Two Weights Off My Back In One Day
There's one song that I didn't mention that's in constant rotation on my Rhapsody because; 1) it's embarassing and 2) it has nothing to do with New York City. "Maneater" by Nelly Furtado has had its fair share of spins in this ending days on NANOWRIMO. I should have just made it my end of the dare had I lost to Greensong in our 1 v. 1 30-day word war. It's not like it would have been a punishment.
As it stood though, I won the challenge by about 40 minutes.
She verified her novel at about 10:30 Eastern and I mentally gave her the win. I got basically to the same point she verified at (50009 words) at 10:10 p.m. Central (I think 10:06 p.m. was the exact time). Being a total idiot, I calculated that somehow our possible writing times evened out at the end of the month. Of course she was able to start an hour earlier so I had an hour more to write to win.
And so I won.
It's such a hollow victory since she's such a nice girl that I just don't want to gloat. Now that doesn't apply to the whole of Team Toronto who I know Chicago has lost to badly but I still want to write on and beat more members of.
---
The funny thing is that I got to word 49,000 by writing one last anti-Toronto screed. To set the scene, all of the MCs have contracted a water borne virus and are having flu-like symptoms. Two of the characters have made their way to Madison Square Garden where there's a shelter. Standing outside of the arena, they have the following exchange:
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Anthony said, grasping at his stomach, I feel like I just took a vacation in Toronto.”
“I know,” Allison said, isn’t it the worst feeling you’ve ever had in your life? It’s like you want to throw up but you’re too bored from the malaise to do it. Well, like Toronto you have to get it out of your system as soon as possible. Just think of Niagara Falls and maybe it will come again. Or stick Moonshine’s paw down your throat. Don’t worry, he’s declawed and his neutered. I did that a little too late though, I’m afraid and he produced some mutant offspring. They weren’t fit to live in New York City so me and the ex-boyfriend I bought Moonshine with shipped the litter off to Toronto. Last I heard they were letting the cats roam the streets.
They say if you listen really closely, you can hear the mewing of the packs of cats that roam the streets of Toronto looking for scraps of food. It’s been said that they’ve mated with the rats and cockroaches up there to produce a breed of not quite mammal and not quite insect horrible beast. Though the last I heard, the Canadians were considering replacing the maple leaf on their flag with this horrible freak of nature.”
“Wow,” Anthony said, “your cat must be pretty famous up in Canada.”
Allison nodded. “Well it’s not like there’s anyone else famous up there. I mean look at who they consider a celebrity. Rick Moranis? What’s up with that? I mean that guy’s about as funny as Moonshine’s cat pies, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Anthony nodded, “Toronto’s pretty much worthless. I mean, they couldn’t even handle the power that is Madison Square Garden.”
“I don’t even think they could handle the Meadowlands. And when you’re city’s not even as good as New Jersey, you’ve got a lot to answer for.”
And then I set off to write one of the best chapters that I have so far and one that might even give the story some direction. It involves the insane survivalist Brian and his illegal activities. It will give the other characters a lot of choices to make and maybe even a final confrontation.
Hopefully they'll accomplish this by midnight in two days because I plan on killing them all off of the water borne disease at that time and writing "the end."
I'll resurrect them in December and write the real ending but I just want to, for once, finish the novel in November.
---
The reason that I don't know the exact time I finished this year is that I really obsessed over my 50,000th word. Last year I let it go freeform and came up with "respect" in the middle of a paragraph about a well known underground leader walking into a bar (along with a rabbi and a priest but not really). This year I was talking about the scheme to rob a doctor's brownstone and 50,000 was in the middle of the pre-planning of the theft.
I was lucky enough to come across "night" vision binoculars. But, well it wasn't luck since I kind of restructured the paragraph to list the binoculars at an appropriate place.
This probably took more time than any other distraction since I had to turn on my inner editor to hit the right word. But I hope to forget that I cheated long before I forget what the word was.
---
Not that I didn't have other distractions today.
Today was the day that I had to go back to the dermatologist and get the "interesting" mole on my back excised. That went flawlessly (the dermatologist described me as a perfect patient who didn't even twitch during the surgery) and I even had about 45 minutes to write in the waiting room. Of course what I didn't do right was eat breakfast and apparently the local anasthetic lowers blood sugar.
The nurse actually had to give me some pretzels on the way out.
After grabbing Taco Bell, I came home and basically collapsed with exhaustion. I was surprised how little the spot hurt for the first few hours (even after the numbness wore off) but now it's starting to get a bit sore. Once I woke up it was off to the races with Greensong.
There was one other distraction. I picked up my broken laptop at Best Buy yesterday and today I hooked it up to a monitor and copied my first 7,500 or so words onto the memory stick I got over Thanksgiving.
I had a pleasant surprise. I had been going on the assumption that I had written 7,751 words before the crash. Turns out I had written 7,951 words. The problem is that I basically duplicated a bunch of the same prose in the first few paragraphs of the restart.
It took some time to work the stuff together and I only ended up with a few extra words but it beat the alternative.
I seriously thought I was going to have to "redrum" the thing and write "I had 7,751 words here but now they're gone" a bunch of times to make up the words. Or I guess I could have just written 57,751 words by the 30th. But I'm glad I'm now over 50,000 so the pressure off and I don't have to compose my second highest NANOWRIMO title ever.
Thank goodness I can now concentrate on just finishing the thing! I've got a writing meetup with rosemilk tomorrow so I know I'll write at least once more.
The weight off my back is a lot more than the chunk of skin they took out, let me tell you. :)
As it stood though, I won the challenge by about 40 minutes.
She verified her novel at about 10:30 Eastern and I mentally gave her the win. I got basically to the same point she verified at (50009 words) at 10:10 p.m. Central (I think 10:06 p.m. was the exact time). Being a total idiot, I calculated that somehow our possible writing times evened out at the end of the month. Of course she was able to start an hour earlier so I had an hour more to write to win.
And so I won.
It's such a hollow victory since she's such a nice girl that I just don't want to gloat. Now that doesn't apply to the whole of Team Toronto who I know Chicago has lost to badly but I still want to write on and beat more members of.
---
The funny thing is that I got to word 49,000 by writing one last anti-Toronto screed. To set the scene, all of the MCs have contracted a water borne virus and are having flu-like symptoms. Two of the characters have made their way to Madison Square Garden where there's a shelter. Standing outside of the arena, they have the following exchange:
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Anthony said, grasping at his stomach, I feel like I just took a vacation in Toronto.”
“I know,” Allison said, isn’t it the worst feeling you’ve ever had in your life? It’s like you want to throw up but you’re too bored from the malaise to do it. Well, like Toronto you have to get it out of your system as soon as possible. Just think of Niagara Falls and maybe it will come again. Or stick Moonshine’s paw down your throat. Don’t worry, he’s declawed and his neutered. I did that a little too late though, I’m afraid and he produced some mutant offspring. They weren’t fit to live in New York City so me and the ex-boyfriend I bought Moonshine with shipped the litter off to Toronto. Last I heard they were letting the cats roam the streets.
They say if you listen really closely, you can hear the mewing of the packs of cats that roam the streets of Toronto looking for scraps of food. It’s been said that they’ve mated with the rats and cockroaches up there to produce a breed of not quite mammal and not quite insect horrible beast. Though the last I heard, the Canadians were considering replacing the maple leaf on their flag with this horrible freak of nature.”
“Wow,” Anthony said, “your cat must be pretty famous up in Canada.”
Allison nodded. “Well it’s not like there’s anyone else famous up there. I mean look at who they consider a celebrity. Rick Moranis? What’s up with that? I mean that guy’s about as funny as Moonshine’s cat pies, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Anthony nodded, “Toronto’s pretty much worthless. I mean, they couldn’t even handle the power that is Madison Square Garden.”
“I don’t even think they could handle the Meadowlands. And when you’re city’s not even as good as New Jersey, you’ve got a lot to answer for.”
And then I set off to write one of the best chapters that I have so far and one that might even give the story some direction. It involves the insane survivalist Brian and his illegal activities. It will give the other characters a lot of choices to make and maybe even a final confrontation.
Hopefully they'll accomplish this by midnight in two days because I plan on killing them all off of the water borne disease at that time and writing "the end."
I'll resurrect them in December and write the real ending but I just want to, for once, finish the novel in November.
---
The reason that I don't know the exact time I finished this year is that I really obsessed over my 50,000th word. Last year I let it go freeform and came up with "respect" in the middle of a paragraph about a well known underground leader walking into a bar (along with a rabbi and a priest but not really). This year I was talking about the scheme to rob a doctor's brownstone and 50,000 was in the middle of the pre-planning of the theft.
I was lucky enough to come across "night" vision binoculars. But, well it wasn't luck since I kind of restructured the paragraph to list the binoculars at an appropriate place.
This probably took more time than any other distraction since I had to turn on my inner editor to hit the right word. But I hope to forget that I cheated long before I forget what the word was.
---
Not that I didn't have other distractions today.
Today was the day that I had to go back to the dermatologist and get the "interesting" mole on my back excised. That went flawlessly (the dermatologist described me as a perfect patient who didn't even twitch during the surgery) and I even had about 45 minutes to write in the waiting room. Of course what I didn't do right was eat breakfast and apparently the local anasthetic lowers blood sugar.
The nurse actually had to give me some pretzels on the way out.
After grabbing Taco Bell, I came home and basically collapsed with exhaustion. I was surprised how little the spot hurt for the first few hours (even after the numbness wore off) but now it's starting to get a bit sore. Once I woke up it was off to the races with Greensong.
There was one other distraction. I picked up my broken laptop at Best Buy yesterday and today I hooked it up to a monitor and copied my first 7,500 or so words onto the memory stick I got over Thanksgiving.
I had a pleasant surprise. I had been going on the assumption that I had written 7,751 words before the crash. Turns out I had written 7,951 words. The problem is that I basically duplicated a bunch of the same prose in the first few paragraphs of the restart.
It took some time to work the stuff together and I only ended up with a few extra words but it beat the alternative.
I seriously thought I was going to have to "redrum" the thing and write "I had 7,751 words here but now they're gone" a bunch of times to make up the words. Or I guess I could have just written 57,751 words by the 30th. But I'm glad I'm now over 50,000 so the pressure off and I don't have to compose my second highest NANOWRIMO title ever.
Thank goodness I can now concentrate on just finishing the thing! I've got a writing meetup with rosemilk tomorrow so I know I'll write at least once more.
The weight off my back is a lot more than the chunk of skin they took out, let me tell you. :)
posted by incendiarymind at 9:29 PM
2 Comments:
Congrats on reaching 50k!
Thanks Sya!
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