author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

OK, check it out. I have 43,620 words left to write, and 23 days (not counting today) to write them in. That comes out to some 1,900 words a day. So if I write 2K a day from here on out - and I did write 2K today - then I'll be able to take a couple days off and still win!

We had a great turn out at the Tea Spot social today. In attendance were, in order of appearance, Kandybar, SlyCrow, mimsyborogove, and Willow. And myself, of course. I'm vortexae. And we all managed to cram ourselves into a single booth. Everyone's gone now (and I'll head for home myself after I get this posted), but then it's past 5:00 PM now, and people started arriving around 12:30, so I think we all managed to do our time.

Kandybar wins the prize for words written so far and words written here, today. But as you can see I made some progress myself, as did mimsyborogove. And in between paragraphs there was some chatting too. It was a nice sort of Write-in/Meet-up hybrid. And now I am thoroughly caffeinated. (I highly recommend the "Golden Thunder" Darjeeling now available at the Tea Spot.)

Tomorrow we'll be having a write-in at my house. I plan to make some vegetarian chili with garnishes of grated cheddar and sour cream ready to go. SlyCrow and mimsyborogove are likely to be there, and if it goes well we'll do it again next week Monday too when Willow might be able to join us.

I'm really liking this write-in thing. Last year we didn't really have any, and if I wanted to actually write at the meet-ups I had to be all antisocial and stuff. But this year it seems, like I said, that the line between social gathering and writing date has blurred in a yummy way so that it's easy to shift between the two modes. It helps when you have a whole bunch of people show up ready to write and socialize too; that way you don't feel like you're the only one A) talking everyone's ear off, or B) ignoring everyone and furiously typing.

I got Diane through most of her first transformation scene, and up to the point where she realizes she'll have to cooperate with the ghost in order to get home again. I left off right in the middle of a paragraph, and I'll probably do a bit more writing tonight just so I can see her home by bedtime. Which may mean that I'll earn a third day off sometime this month. Hurrah!

So I'm going to head to the Boulder Bookstore now, place an order for Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem!, and pick up a copy (if they have one) of Pen On Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide To Igniting The Writer Within. And then I'm going to head home.

All in all... another good day. *happy sigh*

I'm still at the hotel in Tempe, but I won't be for long. The car is all packed up. All that's left is for me to get my own happy ass in there along with my bookbag, laptop, printer, humorous back-support pillow ("The Witch Is In") and print-out of a new short story to mail to SciFiction.

I'll be driving on no sleep and a heck of a lot of coffee. As I type this, the hotel staff are making their way down the halls dropping off copies of the USA Today—just to give you an idea of what time it is. (Heck, those of you who pay a little attention have already read the datestamp on the blog entry. Duh.) WFC2004 is some ten hours over and done. And you know what I just found out? I can get internet in my room. My window faces ASU campus, and if I'm sitting over here at the desk, I can sometimes connect to SSID "asu_tempe". And sometimes I can even stay connected for a significant amount of time.

It seems to be more reliable with the window open.

My last act before leaving this hotel room for good is to start my novel, remembering the wise words of one of the WFC panelists (whose name I have shamefully forgotten): If you can't put in your four hours a day, put in a few sentences at a time, several times during the day. Do what you can if you can't do more. And so I have put down a little over 300 words of the opening scene which begins the outer story that frames the inner one.

I'll be hitting the road soon. Next stop: Flagstaff. I'll try to pull up in range of a wireless signal there, type a few more hundred words on this novel, and blog about it. In any case, the goal is to get home in enough time to get a good night's sleep before—eek!—opening the polls tomorrow morning. That is - in 27 hours. 27 hours until election day! You had just better show up, is all I'm sayin'.

So apparently my MLdom (municipal liaison stuff) is now official. Gods help me. Erin emailed to tell me that I've got the actual moderator superpowers in the Colorado:Elsewhere forums. Go me. I guess I'd better go use them or something.

So we're about seventy-five percent less crappy now. Cool beans.

I suppose I'd better start blogging about the novel now or something. Not sure I want to tonight. I think first I want to get my admin interface back up and running, so I can blog from the web page instead of from the PHPMyAdmin "Insert" form.

If none of that made a whit of sense, don't worry about it. Presumably you're here because you're also into that NaNoWriMo thing. If you do PHP and MySQL too, that's a plus, but certainly not necessary.

No, I can't adequately explain why I don't use an out-of-the-box blog manager like Blogger.com or Moveable Type. I could say, "I'm a control freak," or, "That would be cheating," but if you had to ask, those answers probably wouldn't cut it. In which case, I suppose, it would be best not to ask.

Again, stay tuned.

So... yeah. NaNoEdMo. Um. We're going to have to revisit this concept in April, I think. See you then...

OK, I admit it. I am not, thus far, a very good blogger. Given the panic of getting the novel finished, there was no time to blog. But I would be a singularly abyssmal blogger if I did not at least journal the final days of the month and my pulled-out-of-my-backside win. At the very least, I should show off my "Winner!" .jpg, right?

So. Saturday I stayed up all night. Remember how I was going to stay up all night on Samhain and write straight until dawn? Apparently I wasn't serious enough. It takes a real fear of failure for me to get serious and fight the sleepies. That fear didn't really hit until Saturday morning. Even on Friday night I failed to pound out my quota, even with a quota of 7K per day! And Saturday I rather sabotaged, even considering the mixed blessing of a cancelled flying lesson (winds in excess of 28 knots at JeffCo).

I sabotaged it in a really yummy way, though. I went to the Redstone Meadery and tasted pretty much everything they had. That included the 2001 Reserve, best decribed as "the Port of mead." Then I went home and had a mead-induced nap. Word count at the time: 38,000. In trouble? Oh yeah.

So I got back to work around 8:00 and I stayed up all night, averaging about 1,000 words an hour but not necessarily many hours in a row. And I don't do that well. It helped that the rest of the household was up most the night too.

By 7:00 I had the novel up to its major crisis point and the sleepies were really starting to hit, so I went across the street to Vic's for a change of scenery and a bit more caffeine. I asked the barrista, "So what would you recommend for someone who's been up all night and isn't done yet?" He suggested something called a "depth charge." This turned out to be a shot of espresso dumped into a cup of coffee, and it was nasty. A bunch of sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla powder seemed to help. That, and a glass of orange juice, because I try to accompany my drugs with actual food.

I got the climactic penultimate scene written while at the cafe. There came a point where I was crying like a baby while typing it out, and I'm sure the gal at the table next to mine thought I was a basket case. It's usually a good sign that the story, however awkwardly told, is worth telling, so I was starting to get really excited.

I went back home to write the end of the novel. I cried some more. The surviving characters cried some more, and laughed a little too. I wrote the last line, checked my word count, and really started crying.

Barely more than 46,000 words.

Shit!

The rest of the day was spent frantically pulling extra scenes out of, like I said, my backside. And for the last 2K I wasn't even writing story anymore but background material and brainstorming.

But I did finish. And in time to watch Adult Swim, too. So, Yay! Chalk me up another NaNoWriMo win. One more rough draft to go into my compost drawer until such time as I'm ready for a revision... in... I dunno, how about March?

...and charging on. No time to say much more than that, because if I stop for tonight I'll be left with more than 8K per day - and I won't have time to do that on Sunday! So, on I go.

The characters are about to reach the midpoint crisis. The main character's girlfriend is suggesting a trip to the beach. It spelled trouble for Ranulf and Undine, and it sure as heck ain't a good idea for these kids either.

Addendum: I really should add a "current word count" field to the Nanoblog database table. That and a "which year's novel" indication so that I can reuse it from year to year. And I should actually use the "image" field I put in there...

[Ed. Note: Done. 2003-03-12]

[Ed. Note: Improved. 2005-08-21]

Back to the current word count thing:

I'm currently at 25,072 words. My next reward comes at 27,000 words, when I will allow myself more coffee. Then at 30,000 words I'll let myself have a forum break and then go to sleep. Maybe tonight I'll be able to fight off the sleepies.

37,533 / 7 = 5362, rounded up.

So I guess I'll say hi again about 5362 words from now, which translates to "before midnight, but only just."

We had a great turn out for this week's Boulder meet-up. Lots of chess, lots of Go, lots of chocolate, lots of noise. I got about 1100 words done in the midst of all this. It's starting to break up now (5:16 - and four of us have been here since noon thirty).

The plan for tonight is an Adult Swim marathon (a new Space Ghost Coast To Coast! "Tectonic plates have shifted" since the last time that happened!) and enough food to fool you into thinking Thanksgiving had come a week early. Bridget made pumpkin cheesecake with a gingersnap crust last night (I've had a slice - it's divine) and with the leftover pumpkin I'm going to make muffins. There will also be a field roast (vegetarian version of a roast beef, apparently), a veggie tray, and candied yams.

Sounds like fun, huh? Well, if A) you know where I live, and B) we're currently on speaking terms, you should drop by and join the party and help justify the lack of writing that will happen.

Laundry will happen, though. Laundry, but not writing. That ain't right. Something will have to be done about that.

No, of course that bar hasn't moved 3,250 words to the right. Yes, I know I'm in deep ca-ca. Indeed. Look, don't bother me and my nice fuzzy coat of comforting denial. I am in pain right now, all around the collarbone, and the creases under my eyes are sticky with tears, and it's all Aeire's fault.

Still don't get it? Try reading this one. Yeah. That one's pretty good. Hmm. So's this other one.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a three-hour nap to take.