NaNoWriMo :: NaNoWriMo Blog

As I mentioned earlier, since I hit 50,000 miles on my car on November 1st, I decided to make my goal whatever my mileage was on the odometer on November 30th.

Yes, I was very careful about driving this month, so I only racked up an additional 370 miles for my word count goal.

It all ended with smiles. Literally.

My end tally was 50,374.

The last line (which I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I don't always write in order):

And I smiled.

I hope your NaNoWriMo has a happy ending.

On November 1st, as I'd planned, my car's odometer turned over to 50,000. (With a bit better planning I would have preferred November 30th but that's what I get for going up to visit my Office of Letters and Light buddies in September.)

So it was there and then that I changed my personal word goal for my 2008 novel. I will write as many words as my car has on its odometer on November 30th.

And to make it easier for me to meet this goal, I walked to my Write In today - it's a win-win, I'm driving less and getting more exercise!

Don't worry, I didn't take that photo while driving. I had help.

NaNoLantern

National Novel Writing Month just might be easier to fit into your schedule this year.

Only one other time in history (2003) has the calendar cooperated so nicely with swift noveling pursuits. November 2008 starts on a Saturday and ends on a Sunday. This means that there are five weekends in November 2008. This means that there are ten weekend days.

This is great news to those who need the weekends to catch up on noveling. (As I am one of those people.)

For those in North America we get another special treat added to this five weekend month, an extra hour on Sunday morning for Daylight Savings Time.

2008 loves novelists.

I saw this quote at the bottom of one of those corporate newsletters that I get via email and thought of my dear NaNoPals.

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.

by Burt Bacharach

Oh, man that it so true. I can't imagine a better way to expand your vocabulary than the search for substitute words that are easier to spell!

It's the last great weekend of November which means spectacular word count feats are being attempted by those who are sadly behind.

I admit to being one of those people at this very moment and feel comfortable divulging that Chris Baty is also a bit behind.

Yesterday Chris and I went to a favorite coffee house of mine in Hollywood, Sabor y Cultura and had 30 minute word wars until we both got 5,000 words into our novels. (And then another thousand for good measure.)

The reward for good noveling is to meet up with other novelists. This morning we got up bright and early to check out a fun coffee house in Studio City called Lulu's Beehive. At ten after nine AM it was wall-to-wall with novelists. Every surface covered with laptops and notebooks. (Well, there's one table with two guys talking lawyer stuff and contracts.)

There are so many distractions to novel-writing somehow going someplace distracting makes concentration that much easier.

Get out of the house this weekend and catch up with your novel. Think of it as a romantic date with your imagination. With coffee.

Back at NaNoHeadQuarters on Sunday we tried to figure out how many words were written at the Write-a-Thon on Saturday night. While we had everyone sign in with their word count, somehow we were so hopped up on sugar, vegetarian lasagna and the idea of sitting in a room with 120 other novelists toiling away that we totally forgot to have people give us their ending word counts.

However, we did an informal poll of the Municipal Liaisons in attendance and extrapolated an average from that an estimate that over 200,980 words were logged from The Womens Building Ballroom.

No matter how many words that made it into nascient nascent novels, or how many novelists were there, it was an awesome night because our proximity to each other made us feel connected to everyone else in NaNoLand.

It's a little after 6 PM and the writers are still filing into the ballroom of the Women's Building in San Francisco.

They sit poised to make history (or NaNoHisToRy anyway) ... the largest number of words written per square inch in 6 hours.

While we know that not everyone could be with us, we're so grateful to everyone who has supported NaNoWriMo with donations and of course their wonderful supportive spirits that have spurred fellow novelists past the 25K mark already.

Please enjoy this set of photos (we'll post as the evening progresses ... so long as the wifi holds out).

Seriously, you think that some noisy people at the library are distracting? That a neighbor's dog is keeping you from getting your daily goal done?

Check out Last Night who has a healthy tally of 12,945 words and won in '05 & '06.

(I just want to know where I can get my own goggles, helmet and a serious sound dampening headset like that!)