up to be an "official" participant. When my email pings me, I STOP WRITING. SURELY YOU KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN.
11/10/10: Making money is such a drag.
11/11/10: To write fiction is also to do varied and unpredictable research. I'd be so much better informed as a person if I had tried to write a novel before now...
11/12/10: I hate being behind the curve. I hope to correct that this weekend. I hope to hold myself to that by writing this here...
11/16/10: Cannot...make...enough time...for to be...writing...
11/17/10: The worst part of NaNoWriMo is definitively the way in which it makes you a failure on so many days. This week I've organized rehearsals out of town, accomplished work at my job that I'm eminently unqualified for, and gotten off-book for a show. But my word count HOVERS behind the curve. Still, if I were to quit tomorrow (I won't) I wouldn't regret a moment of the time invested.
11/18/10: I have all my narrators in the same room! Yay! ...Now what?
11/19/10: It's necessary that I research military technology for this story. It's not that I enjoy it. Oh no. No. Not at all.
11/22/10: It's interesting how this is teaching me to work from all sides. An outline informs writing narrative, but also vice versa, back and forth. Also, what ends up being told and what shown - fascinatingly ambiguous.
11/23/10: Thanksgiving is looking like a LOT of hours spent puzzling over a keyboard...
11/29/10: All is pretty much lost. I'd have to get some 13,000 words done in the next 24 hours, and I'm not even sure I could do that with a sick day. Still, I'm compelled to get as much more as I can - which is a pretty cool feeling.
11/30/10 9:36am: So here is the point in the writing process when one imitates Admiral Farragut and says, "DAMN THE OUTLINE!"
11/30/10 10:37am: What in the great wide earth possessed me to make this thing such a plot-twisty mess? I am freaking lost, and I'm supposed to know what's going on...
11/30/10 11:57am: If I've fallen back in love with my story, can I get an extension? Like, maybe three months more? NaNoWriMos.?
11/30/10 12:42pm: Aaaaaand here we lag. Thinking after eating lunch really is the worst.
11/30/10 12:52pm: I'm totally being verbose on purpose. Definitely a drawback to the NaNoWriMo route.
11/30/10 2:01pm: Compositionus Interruptus. To change light bulbs. Oh yeah - being a professional author would be just terrible...
11/30/10 3:31pm: They couldn't choose a month with 31 days? No? Anyone...?
11/30/10 4:52pm: Pretty much time to get to rehearsal. Tonight I'll post, but I didn't clear the 50,000 mark, and I confess some disappointment. I think part of what makes this challenge so appealing is the seeming impossibility of it, and the sense of hope one gets to maintain in the face of it. I have had that in spades, and enjoyed it right up until the end.
11/30/10 11:03pm: The grand total - 41,222. Nothing to sneeze at, as failures go.
HOWEVER, some of those words were words I wrote years ago when I started the project, and I haven't added in all of those I plan to use. If I add it all together, even though it doesn't represent writing done this month, the total comes out to...
...47,723.
Damn it.
Well anyway, nice playing with you all (those of you who were playing). I hope now that all that writing continues a little longer, and then gets revised into something I'm not completely ashamed of. Somewhere between here and there, I will feel like I can say, "I wrote a book."
Which kicks major ass.