So It Begins

I feel like, over the now-year-and-a-half that I've used this blog, I've probably used this title already. But if you'll look at your hand and pick out one specific flake of skin that's probably dry and itchy in this dry weather, you may note that its size is congruent to the size of my caring about using a title twice.

I don't know if that paragraph made sense to you, so to sum up, basically I don't care.

Tess, Ben, Guido, Gus, Martha, Mitchell, and Tamara hit the 50,000th word at almost exactly 10:00 EST last night. In case you were curious, the word was "noise" and it was in the middle of a sentence (I didn't even finish that sentence, either, by the way). The scene that I was in the middle of building was one where Tess and Ben woke up to find themselves in...shall we say...compromised positions. [Possibly] needless to say, if I ever do go back and edit that novel, that scene will be cut out.

The past thirty days of nigh nonstop writing have driven me to pick up some...strange habits. I'm discovering more and more how crippling they are, how detrimental to the continuation of a happy, scholarly, and sane life for me. I hit "apple + S" whenever I stop typing anything. Anything. Including this blog. I've tried to save this website somewhere on my hard drive probably four times now. Also, I would write an ellipse like this...then backspace so that it looks like this..then hit space so my complete ellipse looks like this.. and I feel dumb. (Try this in Word and you might better understand why someone who is trying to get as many words out of her document as possible would do this strange exercise.) I wince whenever I press the "delete" key, and then I count the words I'm deleting and then try to quickly retype that same number to make up for lost ground.

Secret's out: I've gone 'round the bend.

This month was such a great experience. I was a part of two "regionals," meaning I affiliated myself with two "home" locations. The one I focused on was my school region, as that was the one I could most easily participate in actively. We had a Municipal Liaison, a person who's on staff at NaNoWriMo and is in charge of regional pep-talks and write-ins. So I got emails from my two MLs, from program director Chris Baty, and even a few from famous writers who had been persuaded by NaNoWriMo to contribute to the cause. These emails alone would have made the month for me.

But what I loved most of all was the camaraderie. I felt like I was a part of something. The girl in the room next to me got into NaNo too and we kept each other going at times when each of us wanted to quit. In fact, she and I wrote out last 1500 words together and pressed "submit to win" at the same time, and then did crazy dances around the lobby, banging pans and cookie sheets together. And I got to know some of the other people in my region too. I could only go to the online write-ins because I don't have a car and no one would have been able to drive me, but I learned what other people were writing about, the characters that were giving them trouble, the sticking points they had hit, and the tactics they used to boost word count.

It was a really thrilling month. However, I definitely can wait for next year. That will not be a struggle for me.

I have a lot of other stuff to write about, but this took longer than expected, so I'm going to have to put the rest off for a while longer.

<3 spadeALLcross