Monochromatic Outlook

At a few minutes before midnight I am declaring NaNoWriMo over, and I did not make it to 50,000 words.

Totally unrelated to The Vampire Rule,¹ today I got a practical lesson in PHP request precedence.

This thing keeps taking me in unexpected directions. What I thought had gone sideways a couple days ago has gone farther sideways.

Yesterday I didn’t get as much writing done and I didn’t think I’d get much done today because I had a lot of other work to do. But I carved out some time in the morning and then got on a roll in the late evening. I finished a 3500 word chapter (2,824 of which were written in the past 24 hours) that had numerous challenges.

Some intense writing today. I wanted to make up for the time lost yesterday in the Wal-Mart parking lot. I hoped I might push my total to 10,000 words today, but didn’t get there and at this point I’m exhausted. I need to set it down for the night. I wrote 2,825 words today which is the most I’ve written in one day since I started keeping track on Friday, and I wrote material that wasn’t previously on the outline so that’s a really satisfactory day.

Today I wrote 116 words on my novel, bringing me to a total of 6,967 words. I fell rather far short of my daily goal. I could spend some time trying to catch up before midnight, but I think I’d rather tell you the story.

I didn’t do my writing (or any other work) today because I have a Costco membership.

I started by fleshing out some of what I’d already written, providing some more detail in the conversation that ends the first chapter. I’ve also decided to upgrade a minor character; he may still be a minor character, but I’ve decided against discarding him. He’ll appear again.

Day two of the NaNoWriMo challenge is done. It’s early enough that I might conceivably go back to writing but late enough that taking a break now means I’m likely to be done for the day.

Today was the First of November, and therefore the first day of NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write a novel of at least 50,000 words entirely during the month of November. It’s a somewhat ambitious undertaking and therefore tempting not to talk about it until it’s done for fear that I might announce the project and then not follow through.

Here’s a fun game you can play with all your friends. It’s your sci-fi movie character name! Here’s how it’s done:

Take your mother’s maiden name. That’s your character’s first name. Then for the last name take your online banking password and stick the last four digits of your Social Security number on the end.

I am Tanaka Sycamore7599!¹

Wasn’t that fun?²