Yesterday I Was Stuck In Queens With Nothing To Do But Write
A funny thing happened with my NaNoWriMo word count yesterday - I actually passed my 2004 word count for what may be the last time this year. I'm not sure why I didn't write anything on November 9, 2004 (and there's no clue in the entry from last year on LiveJournal) but the lead story today is...
2005 NaNoWriMo: 14,512 words
2004 NaNoWriMo: 14,505 words
Also, this makes me kind of giddy. This is the closest I've been to reliantfc3's word count since the first couple of days of NaNoWriMo.
reliantfc3: 21,333 words
incendiarymind: 14,512 words
Another couple of days like yesterday and this might even be a contest. In four separate writing sessions, I tacked 4,135 words (putting me only 488 words behind the projected necessary word count) onto "Stars, Bars, and the Crown" though I'm still not sure how far I advanced the plot in that five-and-a-half hours of writing.
The interesting thing about yesterday's writing experience wasn't how long or what I wrote but that I wrote in two different states, New York and New Jersey.
Now the reasons why I wrote in two states was that there was a huge storm cell over New York City (one the seemed to signal the coming of the apocalypse). Although talking about huge storm cells over New York's airports seem redundant since they're the rule rather than the exception. So my flight back to beautiful, but much colder than New York City, Chicago was delayed for over three hours from 8:09 p.m. to approximately 11:25 p.m. Though after the plane boarded at 10:45 p.m., I stopped paying attention to how long we sat at the gate before we were cleared for takeoff.
I should have really been writing down some dialog that I heard at LaGuardia but the one classic line that I remember was from the Air Tran gate next door (ATA didn't even bother updating our status), "we have first class upgrades on this flight to Atlanta for only $35 more. It includes free drinks, extra large peanuts, and unlimited affection from the flight attendants." Someone screamed out, "what kind of affection."
Yeah that almost made my time stuck in Queens liveable. :)
Thankfully, the delay at the gate allowed me to plug in an recharge my laptop to write for an additional hour-and-a-half on the airplane. Had we not landed after midnight in Chicago, I might have tried to write there too.
Yesterday's word progress was slowed down by two things, however. The first was that I was working and at certain points in the day when administering a national seminar for the association I work for (as I was doing in Newark) that you have to do certain things. So I was constantly checking the clock and found myself inside the classroom a lot of the time.
The second was that I reached a point in the novel where there are a lot of names that need to be given. One of the hardest things was coming up with names for the local newspapers in my alternate Detroit. Coming up with the Detroit Worker for the Socialist Party paper was easy but coming up with the four other party papers names (in this alternate United States papers are affiliated with particular political parties).
The sad thing is I'm having trouble coming up with who the political parties are. You'd expect that to be the easy part for me. :)
This year it's not adjectives that are my bane, it's proper nouns.
2005 NaNoWriMo: 14,512 words
2004 NaNoWriMo: 14,505 words
Also, this makes me kind of giddy. This is the closest I've been to reliantfc3's word count since the first couple of days of NaNoWriMo.
reliantfc3: 21,333 words
incendiarymind: 14,512 words
Another couple of days like yesterday and this might even be a contest. In four separate writing sessions, I tacked 4,135 words (putting me only 488 words behind the projected necessary word count) onto "Stars, Bars, and the Crown" though I'm still not sure how far I advanced the plot in that five-and-a-half hours of writing.
The interesting thing about yesterday's writing experience wasn't how long or what I wrote but that I wrote in two different states, New York and New Jersey.
Now the reasons why I wrote in two states was that there was a huge storm cell over New York City (one the seemed to signal the coming of the apocalypse). Although talking about huge storm cells over New York's airports seem redundant since they're the rule rather than the exception. So my flight back to beautiful, but much colder than New York City, Chicago was delayed for over three hours from 8:09 p.m. to approximately 11:25 p.m. Though after the plane boarded at 10:45 p.m., I stopped paying attention to how long we sat at the gate before we were cleared for takeoff.
I should have really been writing down some dialog that I heard at LaGuardia but the one classic line that I remember was from the Air Tran gate next door (ATA didn't even bother updating our status), "we have first class upgrades on this flight to Atlanta for only $35 more. It includes free drinks, extra large peanuts, and unlimited affection from the flight attendants." Someone screamed out, "what kind of affection."
Yeah that almost made my time stuck in Queens liveable. :)
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Thankfully, the delay at the gate allowed me to plug in an recharge my laptop to write for an additional hour-and-a-half on the airplane. Had we not landed after midnight in Chicago, I might have tried to write there too.
Yesterday's word progress was slowed down by two things, however. The first was that I was working and at certain points in the day when administering a national seminar for the association I work for (as I was doing in Newark) that you have to do certain things. So I was constantly checking the clock and found myself inside the classroom a lot of the time.
The second was that I reached a point in the novel where there are a lot of names that need to be given. One of the hardest things was coming up with names for the local newspapers in my alternate Detroit. Coming up with the Detroit Worker for the Socialist Party paper was easy but coming up with the four other party papers names (in this alternate United States papers are affiliated with particular political parties).
The sad thing is I'm having trouble coming up with who the political parties are. You'd expect that to be the easy part for me. :)
This year it's not adjectives that are my bane, it's proper nouns.
posted by incendiarymind at 8:42 AM
2 Comments:
Hey, don't be so pessimistic! You might be able to surpass the previous year's word count again. Just keep on writing and you might just surprise yourself.
And conversations at airport terminals are one of the better things about having to fly. Weird conversation, people watching, time to have all of that stew in your brain while you're waiting...
I dunno. I'm not going to get upset if my novel this year is shorter than last but I hit the groove so much earlier last year on the way to reaching 63,000. Course now this year when I need the extra words since I'm on Team Chicago, I'll be lucky to get 55,000 in November.
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