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.