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.