It's finished!

Final NaNoWriMo Update
Total Word Count:		75,058
Today's Word Count:		3569
+/- Schedule:		+14.15 days (+2.16 days)
% Complete:		150.12% (107.23%)

  I went to see Steven Soderbergh's Solaris today with Cara. I thought it was very good. However, my enjoyment was somewhat diminished after we left the theater and discovered that some fucker hit my car and scratched my bumper while we were in the movie, causing what is likely to amount to several hundred dollars in damage.

It is at times like this that I hope karma really exists. To the person responsible, wherever and whoever you are, please know that you have earned my undying enmity. When you are rotting in the special hell that is reserved for people who don't take responsibility for their actions, I hope you will remember that $500 worth of your suffering is from me.

The only way to cheer myself up after that lousy afternoon was to watch a crappy movie. Thus, I went to BK's and watched Hercules in New York. It's true that it was Arnold Schwarzenegger's first film, but that doesn't really tell the full story of how bad it is. One of the main characters is a pretzel salesman called "Pretzie", for crying out loud. You really need to see it to believe it.

In other news, I broke 70,000 words today, thus accomplishing my NaNoWriMo goal. I've got another scene or two to add, which I should easily finish tomorrow. I went ahead and submitted my novel for word count verification, thus officially conferring upon me the title of "Winner", but I'm not going to break out the champagne until I've completely finished the story. Just a few more words to go!

Cara and Kasey both finished their novels today, so they are officially winners. Congratulations, guys!

NaNoWriMo Update
Total Word Count:		71,489
Today's Word Count:		1818
+/- Schedule:		+13.05 days (+1.63 days)
% Complete:		142.98% (102.13%)

  Hullo! I'm in a much better mood now. Thanks to everyone for their words of support following my whine-fest the other day. You will all be rewarded someday, possibly by never having to read my novel.

One of the reasons I'm feeling better is that I have noticed a trend that I believe is strong proof that writing is fundamentally hard: the vast numbers of books/movies/etc. that are adaptations of other works. I'm not talking about Doctor Zhivago or high-minded ventures like that. I'm talking about the raft of crappy movies based on crappy TV shows, and novels based on video games, and other projects of that ilk.

This has been going on for a long time, of course, but the significance of it hit me right between the eyes tonight as I was reading "Entertainment Weekly" instead of writing my novel. On page 86 of the Nov. 29 issue is an ad for the upcoming CBS TV movie The Christmas Shoes. This is the tagline that appears in the ad:

"The hit song that inspired the bestselling book is now a movie that you won't want to miss!"

Are you kidding me? It even looks blurry, like a document that's been faxed back and forth ten times. Personally, I think I'd rather wait for the Playstation game based on the relatively unpopular animated TV series that will be based on the mediocre movie that was based on the bestselling book that was based on the hit song.

It proves my point, though: creating things is hard. If there were enough people out there that could do it, they wouldn't be making these third generation rip-offs. I'm not saying that I'm necessarily capable of creating anything original, but at least I don't feel quite so bad that I'm failing at it.

Speaking of my novel, I'm rapidly closing in on the 70k mark. I'm well into the big finale, which is my main character having a conversation with God. (For real this time - it turns out the other one was a fake. Who knew?) Apparently He has a lot on his mind, because He's been rambling for 3500 words now with no end in sight. It's basically just me blathering, of course, but then blathering is what I do best. It looks like I'll meet my word count goal easily; now it's just a matter of getting the story wrapped up before the deadline.

It won't happen tomorrow, though. I'm rewarding myself by taking the day off from the novel. Instead, I'm going to sit around and eat and play cards and drink some of the approximately 76,000 gallons of beverages that I bought this afternoon. (I vowed that no one would go thirsty, and I meant it.)

I'll talk to you all in a couple of days. Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

NaNoWriMo Update
Total Word Count:		69,671
Today's Word Count:		3982
+/- Schedule:		+13.98 days (+2.85 days)
% Complete:		139.34% (99.53%)

 
de·spon·dent (di-'spän-d&nt) adj. 1 Feeling or showing extreme discouragement, dejection, or depression 2 possessing a deep dejection arising from a conviction of the uselessness of further effort — SYN. DESPAIRING, DESPERATE, HOPELESS

Ugh. What a lousy couple of days. Self-pity wallowing ahoy.

Part The First: Ikea
I woke up late on Sunday morning and started moving my computer equipment from my old desk in the den to my new desk in the dining room. It was a complicated process that eventually involved a bathroom scale and a spreadsheet, and at the end of it I made an unfortunate discovery: the damned desk is broken. As I crawled underneath it to try and ascertain its level of brokenness, I was able to use this vantage point to appreciate a unique new perspective: the desk was also broken in another, different way. With two defects detected in the space of 75 seconds, I quickly scrambled out from underneath it in case a third, more serious problem were to occur suddenly, possibly on a molecular level, that would cause my head to be crushed in a horrible orgy of twisted metal and wood laminate.

What I learned over the course of the next 24 hours is that there are plenty of competent, knowledgeable people on staff at Ikea, and that these people are never in the office. I made three phone calls to the customer service department on Sunday, two of which left me talking to an answering machine that was standing in for all of the presumably helpful Furniture Specialists who, regrettably, were not there. The final call directed me to an actual person who couldn't help me because she knew nothing about this product, and the people in her department who did know anything were sick. She took my number and said she would have someone call me in the morning.

This is exactly what happened. At 11:00 this morning I received a telephone call from another friendly Ikea employee who wanted to give me the important and helpful message that she did not know anything about my problem either. She promised to give my number to the one person in the entire world who knew the answer to my question (specifically, "What in the hell is wrong with my desk?"), and he would call me in the afternoon when he got back "from the field", which would probably be around 4:30. He never called me, of course, presumably because he was too busy rubbing suntan lotion on swimsuit models, or whatever it is they do in "the field".

But I am getting ahead of myself. As of yesterday afternoon I was still laboring under the foolish assumption that a company that sells expensive furniture, which you must transport and put together yourself using instructions written by concussed storyboard artists with a poor sense of perspective, would actually be interested in providing people with good customer service, especially to those people foolish enough to drop thousands of dollars on the most expensive pieces of such furniture. It is these people which represent said company's most likely source of profit, for it is they who best illustrate the motto, "There's a sucker born every minute," upon which said company's business is clearly based. If you are getting the impression that I am not happy with Ikea or myself, you are correct.

But that's today. As for yesterday afternoon...ah, golden, sunny yesterday afternoon. Yesterday afternoon, when the sun shone and the birds sang sweet melodies. Yesterday afternoon, when I packed up my laptop and my youthful sense of naivety and skipped off for some lunch and writing at Taco Time.

Part The Second: Writing
I was about 300 words into the writing session when I was overcome with the crushing realization that my novel has the exact same problems as last year's novel. I sat there holding all of the various plot strands in my hand. It was the moment in my novel where everything is supposed to come together...and I realized that it didn't come together. It made no sense. This wouldn't be so bad if, in my fervor to get the plot moving, I hadn't completely ignored character again. All month I've been saying to myself that it is character, not plot, that makes great stories. This is advice straight from the world's best writers, and I still ignored it. My characters are boring, cardboard creations that no one in their right minds would care about. I don't even care about them, and I made them up, including the character that is basically me.

In short, I have boring characters and a plot that makes no sense. It was then that I understood that all of the 60 bajillion words I've written this month have been in vain. I'd set out with the best of intentions, but I wound up in precisely the same place that I was last year: sitting at Taco Time clutching a handful of shitty words in my claw-like, tendonitis-afflicted hands.

Needless to say, this did not make me happy. To put it more bluntly, it made me want to find the nearest cliff off of which I could do my best Thelma and Louise impression. Since I couldn't find a suitable cliff between Taco Time and my house, I did the next best thing: I huddled on the couch with a box of Triscuits and watched a movie with the volume turned up very, very loud.

I wasn't feeling any better, even after watching Tobey Maguire knock the stuffing out of Green Goblin for two hours at 120 decibels, so I tried to write through it. I bravely soldiered on, and after a couple more hours of writing I found that my novel had been transformed from a wretched piece of garbage into a wretched piece of garbage that was slightly longer. Bravely soldiering on was not working, so I gave up and went to sleep.

Or I tried to, anyway. I went to bed frustrated and annoyed with myself, which meant that I tossed and turned for several hours being frustrated and annoyed at the frustration and annoyance that were preventing me from going to sleep. As a result of this, and possibly due to the fact that I was grinding my teeth all night, I woke up with a massive whopper of a headache. I decided to take a sick day, hoping that some sleep would do me good. I slept most of the day and did feel better, but I think this may have been an avoidance tactic, as I was now trapped in my apartment with my novel all day. A week ago this would have seemed like a great opportunity to get some serious words down, but now it seemed like a prison sentence.

I finally decided to just try and finish the story as soon as possible and worry about the finer points later. I'd originally hoped that I would be able to go back and do an edit of the novel in December, but now I'm not sure. Fixing this thing is going to take a complete rewrite, and I don't know if I'm prepared for that. I'm thinking about just starting something else. I feel that I've learned from my mistake, so maybe if I start writing again right away, the next story will be better.

But damn it, that's what I thought last year too. Maybe I just need practice. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood and things will look better in the morning. I sure hope so.


Am·a·teur  No·vel·ist — see DESPONDENT

NaNoWriMo Update
Total Word Count:		65,689
Today's Word Count:		4443
+/- Schedule:		+13.64 days (+3.14 days)
% Complete:		131.38% (93.84%)