Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Crash

The ecstasy, now the agony.

A moment of euphoria

It's 12:30. At night.

I, of course, have school tomorrow. I'll probably be writing close to all night. I'm already sleep deprived as it is, from the last several nights of high speed novel writing. My hair is all dried out and frazzled. My body is falling apart. My system has a Monster "Assault" energy drink running through it (in other words, I'm high on caffeine right now). My novel still far from the 50,000 word finish line, I somehow experienced a moment of optimistic euphoria about 45 seconds ago, enough to interrupt my furious novel writing for a minute to post this blog.

It is in moments like these, essentially moments of self-inflicted torture, that I feel most alive.

As Aragorn says, there is always hope.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Home stretch

Only a few more days until the end of November, which means only a few more days to finish my 50,000 word novel.

Now, for those of you who think 50,000 words isn't so bad, I can say, from my experience, that you are very, very wrong. 50,000 words is A LOT OF WORDS. Especially in a 30 day period. In fact, I'm wasting my time writing here instead of working on my novel.

But I wanted to post this to give myself a little incentive to push through to the end, because as of this moment I'm rather behind in my word count and I've got to work tirelessly between now and midnight, November 30th, to cross the finish line.

Because of this crazy novel writing idea:
1) I've made my girlfriend upset with my unavailability and extreme exhaustion several times; the excuse "It's only for November!" is losing some of its charm.
2) I've been a super grouch at school on several occasions.
3) I missed out on going to Vegas with Mark and Clemens for Thanksgiving weekend.
4) I missed out on having lunch with my mom on her way down from Redding.

Fate has conspired against me. Once again, I caught a terrible cold (perhaps this simply happens every November?). And of course, I had the usual time suck of report cards and 51 parent-teacher conferences. And it didn't even rain this month until yesterday. Not exactly an idyllic novel writing environment this month.

I'll be 30 in just a couple of weeks. Is it so bad that I want to have a novel done by then? No. And I must get it done. The sacrifices have been too great to justify any other result.

So please offer some positive energy my way, preferably in the form of some mental derivative of caffeine that I can use to stay awake long into the next several nights, but without the side effect of turning me into Mean Mr. Evans. My students would certainly appreciate that.

And when it's done, well... I can't make any promises, but I'll likely post MOST of it online. Just keep in mind it is only a FIRST draft.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Denny's is open late

Where to go when you need to stay up late and write your novel, but you're afraid to go home because the night before you were so exhausted you fell asleep on the bed next to a bowl of half-eaten cereal?

Denny's, naturally.

Yes, last night after school I made my way to Denny's and spent the next three hours writing 1,723 words and eating almost $20 worth of food (burger, a bowl of broccoli and cheese soup which is the soup of the 'day' on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and "zesty" nachos with "specially seasoned" ground beef).

The benefits: I didn't fall asleep, I met my daily writing quota.

The drawbacks: It's been 8 hours since I last took a bite of Denny's food and I still want to vomit.

Speaking of vomiting, I still need you all to "vomit" some story ideas in the form of comments on this blog, please. Only two people commented on the last blog - one wondering why nobody's offering ideas (I suspect Clemens), and the other alleging that his blog is more interesting than mine even though he posts a new blog only about every 5 years (guess who).

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Call for ideas

What's my novel about?

Imagine:

A public school teacher, very dedicated, very hard working, in a school much like mine (ok, so yeah, a lot of it is fairly autobiographical), but after 5 years of trying to work miracles within a system that suppresses much innovation and generally sets up students for failure, he's had enough, and decides to take things into his own hands.

Interpret that as you will.

So ok - quick. Give me some ideas for my novel, if you can. Thoughts, plot suggestions, what you'd like to read about, etc.

I'm up to about 5,000 words. Which means I'm very behind, but 10% of the way there!

Friday, November 04, 2005

NaNoWriMo



For those of you wondering, yes, I am going ahead with the novel writing thing. Last year, as you may remember, I failed miserably. This year, however, armed with what I think are some interesting ideas and not burdened (knock on wood) by any bacteria or viruses, I am determined to finish the 50,000 word novel by midnight on November 30th (perhaps I can give it to Shari as a birthday present?).

Unlike my intentions last year, however, I will not be posting every update online. I'll put excerpts up now and then - the pressure of public scrutiny is just too much for my inner editor to deal with at this point.

I'll just include this tiny taste for now:

It was the night before the big day and, instead of nailing down any of the multitude of last minute details running through his mind about what he would say and how he would say it, young Roger Canfield, debonair 29 year old, was in the kitchen killing ants.

Hundreds and hundreds of ants. Ex-ants, more precisely. They had, once again, inevitably, found a tasty treat or two on the floor, perhaps a splash of salsa or some stray piece of Safeway chicken. The ants, it seemed, liked Safeway chicken as much as Roger did. How many Safeway chickens had found their way from the inhumane steel-wired cages of Arkansas into the somewhat more roomy confines of his stomach? He would likely never know.