Category: life

There was blood. There was sweat. There were tears. There was even a little bit of pee. Yes, those were all things that my protagonists experienced on my plot-holed road to the story’s conclusion. I, on the other hand, experienced mostly just sweat from the anxiety of wondering if I would make it in time. And here I am, done with days to spare.

But before I perform my happy dance, I should point out that in NaNoWriMo, a “winner” is just someone who pasted fifty thousand individual words into a verification box on their website. So you’ll never really know whether I cheated or not. Think about that, huh?

Anyway, that was a bit of an adventure, and I have a lesson to take away from the experience. And that is: Don’t do it again anytime soon.

Phew. And now, I return you to your regularly scheduled Second Life.

It turns out that writing a novel — even a really bad one — is hard work. Here on the fourteenth day of this ordeal, with only 11 days to go, I’m solidly into the second half. At 28,404 words, tomorrow I should reach the three-fifths mark. I tell you, it’s slow going, now that the plot and characters have gelled. Now things aren’t so wide-open and care-free.

Even though NaNoWriMo has stolen my focus this month, for those of you interested in dropping by tomorrow’s scheduled Aerodrome Q&A;, I absolutely will not miss this one (knock on wood). I added it to my Windows calendar with a reminder. So I hope to see you tomorrow at 10:00am SL time on the top floor of Abbotts Aerodrome. Bring interesting questions.

Coffee will be provided.

So here at the one-week mark of this folly, words seem to be flowing more easily as the story begins to clarify in my mind. I can’t believe I’m actually past the one-third milestone — edging inexorably towards 20k, in fact.

Although I’m grateful for the focus that I’ve achieved this week, it does come with a price. Even after sending out group notices in SL reminding people of today’s Q&A; event in Abbotts, I then became so engrossed with the story that I missed the event by an hour and a half. Doh!

So I apologize to anyone who showed up, expecting to chat about planes etc. I’ll do my very best to make sure I’m at the next event on time.

And here’s an interesting random item: a letter from a charity dropped through the mail slot today. The envelope contained a nickel behind a little window, along with these words in large print: “A nickel could save a child’s life!”

Really? Then why are you mailing it to me? If you just mass mailed thousands of nickels to random people, how many children are you now unable to save? It’s mind-boggling.

But anyway, now I rest my typing fingers and go outside to frolic in the leaves.

I typed the final sentence of the latest chapter, heaved a great sigh of relief, then pulled up the word count. It was exactly 10,000. Weird, huh?

So now that I’ve reached five digits, I have exactly one-fifth of my target word count of fifty thousand. Just repeat what I’ve done four more times, but with different words, and I’m done!

No problem. *shudder*