Thoughts on the First Two Days

FIRST DAY THOUGHTS:

It was difficult to get into the swing of the story. I thought I had a good idea and a lovely beginning. Well, my idea is good, still, and I can feel it. But the beginning is… not good.

I think my problem is that I've been thinking about this for far too long. The beginning, the end, the major plot twists are all known; I'm not all that curious to find out what's going to happen.

Then again, I was exhausted last night. Maybe that was a part of my struggle to reach 2K. Clearly, I did so in the end, but I couldn't make myself write any more. Considering I got it done, there's also the possibility that my lack of motivation is just another symptom of the general apathy I am feeling and have been feeling.

Have I started Week Two early?

I wonder if, since this is my SISP, I can get the school to cover my "expenses". Probably not…

I wish I had a laptop so that, when I went o write-ins, I could just type everything instead of having to write it out and type it up later.

The first write-in that I knew about ahead of time is tomorrow. It's from 5-10 at Tealuxe in Providence, which is half an hour from my house. Unfortunately, I need to leave straight from school, so that's an hour of riving because there's no good way to go from Worcester to Providence. Parking will be a costly bitch, but I don't care. It looks like it will be fun.

SECOND DAY THOUGHTS:

This was another day of struggling, unfortunately.

Right after my CS lab, I drove down to Providence. In trying to find Tealuxe, I only got lost once and realized it almost immediately. I got there and managed to find a parking space that was on one of the streets it was on and taught myself how to parallel park.

Inside, I bought an absolutely delicious chai. It was pumpkin and something and something. But that's not the point.

Tealuxe was incredibly crowded and there were six of us (including me). It took a while for there to be enough seats open that were next to each other, but it eventually happened and we all sat down. I met this very cool guy named… Rob, I believe.

Everyone had laptops but me, so that was kind of frustrating. They were all clicking away, and I had to sit there with my pen and notebook and scribble. I didn't get much work done because I was more interested in watching people and listening to conversations (to provide fodder for dialogue in my story, though!) to write a lot.

The RI ML gave me some of last year's swag. Well, she gave everyone who came some of last year's swag if they wanted it. I now have a pen that says "Magical pen of wonder / National Novel Writing Month / 2003", which I used to write the majority of what I got done at Tealuxe.

It was a good motivator, though. I think, had I had a laptop, I would have written a lot more. At least the 2K that was my goal. When I got home, I went downstairs and found one of the ancient laptops Mum got from school and dragged it up here to get it working so that I can bring it to the next write-in. That was incredibly frustrating and took a while, but it works now, so I'm all set.

Once I was home (and I didn't get lost once going home) I finished up the 2K. That took an abominable amount of time, especially considering I only had to write about 600 words. So far, I'm on schedule and building up a bit of leeway so that if I absolutely can not make my goal one night, I won't be totally screwed.

Oh, and I should mention that I finished No Plot? No problem! up to the Week Two part. I plan on reading (like it's suggested in the beginning) each week's chapter the first weekend of that week. There were some good tips and tricks, but most of them didn't apply since I'm already so incredibly unmotivated.

I also started reading Eats, Shoot and Leaves which is turning out to be hilarious and really interesting. Hopefully it will improve my grammar a lot.

That's all for today.

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