Sunday, November 06, 2005

Oy with the poodles already!

Wow. I didn't intend to go this long without updating. My only defense is that this week has gone by incredibly fast. Doing not much, but it still flew by. Let's see. Interesting things since I last wrote?

Um... Thursday and Friday were pretty uneventful--Lourenzo, work, etc, etc, etc. Nothing too earth-shattering there. Saturday... I blew off a NaNo write-in for a girls' night out with some girls from church, on the condition that I skip lunch out today and write instead. More on that in a minute.

We went to see "Prime," which was actually pretty funny, and not what I expected. I was expecting a much more raunchy comedy, but it was actually a lot classier than I thought it would be. Funny, for sure, but not quite the overly sexual movie that I'd thought it would be. Or rather, not the explicitly sexual movie that I was perhaps anticipating. Anyways, then we went out to eat, and a good time was had by all, although the restaurant/bar was incredibly noisy, and I woke up with no voice. Again. I should be much more diligent with my vocal warmups on days like this, but they're a little awkward to do in a house full of people that aren't related or in the same major.

Church this morning, and then I went to a write-in on the Staten Island ferry. Yup--we just sat on the ferry and wrote. Took out our laptops and wrote for one round-trip's worth. They made us get off, though, so we decided that maybe that was too much hassle, so we took our work outside. I seriously can't believe that it's November 6, and I spent my afternoon sitting in a park. Incredible.

In any case, I'm losing steam now. I've written about 3500 words today, and I'm still a bit behind, but I'm definitely further than I was. Tomorrow is my day off (off of Starbucks, that is), so once I drop Lourenzo off, I'm going to find somewhere to hole up with my laptop, and try to get a good 5000 words ahead. I know I've got time to write during the week, but I want to take full advantage of my days off to get ahead, so that I'm not scrambling.

It's amazing how aware I am of the roughness of this draft. I know how much work will need to go into character and plot development once the draft is finished, but I'm excited to know the characters well enough to do that.

I've only finished one novel--in 2002--and I actually went back and edited it the next summer. It was a pretty cool experience. It added about 10,000 words, and the amount that it added to the story was incredible. It really is impossible to write a palatable novel in 30 days, but that's not the point. The point is to just get the words out there in 30 days, and then there's actually something to edit, which is better than having nothing to edit, right?

And, even better, since I've written so much today, I don't have to feel guilty for going home tonight and curling up in front of a couple of episodes of Gilmore Girls. My season 1 dvd's came, and I'm trying to ration myself while I'm working on NaNo, because the novel has to come first (in terms of my spare-time entertainment) during November. Ah well--if nothing else, I'll have something to watch during the winter hiatus, when there are no new episodes.

But tonight, I don't have to feel like I need to write. Of course, I do need to feel like I need to clean my room and all that kind of fun stuff, but those are easy jobs compared to cranking out my daily quota.

Wordcount: 8,071 down, 41,929 to go.

Enough for one day. I'm going home, and I'm not going to think about writing again until tomorrow.

posted by Alida at 4:53 PM
2 comments

2 Comments:
Blogger Jen said...

I actually get the reference that you are making in your title - a rare event indeed! :)

4:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm glad I'm not the only one! I think I've gotten two, total! (I heard one in the music at the gym.)

Mom

10:16 PM  

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