NaNoWriMo, Day 29: The View from the Other Side

Writing on the other side of 50,000 during National Novel Writing Month feels totally different. I'm genuinely surprised by this. There is this freedom I feel in being able to . . . well, write or not write. I found myself yesterday not feeling the need to write, but rather the desire. I was enjoying a long section of a journey for my main character, both the research of the places he traveled to and settling into what I imagined he was seeing, in the locations, and in the expressions on the faces of his traveling companions.

I've found an unwitting ally in writing such passages of journeys to places I have never been. If you can't write what you know, at least you can write what other people have known . . . and filmed . . . and put up on YouTube. After spending a fair amount of time over the last couple of nights setting up the itinerary for this journey, I found myself on Google Earth, studying the terrain, the features, the satellite photos of the areas Walt would go. And then I discovered, inside Google Earth, little YouTube logos which, when clicked, would open up a video in YouTube that the user had somehow bookmarked. Often, the video was taken in the very location on the map I studied. (And almost as often, the video had nothing to do with the location; why a stroll down Olivera Street in Los Angeles was bookmarked in the Canadian arctic, I'll never know. Bad GPS, perhaps?)

And all of a sudden, I was watching several videos made in airports and towns, getting a feel for the look of the roads, the foliage, the weather, any other features that could become details later on. Wow! An actual bona fide use for YouTube! Pretty cool.

Today is the last day of writing, and I really want to push past 55,000, but I've pretty much gotten to the point where I'll need to figure out the solutions to the tough questions that have been hanging over my head, some of which have remained unanswered for several months. I knew that November 30th would be a sort of Day of Reckoning, but I'm glad it's this kind of reckoning, rather than, say, having to figure out how to push out 10,000 words before 11:59 tonight.

The other major decision still to make: whether or not I'll bother attending the Chicago "Thank God It's Over" party on Sunday at Café Iberico. The selfish part of me says I deserveit; the introvert part of me says, "Why bother?"

Good luck to any NaNoers who are pushing today to reach that final goal! I donate some words to you.

NaNoWriMo, Day 28: "Dirt"

I went to bed at midnight last night.

Midnight.

When was the last time I went to bed that early? I can't recall. I'll have to consult my house's security camera videotapes to figure this out. What led to such a lovely treat, such wonderful unconscious bliss for a world-record (for the month of November 2007 at least) six-and-a-half straight hours? Why, I'm glad you asked. This sentence led to that:

Spreading out before them, nothing but permafrost and dirt, a few sad, small patches of green, and on the horizon only water.

A simple, harmless sentence, buried in the middle of a paragraph describing a helicopter lifting off from an island in the Canadian arctic, carrying my main character and three other people. And it is significant only because the word "dirt" was the 50,000th that I had typed in the course of writing Son of a Saint.

So, I've made it to 50,000. Big huzzahs and celebration and champagne, right? Well, not really. After I had changed the logo (in the right column) to the winner's logo, changed the progress bar to the purple badge, and updated the numbers, I couldn't help but continue cogitating on the enormous holes in my story, and how I might be able to build up enough words around the walls to make those holes small enough to only be able to fly a Boeing 737 through. It's not quite a Pyrrhic victory, but it's also not any time to stand at the dais and beginning my Nobel acceptance speech.

You see, here's where the marathon comparison finally breaks down: When I hit mile 25 of the Chicago Marathon, I summoned up every last bit of strength I had and channeled that into my body to get me across the finish line at a sprint; as some volunteer with a few kind words slipped the finisher's medal over my head, I had nothing left, and knew that I wouldn't have to seriously think about running for three weeks — or ever again, if I chose to.

I've definitely picked up steam here at the end, pouring out over 10,000 words in the last four days. And all signs indicate that I've crossed a finish line. But I know I have to keep running — probably for another 20,000 words or more — in order to complete a first draft. The good news is that I haven't had any lactic acid building up in my brain, as it did in my thighs during the marathon. So, provided I can find a solution to my literary quandaries (and I will!), I will keep running until I have a complete first draft.

Then I'll get drunk. Okay, just kidding. But that's what writers are supposed to do, right? When in Rome . . . .

I got a nice email last night from a fellow NaNoWriMo'er who won a couple of days ago. We had communicated before it started, talked about getting together in local cafés to motivate each other, our laptops back-to-back. But that was the last we contacted each other until she was over the hump and saw that I was close, and then she finally wrote me to cheer me on from a distance. She summed up a lot of my feelings in her congratulatory email this morning:

My goal for NaNo was primarily to train myself to write faster. I've never understood the "shitty first draft" concept that many writers advocate, because I've never been able to turn off my internal editor. I also hoped to be writing a literary novel. Well, I made the first goal; even if my first draft isn't finished yet. it sure meets the sniff test in many sections.

However, this will never be litfic. It's an airplane book, a beach read. Heavily plot-driven. I can live with that, especially if I actually finish it. I can imagine doing NaNo again only if I do keep working on this one.

I, too, characterized Son of a Saint as literary fiction, but it is far from that now. I feel like I'm just learning about my characters. I feel like I'm finally at the point where I can write some cogent character studies, a thorough plot outline. And in the process of going through this behemoth (Microsoft Word says it currently stands at 149 pages) a second time, I can start to infuse it with the kind of potent descriptions, nuance, wit and scope that I have convinced myself I'm capable of creating. (We'll see, Bailey.) The best part about this month is that as it winds down, I'm still hopeful. I don't hate my novel, even in the sorry condition it's in, and best of all, I don't hate writing.

But I'm not certain I'll be doing NaNoWriMo again. Yes, Catharine Amanda, thank you for your comment in my last entry, but I can't guarantee you that I'll be by your side next year when you take this on. Unless you want to ply me with bribes. Actually, I'm not the one who deserves the bribes: the one you need to be talking to is Laura, who has been a saint this month in giving me the time and space to do what I've done.

And thanks to the many of you who have sent me comments, both here and in Facebook, along the course of this month. You can all have autographed copies of my book when it's published. Which should happen around December 3rd. I just need a literary agent and a publicist to each call me, agree to represent me, and begin putting together the book tour. I mean, how hard could this be?

NaNoWriMo, Day 27: The End of a Month, the End of a Character

I've taken to skipping around now, writing a little bit in each of the chapters heretofore untouched. There is this sense of scattered desperation as I dab a few words here, slop on a few more there. (What I should be doing is nipping and tucking, but that's what the second draft is for. I have to keep telling myself this.)

I had read in Chris Baty's NaNoWriMo book about how some people deal with the end of the event: One guy, when he's near the end, starts painting entire chapters with single broad-stroke sentences, in an effort to make sure that his 49,999th and 50,000th words are "The" and "End." At the beginning of the night, I had some idea that I was going to try and do that same thing. But the fact is, it won't happen; I can't stop myself from starting to write a goodly amount of detail when I get into a section I like.

And tonight, I finished the evening with a section I definitely liked, though that will sound kind of dark: One of my characters is killed on Lake Michigan. It is an important turning point for many characters, and it compels my main character to take steps to change the course of his life. (Yeah, and I'm only getting to this event around the 48,000th word . . . so you have some idea how much more there is to still write!)

The character I killed is one that I dearly love, but who has gotten very little attention along the way as I've focused on my main character (which is to say, I've focused on me. I mean, let's be serious: what first-time novelist isn't writing his ol' narcissistic self as the main character?) This character will get much, much attention in the revision.

So it looks like I'll be hitting 50,000 tomorrow . . . and scooting right past it as I continue to try and wrap this puppy up. My problem, however, continues to be that I don't know what's going to happen for large swaths of the book that are not yet written! I suppose it'll be exciting to see how that all turns out.

Right?

Right?

NaNoWriMo, Day 26: A Groove of Sorts

A NaNoWriMo "writing buddy" is bemoaning how much crap comes out of this month-long exercise. I'm feelin' that too. That's what the last week or so has been like for me. But tonight I actually felt like I made some progress. Knocked out almost 3,000 words, but more importantly, there's some stuff here that might actually be useful to the story I want to tell.

I feel like I spend a lot of my time jumping back to previous work and adding ideas/reminders to the "Notes" section for each chapter. I'm thinking all the time of inconsistencies that will need to be cleaned up. Yet another thing to add to the editing process! I tell you, I thought that facing the blank page is scary, but I have a feeling the concept of having to edit thousands and thousands of words is pretty damn daunting too.

I'm going to try writing tomorrow while listening to Christmas music. That oughta be an interesting experiment. *grin*

NaNoWriMo, Day 25: A Stretch, But Hardly Home

I talked with Laura tonight about what to do post-November 30th. I told her that I had hoped to continue to devote nights to continuing to work on this first draft . . . just not every night. And that once the draft was done, I'd take a longer break from it. And she was totally cool with that. So that's what'll happen.

I really feel like my writing right now is biding time until I figure out how to get around the blocks I've set up in my plot. I seem to have no problem churning out the words — a dinner conversation can really eat up that quota, you know — but I'm not sure that much of it will stick around. I tell myself that at least I'm getting to know my characters and hit my quota, but that is just so unsatisfying, I can't even tell you.

When I compared this to a marathon, I had no idea how right I would be. I am so in miles 20-25 now, the ones that were torture. Once I hit mile 25 and I knew I could finish, I was able to fly and find some joy. Will that happen when I cross, say, 48,000 words?

NaNoWriMo, Day 24: Up and Over 40,000

I'm grabbing for scenes now, looking for anything I know that I can write. For instance, tonight: A Thanksgiving dinner. I know, how easy, right? But one has to occur in this book, it just makes sense, so the only thing better than writing what you know is writing what you just experienced for the first time. So, some general moments of my Thanksgiving were worked into this chapter.

In this scene, Walt and Sherry are clearly now deep in the love sauce, which is more than what what they had worked out in the previous chapter. So I'm clearly going to need some prose in between that will bridge that gap. I fear more and more that the last week of writing during NaNoWriMo will be spent creating these stones to get me across the river — stones that will be too far apart to easily hop from one to the next. And so I will spend all of my first edit on this draft writing that bridge material. This baby could do some serious expanding in that phase.

I wish I could feel more joyous about breaking the 40,000 barrier, but it feels like I'm flailing with my fingers here.

And no, the time stamp on this entry is not incorrect; I really am that dumb! *grin*

NaNoWriMo, Day 23: Hoping for Miracle Post-Production?

The family went out to see the new movie Enchanted yesterday, but due to the fact that no babysitters were available, somebody had to stay back with Susannah, who was napping. I was the obvious choice, since I had writing to do, and so I reluctantly let them go. (We get to see so few movies these days!)

I got a bit done, about a thousand words, but not what I was hoping for. I continue to struggle with where this is all going, and being overwhelmed with what still must come. Timeline issues are a mess, and I'm trying to tell myself that I can write through them and figure all that stuff out later — that nothing is stopping me from at least getting down the scenes that I know are going to happen. But my head won't let me; I seem to have to know when these things happen in time.

The other major issue: one of the major climaxes of the book is when my main character takes his girlfriend and her daughter back to the place he's been avoiding for the last two decades of his life, for a sort of confrontation of his past. The problem is that I can't seem to figure out what it is that is compelling enough to make him go back there. Thinking about this issue has become a mini-obsession with me, but the more I think about it, the more blocked I feel.

Write what you do know, I think. But I'm struggling with knowing anything at this point.

God dammit! This is a good idea! I know this can be done! Sometimes I just wonder if I'm the one to do it. For all the writing I've done in my life, I suddenly feel remarkably inexperienced. Sometimes the book feels like a huge tease. Normally I don't mind being teased — it can be fun and inspiring. But this doesn't feel like the good tease. This is the jigsaw puzzle on a deadline, with pieces missing. I could spend the rest of the month looking for those pieces . . . or I could just put together what I know, hope it adds up to 50,000 words (pieces), and then hope that I can "fix it in the mix."

NaNoWriMo, Day 22: Feasting, and Back On Track

What a fantastic Thanksgiving this was. Such an amazing feast of food, and it was so much fun to cook all of those dishes. "So many options!" one family member said. "That's what Marck's Thanksgivings are like," another replied. And that made me feel great. I'm sure it's more than needs to be done, but it's fun to try out these recipes and so hard for me to narrow them down. So . . . What the hell? It's once a year. Go for it. And we did. And we kicked ass.

Starting to find a little ass-kicking power on the writing thing again, too. I spent some time earlier in the evening jotting down events that need to happen in certain scenes, and when I sat down to seriously write tonight, I was able to get some words flowing again. Not a 4,000-word day by any means, but tonight I feel like I might be able to do that again. Sometime.

My focus now is on keeping the plot moving. Today is the first day of the last week of this event, and I'm keenly aware of how far I must still go to get anywhere near the end. I don't mind glossing over moments, as long as I leave enough bread crumbs to be able to get back to them later. It's all about my getting this first draft done.

I mentioned to someone tonight that I wasn't sure I could stand to still be working on this first draft into December. "Actually," I clarified, "I'm not sure Laura could stand it." And Laura, who was standing nearby, said, "Oh, I wouldn't mind at all." So maybe that was something like permission to keep writing past 11/30 to get that first draft done. That would kind of break with the spirit of NaNoWriMo, but in the end I would be happier that I managed to include at least a bit of everything that needed to happen in the story, with time to flesh things out in the coming months.

Nano Wrimo, Day (21) Off

I think my life could not have picked a better day to get so crazy-busy that I would skip writing. I had the advantage of having hit Wednesday's quota on Thursday, and Laura and I took Wednesday off in order to prep for the Thanksgiving feast. Which is a beast of a feast. So with everything that had to be done in prep (including a sink-unclogging that featured gunk getting sprayed all over my wife's freshly showered face — a story that I hope she'll find some humor in someday, but that ain't today so you'll have to wait for that one), I really had no problem not making time to write.

So I used my day in the bank, and I'm still on quota. Now I'm up against it today, and I'm hoping that we did so much prep last night that I might have a half-hour or hour or so to sit down and do some very specific outlining of the remaining work. 'Cause let me tell you . . . I've got two people who are kind of in a dysfunctional place in their relationship, and I need to get their asses together somehow. (Amanda -- thanks for the comment; I'm trying to work exploding penguins into their romance.)

I've had all these scenes floating around in my head — little moments, almost like memories of a life that I've never led — and I need to find a home for them. My hopes have been that today is the day they get anchored to a section of the book. And then, hopefully, I'll have some idea of where I'm going with this and I can start cranking out the words.

My hopes of doing this project might have been dashed last night by the confluence of a number of events. We finally finished food prep (and kitchen cleanup) at 1:45 a.m. and got ready for bed, only to find that Zuzu had woken up. And more than just a middle-of-the-night disturbance; a serious wake-up. She does this sometimes, and when she does she's completely disoriented and convinced it's time to get up for the day. She insisted on something to eat, and then complained of (growing) pain in her knees. A bowl of fresh pineapple and two teaspoons of kids' Motrin later, she was finally settling in.

Cue the dog. Our family from St. Louis brought their King Charles spaniel with them. Lily is very much a part of the family, and we love her to death. She's never been a problem before, but last night it was clear to her from all the crying and getting-of-food that other people were awake. So she began this methodical single bark every 10 to 15 seconds. I stumbled out and "talked" to her. And she quieted down, and I finally was able to fall asleep . . . with Zuzu slapping her arms out and regularly hitting me in the face.

CRASH! Something came piling through our bedroom door and collapsed on the ground. "I'm so scared I'm so scared I'm so scared I'm so scared!" Piper screamed, and piled into bed on Laura's side. Serious nightmare action. I took the opportunity to move Zuzu back to her bed, where she woke up just enough to demand a little backrub before she fell back asleep and let me go.

Ah -- back in bed, just falling asleep, and . . .

"Woof!"

Out to the living room to remind Lily that, no, no one was really up, and sorry for fooling her.

Blissfully asleep . . . until . . . What was that sound? Something way off in the distance . . . which if I'm not mistaken . . . wait, it's getting louder as I wake up . . . Yeah, that would be the house alarm. Sister-in-law Heidi had gotten up to take Lily out for a walk and had forgotten about the alarm system.

So, that was the end . . . I was up! All of which is to say that I'm not really feeling very creative at the moment, and any free time that I was hoping would be used for novel outlining will most likely be used for catnaps on the couch while the turkey cooks.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

NaNoWrimo, Day 20: An Excerpt That Will Never Make It Into the Next Draft

My wife sat across from me at the island in the kitchen tonight, looked deep into my eyes, and said those Three Little Words:

"You look tired."

That's Exhibit A.

Exhibit B is a sample of the evening's output. I think it perfectly captures my frame of mind about this novel right now.

“For someone who works in a gallery, you have very little art,” she noted, sliding in to the dining nook.

“I work there. I don’t buy there.”

“So why no wall stuff?” she asked.

“I don’t like lots of stuff.”

“Oh yeah?” she smiled. “When you travel light, you can skip town faster, right?” He wasn’t sure what she meant by that. He dried the dishes and put them away. “Could I maybe have a glass of water?” she asked.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said as he took a couple of tumblers from a set Cynthia had brought, rescuing it from languishing in the Stockman basement. He brought the waters over and sat across from her.

They sat in silence for awhile. She studied the grain in the table, visible through the fading pale yellow paint. He looked up at the light fixture above them, noticing for the first time that the wattage could stand to be stronger. Back to their drinks, where they both took sips at the same time, set their glasses down at the same time, and laughed at their mirror games.

“So . . .” she began.

“Yes?”

“What shall we talk about?”

“I really haven’t a clue,” Walt said.

Silence again. A dumpster top slammed shut on the alley, and three stories above, Walt thought he saw a ripple on the surface of his glass of water.

“Do you think,” she suggested, “that we would talk better . . . that maybe this whole scene would go better . . . if we just moved over to my place? I mean, at least over there, there are more people to interact with. My daughter, her best friend, the best friend’s parents.”

He absently ran a finger around the rim of his glass.

“Yeah. Sure.” He got up from the table. “Let’s do that.” He took her glass back to the sink, not bothering to rinse it out before meeting her at the door.

In case you're wondering, things didn't go any better at her place.

NaNoWriMo, Day 19: Eyelids, Don't Fail Me Now!

I am unbelievably tired today. I feel like I've been sleepwalking through my whole day. My word count tonight reflects this. On two of occasions, I have dozed off with my fingers on the keys. I really just need to get some sleep.

I wish I had more of a lead over my word count going into Thanksgiving. I also wish I had a better idea of where the plot was going. I really need to sit down and do some organizing or the whole thing is going to fall apart.

NaNoWriMo, Day 18: En Fuego

So, I didn't get to a café today. It just wasn't going to work with all that we had to do today, and with Zuzu's nap schedule. But I think it worked out okay.

A big shout-out to Laura's mom for taking Piper to go see Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium this afternoon. And for Laura, for really falling on her own sword when she then took Piper with her on a trip to many department stores for returns and a little shopping. That left me at home to write as Zuzu took a long nap. (Yeah, thanks to you too, little girl.)

The result: I got into the prep school prank flashback today, and absolutely heated the keyboard with my typing. Part of the reason that this section went as well as it did is because it's based on an incident I experienced in college; all that was left was some huge exaggeration and making everyone involved a little more evil or a little more filled with goodness, and voila . . .

I knocked out almost 4,000 words today.

It's nice to actually be a bit ahead of the game for a change. Laura wants me ahead so that I can actually take Thanksgiving off. Me, I'm feeling more like I need to get these words behind me so that I have a chance in hell of actually reaching the end of my story sometime in the first week of December!

Anyway: Mucho thanks to a very supportive family. It makes a huge difference in this married father of two actually being able to get this thing done.

NaNoWriMo, Day 17: Chaos Now, Order Later.

I can start to feel the building pressure of the holidays intruding on my time to write: This afternoon, Piper was settled in watching Nanny McPhee and Zuzu was asleep. Primo time for writing, right? Except that I spent the whole time doing menu planning for the time when my Laura's brother's family will be here. More time will be spent doing this tomorrow as well, though I've promised myself (and Laura has backed this up) that I will get away for a couple of hours. Maybe back to Café Ambrosia, where I had such a productive afternoon last weekend.

I've gotten Walt through the flashback to his breakup with Jacqui, which is really only a device to get him to tell about his past. I can think of many pieces that I've left out, but they'll probably come up in the next scene, which is another flashback, this time regarding his time at a boarding school where he had to hide his history from his classmates.

It occurred to me tonight that my chapter outline might have a real problem: After Walt and Sherry get to know each other in the present, I have three chapters — two of them fairly long — where we leave the present. That's a lot of time without the reader dealing with the relationship they're supposed to care so much about. Or that I thought they were supposed to care so much about; maybe that's too much of an assumption on my part.

I looked briefly after finishing writing tonight at how I might rearrange these sections. And then I realized: Why bother? All of the content is good and necessary, so who cares right now if it's not in the right place? The important thing is that it's out. I'll figure out the right place for it later. Hell, for all I know, maybe the break from present-day Chicago for so long smack-dab in the middle of the book might serve as a sort of "halftime show" (maybe I should have Janet Jackson show up and flash the reader?) before things get cooking on the downhill.

This book is looking to clock in around 60,000 words. This is what I'm thinking right now: While I'm at over 29,000 words, I think this is about the halfway point. The problem is, I'm feeling very low on story ideas right now. I'm not sure how I'll find the creative energy to fill in these gaps; it's just not coming like it used to.

So, you know what? I resolve to only worry about what I can write tomorrow. Beyond that, I'm just going to have to trust that I'm going to work out the issues in my head and find the scenes that need to be there. What else can I do, really?

NaNoWriMo, Day 16: The Second Half Begins

I had to stop writing tonight when I woke up to discover that I had "typed" six lines of the letter "k." I had fallen asleep at the keyboard with my hands on the home keys, and my right middle finger had pressed just a little too hard.

As would be expected, I've come down a bit from yesterday's euphoria. To offset that let-down, a fun lunch with some writers today got the juices flowing in very different ways. I liked the balance of confidence sitting around that table, nicely mixed with "We really don't know 100% what we're doing but we're doing it anyway." Nice to look around at the other people who jumped off this cliff with you, take your eyes off the ground rushing up at you, and realize that you're all in this together.

I'm nearing the end of this easy-to-write section and can already feel some tension about the next section, a flashback taking Our Hero all the way back to his boarding-school experience in his teens. Maybe I'll have him learn how to cast spells in a giant castle with constantly shifting staircases. For some reason that sounds familiar, but I'm going with it.

I feel like I have more valuable things to write about tonight in this blog, but I continue to fall asleep here, so actual thought will have to wait until another evening.

Hey. By Monday, I should be well over 30,000 words!

NaNoWriMo, Day 15: Look At Me, I'm A Chiropractor!

Many years ago, before I knew much about medicine and doctors and such, a good friend of mine told me about this miracle chiropractor she had been seeing.

"I don't know how she does it," Beth said, "but this guy can just . . . very gently . . ." as she demonstrated by placing a hand on my neck, and seeming almost to tentatively squeeze it, ". . . move something. And all of a sudden, it's like he has restored the bloodflow to that part of my body. I feel this sense of freedom, of things opening up. It's the closest thing to a miracle I've experienced at a doctor's office."

In the shower this morning, I was thinking about how stuck I've been in my story, mired in the relationship between my two main characters. And then I realized something, and made a simple decision: I'd leave that chapter unfinished and simply move ahead to the next chapter. Which, according to the outline, involves a flashback. Not just any flashback: it's the one where Walt spills the beans.

And let me tell you: that one, simple, gentle decision has completely freed my mind, my fingers, my muse. Because tonight, when I finally sat down to write (sadly, much later than I had hoped), those words came tumbling out like . . . like Jasmati rice out of the bulk dispenser at Whole Foods!

Alright, but the words I was writing were better than that crap simile. Trust me.

Anyway, it's been a fun night! And the best part is that I'm stopping with so much more to go! I could have easily broken 28,000 tonight if I wasn't still recovering from the cold, and if I knew I needed to conserve a little strength for the weekend and the writing to be done then.

But the good thing is that I've left myself right in the middle of this fun scene, and I get to continue it tomorrow! So I should have another banner day tomorrow night.

Halle-friggin'-lujah! I know I'm not out of the woods, by any means — I still have many thorny issues to grapple with. But it is such a relief to experience that sense of "typing on air" after several days of typing with mini-dumbbells duct-taped to each finger.

NaNoWriMo, Day 14: Treading Water

I'm feeling a real gripe with NaNoWriMo building. I tried to voice it in a conversation with my niece tonight, but I can't find the words to quite describe it. But part of it has to do with the fact that I wonder right now if the event isn't killing all the enjoyment I have for writing.

Yes, as you can probably tell from that statement, I'm pretty down in the dumps right now. Today is the final day of Week 2, and I am a serious novel-hater right now. I'm feeling like I need to throw my characters either into bed together or in front of a car. Or to really make things interesting, throw them into a bed standing in the middle of a busy highway. Anything to get them off their butts and do something.

I hadn't bothered to read any of the pep-talk stuff from Week 2 in the Chris Baty book or in the emails I received (via NaNoWriMo) from Tom Robbins and Sue Grafton. But I think I might have to resort to that stuff. The thing that worries me is that I was even well-rested the last couple of days . . . and I still haven't been able to find my way toward loving this part of the story. I mean, my two main characters are getting to know each other. This should be the crux of it. Flirtations, barbs, debates, camaraderie, etc. . . . Shouldn't this be more fun?

I can't believe I added better than 1,000 words to my total tonight. It felt like maybe I typed 10 or 20. That's probably just the word count on the parts I loved.

I'm getting together with a coupla fellow NaNoers for lunch on Friday. If there is inspiration to be had in such events, Friday can't get here fast enough.

NaNoWriMo, Day 13: 2nd-Week Blues Arrive Late

For the first time, I've sketched out the story. I have synopses of each of the "sections" (which one might call "chapters," but some of these sections are pretty darn big), and it comes out to a nice, clean, even twenty. Right now, it feels a little hollow, shallow, but it's there. Hopefully I can inject it with some import . . . or pixie dust . . . or maybe just a bunch of raunchy sex scenes to keep the reader engaged.

Yeah, it was a night without much inspiration. I'm stumbling through the after-effects of a hit-and-run accident and trying to figure out what it all means to Walt, to Sherry, to . . . me. I found myself picking up the pace at the end of the night, trying to get things moving again. I'm resisting doing something drastic to my characters to force something to happen. The substance is there . . . I just have to uncover it.

Maybe I'm still on the mend, needing more sleep. Maybe it'll make more sense in the morning.

NaNoWriMo, Day 12: Airborne™ Is My Friend

So the leaf-raking event of Sunday did me in, and by this morning I was feeling way too crappy to rear my ugly head at work. I ended up spending the day taking Airborne, Advil, Benadryl, and sleeping like crazy.

Waking up late in the afternoon, I headed out to my daughter's ballet class, since this was the one week we were allowed to observe. And before anyone is thinking that I'm some sort of kick-ass father for "going the extra mile," showing up for the class when I was sick, you should know that I actually dozed off during the class. I don't think Piper saw me, as I was tucked into a corner of the room, on the floor. (Please don't tell her.)

I'd like to think that all that sleep bought me beaucoup creative minutes with my muse tonight, but it didn't feel that way. I powered through a section tonight and got a lot of words down on paper, but I feel sometimes like I'm redefining the unofficial motto of NaNoWriMo: "Quantity before quality."

I finally, painfully, introduced the two major characters that are going to upend Walt's pretty-messed-up-already life. (In fact, what they're truly doing is righting his ship.) They come in the form of Sherry, a single mom, and Arden, her five-year-old daughter.

I've been resisting introducing Arden for the longest time. She scares me because I want her to be so . . . right. Naturally, she's going to be heavily based on my two daughters, and that's probably why I want her to be so true. I have thoroughly convinced myself that I'm going to completely botch Arden's character development. So, like so many aspects of this novel, I am praying that the editing process is going to allow me the time and ability to give the characters, the settings, the descriptions the kind of depth they deserve. (Translation: Marck is going to give everything the typically over-wordy treatment he gives everything he writes.) (This blog entry a case in point, n'est-ce pas?)

I came across these eight rules for non-fiction that Kurt Vonnegut wrote sometime back. (It would have been hard for him to do it, say, yesterday, wouldn't it?) And one of those eight rules sticks in my head as I think about editing this quickly growing behemoth: "Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action."

Gulp.

Just the thought of editing with this foremost in my mind makes me feel like this might be the most painstaking process ever.

I'm getting close to the end of the outline I had created before I started. And I'm nowhere near the end. So I've started to try to finish up an outline of the chapters/scenes remaining. I created the next three chapter outlines, and then just because it's the only other thing I knew, I created chapter 100 and wrote about the final chapter. Now I'm adding chapter 99, chapter 98, etc. I'm hoping the two trains will meet in the middle somewhere . . . and that I'll then get to go back and renumber those chapters! Because if this thing is really looking at being 100 chapters, I have a friggin' out-of-control nightmare on my hands.

Speaking of nightmares: I had a doozy last night, the kind that you wake from whimpering and looking to hold your wife tight in bed. (Laura has no recollection of this happening.) The dream stayed clear in my head when I woke up in the morning — an extremely rare occurrence. I can't find it's connection with my life. I'm wondering if this is the novel talking . . . or if this is simply the delusional nightmares of a drugged up pseudo-novelist.

NaNoWriMo, Day 11: Seeds Sown for Future Endeavors?

I pounded out about a thousand words in the middle of the night last night, which would be a great thing, except that I did it while sitting next to just about the draftiest window in the house. By this morning I had a sore throat. I've been taking Airborne all day and drinking lots of tea in hopes of thwarting the cold. What I probably shoudl really be doing is getting some sleep, right? So I'll keep this entry short.

My day hours today were spent doing those typically suburban things: Piper declared today "family pancake day" (as she has declared every Sunday for the past several weeks), and I fulfilled my fatherly duties by making the bestest buttermilk pancakes ever, period. This afternoon was spent raking leaves in our backyard — a job that will need to be repeated in a week's time, since the trees are not nearly done giving up their foliage. Still needed to get one round of this in, in case a snow comes in the next several days and makes such endeavors impossible.

The thing that was really enjoyable about the leaves today was that the girls played in them for a lot of the time I was out there, jumping in my leaf piles, throwing them at each other . . . It's the first year that this has happened.

Watching the two of them, I wanted to write a new novel, one with both of them as the main characters. But I'm not sure I have the talent to make a story like that not sound too . . . precious . . . treacly . . . not sure what word I'm looking for here, but I'm betting I would have had no problem finding it twenty-four hours ago.

The funny thing about this noveling thing (at least the thing today) is that since I've started work on this novel, I've come up with ideas for two more. One is a bit of a seat-of-your-pants thriller. The other is a much more introspective piece. I've made a couple of notes on them in new Scrivener projects, in case they amount to anything. It's weird to think that I might be doing this again.

More to the point with this novel: When I got my hair cut on Saturday, the guy who cuts it agreed to do my hair (and his wife my makeup) for my photo shoot for the picture on the back cover of my novel when it's published. He also agreed to accompany me to NYC when I appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I told him he wasn't thinking big enough for my needs: I was going to encourage him to sell the salon and just come on full time as my "hair boy." He's game.

NaNoWriMo, Day 10: Cruising On Ambrosia

A true luxury today. After my haircut, I headed over to Café Ambrosia, where I had almost two hours of uninterrupted time with the novel to get my word count back in the vicinity of being on target. It's a fairly new café in Evanston, and I'd heard someone on the NaNoWriMo boards talk about how once you checked it out, you wouldn't want to go to any other café in the area.

It's very spacious, with lots of different sitting options: The counter along the window, the counter inside, couches, comfy easy-chairs, and your traditional small-table-and-wood-chair. Which is what I opted for, along with my large caffé mocha.

First order of business: some house cleaning. It seems that in the course of these first ten days of writing, my plot and some characters (in typical fashion) have headed off in directions I hadn't expected. So rather than whip them into shape, I spent some time altering my plot outline, making it conform to where they've gone.

Then I wrote the second letter from Walt's mother to him. These were the sections of the novel I was most looking forward to, but since the loss of the notebook, these sections have become the most cumbersome to write. The letters provide the backstory to where Walt came from, what he is so desperate to escape. I don't feel like this material has come back so very well. Which is to say at all. I lumbered through the letter, but I feel like it's biding time. Maybe this is going to be fleshed out in the second draft.

One of the things I realized was that I had totally missed in my first draft of the earlier chapters was any explanation of how my main character got set up in his apartment. I mean, this first section of the story is about his starting over, so I feel I need to detail that process to some extent. So I found myself breaking a chapter into two pieces and inserting another chapter in between. And then I started writing that chapter. Of course, who should show up almost immediately in this new chapter? The female character who apparently desperately wants to sleep with Walt. (So, this rearrangement was her idea!) We'll see where that goes. I'm suspicious of her — not only her intentions for my main character, but her intentions in my novel. Still, if every character needs to want something, as Kurt Vonnegut suggests, then she has the most clearly defined want of anyone.

I ended up knocking out almost 2,000 words this afternoon. And there was this one transcendant moment when a particular song came on my iTunes: Seal's "Violet." I have no idea what happened, but in the course of that 8-1/2 minute song, over 400 words flew out of my fingers. Damn, was that nice.

I would love to get another two hours like this on Sunday, but I feel guilty about asking Laura to once again watch the kids. Especially when it feels like the house and the yard is getting crazier and crazier, and when we're hosting Thanksgiving in a mere eleven days.

NaNoWriMo, Day 9: Games People Play

One of the things that surprised me about my process is the music situation. When I began this, I thought I'd be using a ton of instrumental music, especially some of the wonderful podcasts from Magnatune. I tried that for the first two or three nights, but then I discovered that what I need in order to write is the familiar. Or maybe variety. In any case, the music that really helps me cook is just my usual iTunes collection on "Party Shuffle." (FYI, last five artists: Joe Jackson, Frederic Chopin, Crowded House, Massive Attack, and Elliott Smith.) I had made the assumption that the lyrics were going to make it harder to write. But I should have known better: I've always favored music over the lyrics. It's easy for me to tune out the content of the words, turning the voice into just another instrument. I suppose if I ever get in a jam, though, I could just put my head back, listen for the next lyric I hear sung, and just put those words into the mouth of the nearest character.

A lot of NaNoWriMoers seem to use tricks like that: Little things that get you writing again, just keep the word count up. It's not that it sounds like cheating to me so much as a useless drill. I suppose I wouldn't mind it so much if I knew the exercise was going to be relevant to my story, but deciding all of a sudden that my character is stuck in an elevator with a German shepherd, a candy striper, and a professional poker player and spending my evening writing about that just seems like . . . well, a waste of my evening.

Besides . . . I know where this story is taking me. For some reason, I'm resisting going there.

I'm part of the Chicago team having a "word war" with the cities of Toronto and New York. It feels weird, pretending that writing is somehow a team sport. And it's not like I really have to be a team player for this game. All I have to do is keep my fingers typing. It is a little more motivation for me, knowing that for every word I type, I'm pushing up the Chicago word count. That helps keep me going a little.

I hear that people also have mini-word wars at some of the meet-ups and write-ins. "Who can type the most words in the next ten minutes — go!" That kind of thing. I wonder how I'd do in that kind of stressful situation. Probably freeze up.

I miss my notebook. I miss all my little moments I had jotted in there.

Okay. Back to the sidewalk where I left Walt and Miguel, a little drunk, and about to witness a near-fatal car accident. Yee ha!

NaNoWriMo, Day 8: The Words Get Heavier, My Arms Get Tired

I'm trying not to worry too much about my word count dropping below the target for the first time. We are coming into a weekend here, and there's a chance I might be able to do some catch-up on Sunday at a café somewhere.

And it's not lost on me that today is the first day of Week 2, apparently widely known to be the most difficult week of NaNoWriMo. It's the week you learn to hate your novel, you're tempted to kill off characters, and you consider how nice it would be to just go to bed at 10 p.m. rather than stay up. (Actually, I never feel like going to bed at 10.)

My problem is that I'm stuck with my main character just about to head into this important, story-changing moment . . . and I'm resisting it. I'm scared to write it, and I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm scared to face up to something he's going to face?

I've got to just bear down and push ahead. Just keep putting one word in front of the other.

NaNoWriMo, Day 7: The Importance of Not-Writing Time

I'm suspecting that everything I wrote tonight might not make it into the next draft of the novel. It involved an art installation in the backyard of a very rich couple's home, and an enormous fight between the man and his mistress. But I felt the whole timie I was writing this that I was biding time, afraid of the next scene, which I know is going to be a major event in the novel that gets things rolling: a hit-and-run accident during which my main character saves the life of a three-year-old girl.

But here it is, 1:00 a.m., and I have a majorly stressful day at work tomorrow. So I'm going to resist the urge to make it all the way to the hit-and-run and leave that for tomorrow. Undoubtedly I'll have some new ideas on how to approach things when next I sit down.

I see all sorts of great ideas come to my head in the hours that I'm not writing. This is hardly a revelation — he same was once true of my songwdriting as well. The brain seems to continue to work on the puzzles and hang-ups in the story long after the computer has been shut down. I've found that my morning shower seems to be a particularly creative time. For instance, after going to bed last night with the sneaking feeling that I absolutely despised the job my main character just got, I discovered in the shower that the hit-and-run would spell the end of that job for him. Voila — I won't have to keep writing about that.

I'm really feeling the need to complete the outline for this story that I had started back in October. I feel things getting a little out of my control, which is probably great for word count, but isn't going to do much when I have to go back and edit the behemoth. Another reason for the outline: I find that I look forward to the next day's writing when I have a vague idea what I'll be writing about. And since I'm quickly approaching the end of the portion of the outline I created, I may soon be in no-man's-land. I need my outline to stay at least a few chapters ahead of me.

NaNoWrimo, Day 6: Into Five Figures!

Just broke the 10,000-word mark a few minutes ago.

Biggest surprise so far: How little the Internet has distracted me during my writing periods.

Second biggest surprise: How much life distractions have gotten in the way. For instance, that heating problem that we were having starting last night? That didn't get resolved until 3:30 the next afternoon. Such a stupid, niggling little problem that kept me from really finding my groove. Little things like this seem to crop up all the time. They're there every day, I'm sure, but during this month, it's all especially noticeable.

Piper has been asking about the book a lot. Driving her to school Monday morning, I gave her an idea of the plot in very broad brushstrokes, not allowing for too much specificity since my story involves a certain amount of dealing with the myth of St. Nicholas. She tells me she wants to help me with the story. She is, in ways she doesn't know, and probably won't until she's older and reads it . . . if she reads it.

Last night, she came in from ballet class and I was on the computer, pounding out a couple hundred words before dinner.

"Is that you book?" she asked, all excited.

"Yes."

"Can I see it?"

"Sure!" I said, and I turned the computer toward her. The change in her expression was not imperceptible. All there was to see was a lot of words on a white page.

"Oh," she monotoned. Translation: Your book is boring. And off she ran to taunt her little sister.

NaNoWrimo, Day 5: Cold

Someone who read my entry yesterday about the (still) missing notebook copped the right attitude: Snap out of it. Anything that was in there can be re-created, or made better.

Yes, and no. From my years of songwriting, I know that countless ideas were lost to the ether because they weren't recorded either on my mini-cassette recorder (hey, it was the '90s) or into one of my countless "idea books." I learned to deal with that early on, realizing that I was always going to have more ideas to replace the old ones. I didn't mind that so much when it came to four-minute pop songs. It feels very different to me when it's the goddamn novel.

But hey, point taken: I'm snapping out of it, slowly. By tonight, I was feeling a little bit of eagerness to write again, even though I wasn't sure what the next section would look like. As it turns out, I'm finding a little more speed to the story: In the course of some 1,300 words, I got Walt an apartment, a quick tour of his new neighborhood, and though he doesn't know it yet, he just met the woman he's going to fall in love with.

I probably could have gotten a lot more written, but the fact is that I'm a little uncomfortable and I'm going to bed. You see, the heat has gone out in our home. I spent a lot of time tonight troubleshooting the thermostat and determining that wasn't the problem, and then relighting the pilot light a couple of times and determining that wasn't it either. The thermostat is telling the heater to turn on. It's just that the heat isn't doing it.

So the temperature inside is currently 65 degrees and outside it's 38, heading toward 33. We have a call in to the heating guys, and they'll be calling first thing in the morning. In the meantime, Laura is hunkered down with Piper and I'll be bringing Zuzu into our bed to make sure everyone's warm for the night. Maybe I'll surprise the girls with a fire in the fireplace in the morning. Oh wait — that will actually suck heat from the rest of the house, won't it? Oh well. We'll figure out something in the morning.

Anyway, I decided to only break through today's quota and call it a night. I keep hoping to have one or two of those amazing 3,000-word days I hear about, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm not worried, but it would be nice to build a bit of a buffer in there for the occasional rainy day . . . or in our case, snowy day. When the heat, you know, goes out again.

NaNoWrimo, Day 4: Work in the Face of Adversity

I had such high hopes for today: a relatively free schedule, a supportive family willing to let me go for some time this afternoon, and a real desire to get to the next section of the novel.

The one commitment on the schedule today was a birthday brunch celebration for my mother-in-law. This promised to be a joyous occasion with family and friends, with great food and conversation. Perhaps there might even be some inspiration for the novel!

Alas, the enjoyment of the afternoon was almost undone by a restaurant's terrible service. Due to a long wait for a table and a much, much longer wait for the food that we ordered, not to mention terrible communication by the waitstaff, we did not escape the restaurant until three hours after our arrival. Besides leaving a slightly bad taste in our mouths, the extended brunch ended up meaning that there would be no time for me to escape the house and write today.

But this turn of events was not the really devastating event of the day.

Since late September, I have been carrying a small spiralbound notebook with me, used exclusively for the purpose of capturing my random neural firings about this book. Over the course of that month — and especially in the week before November 1st — I had worked out character sketches on five main characters, mapped out many scenes and "moments" that I knew had to happen, and — most importantly — laid out the foundations for the backstory on which the whole novel is carried.

And after searching in every place I can possibly imagine (including a latenight trip to my workplace to ransack my office), I am sad to announce that this book of ideas is lost.

It's hard to describe how debilitating this has been to my psyche. Tonight was the night my writing would begin to reinvent an ancient, worldwide tradition. My map to this reinvention was in the pages of this book. Without it, I found myself moping, even resisting beginning to write.

I will forge on. And I will continue to look for the missing notebook. But it's hard to shake the feeling that important pieces to this puzzle have been permanently lost. My writing tonight — a letter from my main character's mother — was the most importan section I've written so far, and it felt very uninspired. It's hard to tell if the writing is really that weak or if everything right now is colored by my darkened state of mind.

Let us hope the notebook makes a reappearance soon. And that Day 5 is more positive than the mess that was today.

NaNoWriMo, Day 3: No Panic Allowed

Okay, so things didn't go so well last night. I got myself up to around 4,000 words before kicking off for the night, but I would have liked to have been closer to 5,000. And here it is just after midnight a day later and I've only closed in on 5,000 now. Not terrible, right? I mean, I'm less than 100 words off quota. Except that I had hoped to be far ahead of quota during the "honeymoon" period.

The problem is this: I've gotten Walt (my main character) sitting at a dinner with a family . . . and for most of a day I wasn't sure what they were going to talk about. So I had this primo writing time after I got Zuzu to sleep and before Laura and Piper came back from the 3-D version of The Nightmare Before Christmas when I could have cranked out major words. And I ended up writing "around" my story. Biding my time.

It wasn't until Piper was asleep, Laura was by my side, and we watched an episode of Pushing Daisies that I figured out the two things that would go on at this dinner: 1) Walt's buddy's wife will press him on his history, which he will be typically reluctant to share; and 2) The seeds will be sown for an adulterous relationship between said wife and Walt.

This latter item took me quite by surprise, and may be the first sign of what Chris Baty and many others have talked about in the past: characters deciding to do things "on their own," without your necessarily willing it. Since I immediately created this female character as someone who did not sign up for the conservative Christian marriage she has found herself in, it would make sense that she is profoundly unhappy . . . and that Walt's appearance in their household makes possible a dalliance that she was likely to be doing someday soon anyway.

I had found myself resisting working sex into the story, thinking that was just "too easy" to go there. But that's just silly. An affair can be handled in very adult (read: grown-up) ways. I can keep titillation to a minimum — with the full knowledge that the very word affair carries a pretty high titillation factor.

I'm going to have a couple of hours tomorrow at a local café to pound out some words. Hopefully I can make some gains on my word count then.

NaNoWriMo, Day 2: The Reality of Excision

I'm having my first revelation about "longform writing." (I suppose I could just call it "noveling," but I'm all about using as many words as I can right now, in the name of reaching the pinnacle of 50,000 words.) When I finally went to bed last night at 2:00 a.m., I realized that while my story started with my character on a plane landing at O'Hare, I had only just gotten him to the point where he was driving away from the airport with a college buddy he hasn't seen in 20 years . . .

. . . And it took me 3,000 words just to get to that point.

It made me realize that when I finally go back to editing this epic, I am going to be excising ginormous amounts of text that simply has no purpose being there. I'm not worrying about that now, thank God. It's making me see that the true work of this is not so much the initial writing. It's not that hard to throw a lot of clay on the wheel; the real effort comes when I try to make that into something . . . beautiful? Hell, I'll be happy just to take "acceptable."

I had this whole revelation confirmed Friday afternoon when I had lunch with another NaNoWriMoer and her co-worker (who will undoubtedly do NaNoWriMo on another year). This is her fourth attempt at NaNoWriMo, and she's only "won" once. ("Winning," in NaNoWriMo terms, simply means writing 50,000 words by the 30th.) But she still has the experience of going through this, successfully or not. And she knows that what we're basically doing right now is figuring out where the hell our stories are supposed to start.

The thing I'm proud of in myself is this: I've been imagining for weeks that this story was going to start on that damn airplane. But you know what? If, during the editing process, I realize that it makes no sense to start there, I'm ready to jettison the whole scene. Hell, I'll get rid of all 3,000 words if there's a better way to do this. That may not seem like much, but I'm the kind of guy who — especially after he's envisioned something being a certain way for a long time — has a very difficult time adapting to a new reality. At least at this point I'm keeping an open mind to the possibilities of where my story will go.

Well, at midnight tonight, Susannah woke up all cheery. Laura brought her out here, and she gave me a sunny "Good morning!" despite the pitch-black evidence to the contrary outside our window. The break gave me the opportunity to update my word count. Mother and daughter have headed to bed now, and I'm hoping to get in another hour of writing before I call it in myself. I'm hoping to continue to get ahead of the game this weekend; I hear it's very necessary to survive Week Two.

NaNoWriMo, Day 1: Neither Over-Anticipation Nor Abject Fear Can Stanch the River of Words!

Standing in my front driveway last night as I handed out candy to passing princesses, superheroes, and wild animals, I began discussing NaNoWriMo with a neighbor who teaches creative writing at a nearby university. I was genuinely shocked at how excited she was about the whole NaNoWriMo idea, and about my specific novel. She was immediately pushing things off into new directions, finding cultural parallels, and generally making me feel like: Hey, maybe this idea isn't so insane after all.

I floated on the helium of that conversation for the rest of the night — even when I had a panic attack in the dimly lit semi-solitude of my youngest child's room, as I rubbed her back and she fell asleep. While my hand felt the rise and fall of her back steady into its sleeping rhythm, I began obsessing over the (perhaps not-so-)little holes that plague my plot. Like, for instance: I know what my main character doesn't want to do with his life, but what is it that he strives to do in its place? Or is his whole reason for living simply to get away from the family business? There has to be more to it than that.

I looked for escape in the waning minutes leading up to the kickoff, but not even the guilty pleasure of a nip/tuck season premiere was able to keep me from watching the clock. I finished watching at 12:03 a.m. My muse had been freed! But wait — Laura woke up and wanted help sorting through the kid's Halloween loot. Writus interruptus.

Finally, the first sentence was pounded out at 12:43 a.m. By the time I was falling asleep, I had managed 615 words. Not a terrible start, and I knew I was going to have some "bonus time" the next afternoon. It felt a little weird to be writing in my bed, only because I had envisioned the start of this being in our living room, in the giant chair (or the "Thinking Chair," as my Blues Clues-drenched children like to call it), cozied up with a cup of coffee, some "borrowed" Halloween candy, and my newly licensed copy of Scrivener (Thanks, Mom!).

But the Thinking Chair was not where it all started. You see, the night before, I was prepared to go to bed at midnight and get a full six-and-a-half hours sleep — a good night for me! — when I suddenly realized as I brushed my teeth that I had yet to carve one pumpkin. My solemn duty as a father led me to realize that I could not face my girls in the morning without a jack-o-lantern. And so I went to work, and by 1:40 a.m., I was in bed, dozing off, with a large pumpkin carved with a pirate-skull design waiting for Piper and Zuzu's eyes when they sleepily trundled down the hall the next morning.

Perhaps it was an honorable move on my part, but that carving detour really took a lot out of me for the next night, leaving me to retreat to the easy-to-sleep bedroom locale, and probably keeping my word count down at the starting gun. NaNoWriMo guru Chris Baty recommends that you resist the call to sleep and power through until you have typed all you can type. But I decided to take those words to heart the next night.

And as I said, I got the opportunity to make up for some lost ground when I had to sub in for Piper's pickup from school and take her to an appointment. "Stuck" in a waiting area for 45 minutes or so, I was able to pound out 909 more words, putting me in excellent shape to hit Day 1's quota.

Which I did, easily, while settled into the official Thinking Chair. With the assistance of Earl Grey tea, various chocolate bite-sized treats, and the music of Floratone and Katahdin's Edge, I pushed through what feels to me a rather dull set-up to what I hope will be a pretty fascinating story. Or, perhaps I'll write the life out of it and the whole damn thing will be boring! I'm sure I'll worry about that much more in the coming days. Right now I'm happy to be off to such a snappy start.