(no subject)

17,053 / 50,000 (34.1%)

Today's new words: 2089

Current deficit: 2951

Working Conditions: Longhand phase at Barnes and Noble. Hours-long break for long biking expedition on canal towpath with Dan, and then sabrinamari and vgnwtch's joint birthday party. Late night typing phase in my study. Peristent cat on keyboard. It seems I can have a social life and a 2k/day writing pace, as long as I don't have to put my full weight on my left foot or teach any students.

Notable incidents: An exposition grenade went off, and shards of exposition shrapnel flew all over the scene, bringing all action to a total standstill while the characters bandaged themselves up, mopped the mess off the floor, and picked up tweezers with which to pull the exposition shards out of the furniture.

As Anne Lamott would say, the first draft must be shitty.

Is this a first draft? Yep.

On the Nanowrimo forums, the folks in my region have been really disorganized about arranging write-ins, meet-ups, whatever you call them. I got sick of waiting, and so declared that I'd be at the Barnes and Noble at Brunswick Square Mall on Route 18 in East Brunswick this coming Thursday night, the 17th, from 7:30pm until they close at 11. If anybody shows up, fabulous. If not, that will be okay, too. So maybe I will cause a writing gathering to occur. Anyhow, if you feel so inclined, come over. I'll be the short, bespectacled brunette with the cane.

(no subject)

17,820 / 50,000 (35.6%)

New words: 767

Current deficit: 3851

Working conditions: Composing directly to laptop at Barnes and Noble after late start, followed by composing directly to laptop in living room while languishing in front of The Fellowship of the Ring on DVD for approximtely the 500th time.

Distractions, diversions, digressions: Two hours biking on Delaware & Raritan Canal towpath with Dan in early afternoon--perfectly reasonable. Two hours, averaging 142 bpm. How weird is it that I'm now in the best cardiovascular condition of my life precisely because I can't walk?

Not reasonable: The Client Parent From Hell phoned me at 9:30pm to inform me that I was immediately going to edit his daughter's application essay to a high school she's trying to get into. I actually had to say, out loud, repeatedly, things like, "I am not a concierge service, nor am I a homework plagiarism service. I am a highly specialized consultant, and what you are asking me to do is unethical." After his daughter's efforts to translate between English and Mandarin, the family backpedaled and tried to pass off the original demand as a language barrier problem. Yeah, right. Poor kid. I felt so sorry for her, having been put in the position of having to translate requests she knew to be unreasonable, while she was audibly shaking apart from stress over the phone, I told them to email the essay, and I'd reply with feedback--feedback, not to be confused with corrections, which would be doing her homework for her. I gave a long, not exclusive list of things I would not do because doing them would violate my professional ethics, and then when I said I would bill by the minute in accordance with the hourly rate they pay me for tutoring sessions, they had the gall to ask me how they could trust me not to pad the time I charged them for. "Well," said I, "if I were willing to do unethical things for money, I could have just accepted your father's initial offer, couldn't I have?" We reached a mutually tolerable arrangement, but later they put me in the position of having to say, "In future, please do not call here after 10pm. My husband is asleep by 10pm." And then, "Never, under any circumstances, even if your house is on fire, are you to call here after 11pm."

Between the haggling and the actual labor, I lost most of my second writing shift. If my Thursday client hadn't gone on hiatus for the rest of the month of November, I could have afforded to tell the Client Dad From Hell to take a flying leap. I'm quite sure he will create a moment in which I have to tell him that, and it probably won't be long in coming.

Meanwhile, I have to be up at 6am for blood tests. So very weary of blood tests.

At least I have a writing date with Breva the Axe tomorrow. She's defending her dissertation on 12 December, so she's high-strung and flaky the way grad students are in the endgame, but you can't beat her for motivation. I had hoped to cut into the deficit today, and didn't even make quota. Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow.