This week I drew (don’t laugh) a blueprint of SuperMug – the big box store my novel mostly takes place in. I even showed it to my husband – the artist – who tried really hard not to laugh at my lame attempt at a straight line. But it helped – my writing, not my budding career as an architect. The visual picture of where and how each character interacts with others and their surroundings spurred me onto another 2000 words in no time flat. Of course I still have about 15,000 words to go in 6 days – but that’s actually really doable. Right? Yes, totally doable.
I noticed during week 3 and this part of week 4 (I’m including the last three days – or week 5 – into this final week stretch) how many ups and downs this action packed week has taken. The words between 25,000 and 40,000 are the most rewarding and hard-to-get words there are...EVER. I can’t wait to hit 40,000 when suddenly the last 10,000 words will slip out of my subconscious and find themselves on my computer screen without me actually doing anything. Fine, that’s never going to happen, but it has to be easier than 30,000 to 40,000 words – it just has to be.
I know it sounds like I’ve jumped off the deep end. I sure have spent a lot of time cyber-stalking high school classmates (see previous blog post for the non-crazy definition of that sentence). I’ve also spent the week reading and watching this season of HIMYM on-line; I washed 6 loads of clothes this week and spent about an hour going through recipes for the infamous Thanksgiving Day breakfast. You see, I’m married to an Englishman who is fairly lukewarm about this American holiday – he’s going to make a pizza with all of the ingredients you find in a traditional mid-western turkey day meal and we’ll choose some random movie marathon to watch (after the national dog show – Hell, you have to have at least one tradition and I choose you John O’Hurley, you and the Irish Wolfhound presenting tomorrow). Every year I get up and make a breakfast – something like scones or waffles or crumpets or french toast – something revolving around bread apparently, and we hide from the rest of the world. But really all I’m going to do all day is tuck away into the bedroom and write. I’m really good at cranking out like 5,000 words on T-day, ignoring all things food, football, balloon and thankful – all for my extremely unthankful novel.
Tomorrow it ends; all the procrastination of November boils down to MY day of writing with abandonment – and for that I AM thankful.
And it’s not too late for you either. I don’t care if you have 4, 083 or 16,000 or 42,000 there is still hope and a novel in each of you. Eat your turkey, visit with your family and then go type like you’ve never typed before…don’t even get me started on Black Friday – I forbid anyone who reads my blog to go shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. Don’t fall for the marketing ploy – you can shop again. Promise.
If you aren’t reading this state side, and you think that my turkey rant was a little bit scary, then you are probably Jeff and somewhere in Australia reading this. On the other side of the world you have one less day to type, so keep writing already! Here’s hoping every NaNoer reading this has pure adrenaline; enough to make it to the writing finish line!
For the rest of you patiently waiting for HP Mondays to start up again, I will try to write something for this Monday. Monday is still November, so I might be desperately trying to get to 50, 000, watching my fingers bleed over my keyboard and screaming any lyrics of Bon Jovi I can think of; in that case you’ll get a Harry Potter blog post on Tuesday. That would be book 4 for those who’ve forgotten. Go, go Goblet of Fire!
Speaking of Harry Potter, one of the things I read this week was a short story/novella by Maureen Johnson called “The Jubilee Express” inside the collection Let It Snow. That little British wizard is just everywhere:
Debbie had to get up and slice me a thick piece of cake before she could answer. And I do mean thick. Harry Potter volume seven thick. I could have knocked out a burglar with this piece of cake. Once I tasted it, though, it seemed just the right size. Debbie didn’t fool around when it came to the butter and sugar.
Here’s hoping your slice of pumpkin pie tomorrow is Harry Potter volume five thick!
No comments:
Post a Comment