I woke up at 8 AM, sleepy but ready to write. Overnight I thought of a good preface which would improve the overall tone of what I wrote yesterday, once again proving that I do my best work while I'm asleep. I wrote for about 90 minutes and added about 2000 words.

I also posted an excerpt, which you can read in my NaNoWriMo author profile. I've decided that this is the last time I'm going to do this, however, for the simple reason that it makes me edit too much. I had a really good groove going, and I was reasonably happy with what I was writing. When I decided to post an excerpt I immediately shifted out of Writer Mode and into Editor Mode, and my progress ground to a halt. There's no way I'm going to finish this if I have to spend 25% of my time editing, so I'm just not going to do it.

I'm really sorry, but I know how I tend to work, and I'll obsess if I know that people are going to be paying attention. To make it up to you, I'll try to post something for you to read in the next few days that I've already obsessed over.

ADDENDUM: I just read the first chapter of feng's novel, and I now have a new policy: I'm not reading any other NaNoWriMo novels while I'm writing my own. It's just too depressing, and it shatters all of the confidence that I've worked so hard to build up with caffiene. It's not just that he has an engaging writing style, it's that his work demonstrates an elusive, fundamental characteristic of good novels that I have thus far been unable to reproduce: it contains interesting stuff that people like to read about. In the great cereal box that is literature, feng's novel is the action toy surprise inside, and mine is the "Questions or Comments?" section on the bottom flap that you can't even read without dumping the cereal all over the counter. feng's novel will bring you fun and excitement, while mine will just bore you and leave you with a giant mess in your kitchen.

So I'm not doing it anymore. No more good writing for me in November. With all of the things I have vowed not to do this morning, I should have a lot more time to focus on the task at hand.

Then again, maybe I need to bolster my confidence by going to Ikea.

Total Word Count:		3419
+/- Schedule:		19 words ahead
% Complete:		6.84%

  So here's the thing: writing - like where you think up stuff that didn't exist before you thought it up and then write it down - is really frickin' hard. It's easy to plod on about what happens to you in real life, blah blah telesales this, blah blah soggy wallet that, but actually inventing things is a royal pain in the ass.

You might interpret this to mean that Night 1 of NaNoWriMo did not go well for me. Indeed, it did not.

A large group of us got together at Cara's house for a kickoff writing party, and as a group we did some good work. Mr. Pogue was the big winner with over 3600 words. Overall the eight of us churned out about 13,000 words total.

I did not fare so well, however. My general strategy was as follows:

1) Type a word. Erase it. Type it again.
2) Eat a piece of candy.
3) Get distracted with computer activities such creating a spreadsheet or crashing Windows.
4) Get a drink of water.
5) Complain loudly about how much my novel sucks to anyone who will listen.
6) Put forehead on keyboard in despair.
7) Repeat.

I stared at my blank Word document for an eternity. It was a true Barton Fink moment. I finally made a little progress, but after 560 words I got scared again and abdicated responsibility altogether. I sat on the couch in what was described by feng as "the Captain Pike position": laying in a little puddle on the couch, my entire body huddled under a blanket, emerging from catatonia only to interject distracting smart ass comments and emit random beeps. I finally got it in gear around 11 PM, and I managed to knock out 900 words in the next 30 minutes before it was time to go home. But man, oh, man was that blank page scary.

I think I was under the impression that things were going to be easy since I had my great "idea", but my confidence was rather damaged after taking over a half an hour to write the first sentence. Oh, and did I mention that everything I wrote sucks? Let's just not talk about that.

I hope tomorrow goes better.

Scott's NaNoWriMo Summary
Total Word Count:		1438
+/- Schedule:		262 words behind
% Complete:		2.88%

  It happened. I can't believe it. I have an idea.

There I was in my bed, happily sleeping my way to novel-writing oblivion. Suddenly, at 4 AM, I woke up with an idea. Knowing that I wouldn't sleep until I wrote it down, I padded into the den to find a piece of paper. I jotted the idea down, looked it over, and decided that it sucked. I thought about it some more while I got a glass of water, and when I returned I decided that, in addition to sucking, it was also stupid and boring.

What was worse, I was still wide awake. In hope of being inspired or sedated, I reached for the nearest bit of reading material, which turned out to be a video supply catalog. This had the latter effect, and, 220 pages later, I went back to bed and fell asleep immediately.

I floated along pleasantly in my deepening slumber for about 45 minutes, when something else stirred in my subconscious - a new idea. Wisely hesitant to wake the master without good reason, my subconscious considered the matter carefully. Proposals were proposed, debates were debated, and committees argued over whether or not to commit. Finally, convinced it was important, my subconscious officially submitted the idea to The Rest of Me.

Having already been awakened once, The Rest of Me was not in the mood for games. It looked at the idea with grave suspicion and declared unilaterally that it was not even going to think about opening my eyes unless it could come up with a brief two- or three-sentence blurb summarizing the idea. Shockingly, it proceeded to do just this. The Rest of Me was left with no choice, and at 6:15 AM it dispatched messengers to wake me up. I turned on the light, jotted down the blurb and went back to sleep.

When I woke up for real an hour and 45 minutes later, I didn't know what to think. I didn't know if I really liked the idea, and I still don't. It doesn't have an ending, and the chance of suckage is alarmingly high, but - and here's the exciting part - I think there's at least 50,000 words here. Maybe more. It may be a lousy direction, but it's a direction, and that's the most important thing you can have in NaNoWriMo.

Here's the blurb I wrote:

"Doug Ericsson, an avowed atheist, dies in a tragic accident and, as a result of a bureaucratic mix-up, ascends to Heaven. Unable to evict him due to Heaven's torturous bylaws, and overwhelmed by the responsibilities of keeping the Universe together, God grants Doug probationary Everlasting Life and gives him a mission: find out what's gone wrong with Heaven, and figure out how to fix it. As he journeys through Paradise to complete his quest, Doug meets a mysterious caveman, learns a lesson about faith, and tries desperately to avoid being sent to Hell - the maintenance department of Heaven's massive software division."

I feel like I've got one foot over the precipice here, but this is what I'm going with, for better or worse.

Wish me luck.

(Special note to Adria: I haven't given up on the romance novel idea yet. I might be able to work it in somehow. Heaven is a big place.)

  I am so screwed. I have no idea what I'm going to write about. I left my laptop under my pillow last night, but the Novel Idea Fairy didn't leave me anything. In fact, the only thing that's changed since we last discussed my novel is that I bought a pair of headphones. I now have a slightly more portable means of playing music while not writing.

I take back my earlier statement about the Novel Idea Fairy - Adria did suggest that I write a romance novel. Perhaps she is the Novel Idea Fairy. Perhaps I will have to follow her advice. We may be looking at the world's first romance novel about a caveman and a guy with no thumbs.

I am going to bed now, in hopes that it all comes together while I'm sleeping. The next time you hear from me, I will be behind schedule.

  Sad news! Pioneering DJ, musician, and producer Jam Master Jay was shot and killed in his Queens studio yesterday.

CNN Article
CNN Obituary
MTV.com Article

I'm a big fan of Run-DMC. They were responsible for my interest in rap music, which I consider to be one of the few uniquely American art forms. Not only did Jam Master Jay help make rap popular, he also had a big hand in defining its sound and direction. Go home tonight and listen to one pop, rap, or hip-hop song; if it was recorded in the last 15 years, it was probably influenced by Jam Master Jay.

And now he's gone. What a shame.

  If my blog teaches you anything about me, I hope that it’s this: I am not smart.

Last night during my marathon session of not planning my novel, I realized that I had no clean pants. (This is the type of focused thinking that really comes in handy when you are trying to write a novel in a month.) In an attempt to plan ahead, I decided to wash all of my jeans, including the pair I was wearing. I put on some sweatpants and threw the whole lot into the washing machine.

Fast forward to 8:00 this morning. I awoke and instantly realized that I’d forgotten to take the jeans out of the washer. I stuffed one pair into the dryer so that I'd have something to wear to work. I showered and fiddled around on my computer until the dryer was finished and then put the jeans on, still slightly damp. I put on my watch and shoes and went to gather my keys and wallet. I searched around and found my keys on top of the dryer.

Oh, that’s right, I’d taken the keys out of my pants last night before I washed them. But if I took my keys out and put them here, then where did I put my wal-

I shuddered and peered into the open washing machine. There is was, right on top – a big black soggy leather rectangle that used to be my wallet. I’d forgotten to take it out of my pocket before I put my jeans in the wash. I stood silently in my laundry room as the universe pointed and laughed.

Luckily, nothing was really damaged. The only important things in it were a couple of checks that I’ve been carrying around for two months – I like to let my checks age before I deposit them, like a fine cheese – but they were still intact. The worst part was that I had to walk around all day with a wet wallet in my pocket, a dark brand of stupidity marking the right half of my ass. I needed it (the wallet), and I didn’t want to leave it laying around, so I didn’t really know where else to put it. I toweled it off as best I could before I went to work, but the leather had had all night to absorb water into its pores. The weight of my body sitting on it caused all of that water to slowly ooze into my back pocket over the course of the day, resulting in a nice, steady stream of cold wetness underneath me. It was like sitting in a very small puddle for 8 hours.

I’d like to think that I am a reasonably intelligent person, on the grounds that I went to college and know how to read and can intermittently operate a computer. I’d like to think that this story is a statement about the human condition – that all of us, regardless of our experience or abilities, make foolish errors from time to time, and that we are united as a race by our ability to make mistakes, laugh at them, and learn from them.

Then I feel my clammy wallet poking at me through my wet jeans, and I think that it’s far more likely that I’m just a huge idiot.

  A couple of announcements: First, my telesales post from last week is back up. (If you haven't read it, go to Thursday, October 24.) At some point in the last few days it disappeared without warning. I suspect Blogger malfeasance, but I can't confirm that since they haven't emailed me back yet. By sheer idiocy I'd made an accidental archive which happened to contain that post, so I was able to resurrect it after a few despondent hours in which I thought I'd lost all of my work. If you are a Blogger user, heed my warning: keep a backup!

Second, I want to thank everyone for their excellent and hilarious comments. They gave me a good laugh last night. Actually, it was even better than that. My throat was a little wheezy from playing in my soccer game earlier that evening, so when I laughed at the witty comments I sounded just like Mutley, the cartoon dog. I always wanted to laugh like Mutley when I was a kid, but it made my eyes water and I could never get it right. Thanks to everyone who left a comment for making a childhood dream come true. Now if I could just go to space camp and marry Bo Derek, I could close the book on my youthful fantasies once and for all.

  I still have no idea what I'm writing about for NaNoWrimo, and fear has begun to grip my innards with its icy claw. I decided that after work today I was going to get down to the writerly business of figuring out what in the hell I am going to write about. Thus, at 6 PM sharp, with pen in hand and a look of steely resolve on my face, I sat down at my desk and started shopping for a new computer.

After shaking off this minor setback, I redoubled my effort. I got out all of my notes I've jotted down over the past few weeks and re-read them. Sadly, there were only two of them, and they both contained the same idea. I decided that I could best mold this idea into a cohesive, meaningful piece of art by watching The Simpsons Halloween Special. It was a good thing, too, because this one contained one of my all-time favorite quotes.

         (The family is searching for Bart's evil twin brother Hugo.)

         HOMER: We'll search out every place a sick, twisted solitary misfit might run to!
         LISA: I'll start with Radio Shack.

Ha! Those guys are such great writers! Speaking of which holy crap I don't know what I'm going to write about oh my god I'm so screwed. I guess I'd better watch Buffy.

After watching Buffy, it was time to get down to brass tacks. I hadn't had much luck with my other attempts, so I took an approach that was guaranteed to pay literary dividends: I configured my computer network so that I could copy MP3s from my Mac to my Windows laptop. It took me an hour or so, but man, do I have a lot of MP3s on my laptop now. I bet Thomas Pynchon would be green with envy if he could see it.

I was brimming with confidence after this success, but I was still no closer to having an idea. I decided that talking it over with a fellow author would give me a sounding board and provide positive feedback, allowing my ideas to blossom. I called up Cara, who served as a great sounding board for my ideas about how cool my computer network is. We then participated in a traditional author's exercise of complaining about how screwed we are.

          "I am so screwed," I said.

         "Dude, me too. I am so screwed."

Then we talked about her dog, and orchids, and the differences between Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. We then agreed that it was time we stopped goofing around and got back to our respective writing duties: playing frisbee with the dog (her), writing a blog entry about how screwed I am (me).

Two days to go. I have no idea what I'm going to write about. Man, are my innards getting cold. Tomorrow I am definitely going to work on an idea for my novel. And I need to remember to pick up some new headphones, too.

  Today I went to Matt's to carve pumpkins with his cool friends. I was disappointed that I had to miss an earlier pumpkin carving session with some of my other cool friends, so I'm happy that I got a chance to stick my hands inside a dead vegetable before Halloween passed me by completely. You can take a look at the results in the Jack-O-Lantern photo gallery. (Mine is the one that looks like a robot.) We all had a lot of fun - so much fun, in fact, that our jack-o-lanterns spontaneously burst into flame at the end of the evening:



After pumpkin carving I went to see The Ring. Let me begin by saying that I am not easily frightened by movies, so I am always on the hunt for a good cinematic scare. I'm talking about honest horror, not fake gore or stuff jumping out from behind the sofa. Given this quest, I was therefore highly pleased as I sat watching this movie, which is to say that I was highly terrified. Nothing about The Ring is cheap; it's a high-quality creepfest. There's a story, amazing photography, and some actual subtext, if you want to look for it. I did not have time for subtext, however. I was so busy digging my fingernails into my own arms that I barely even had a chance to notice how beautiful Naomi Watts looked. I won't say anything else because I don't want to ruin it. Go see it if you like scary movies; if not, stay away.

  After wrestling Blogger and my computer into submission using several illegal moves, I have managed to add commenting and archiving to the blog.

To comment on a post, click the "Add a Comment" link below that post. The number in parenthesis indicates how many comments have been submitted. To access the archives, simply click the "Archives" link. Entries are currently archived every month. This won't make much of a difference now since I've only been doing this for one month, but you'll thank me come November.