This snippet is the first 250-ish words of my 2009 NaNo novel.

I opened one eye, only to squint angrily at the clock.  The red digits glowed brightly at me, oblivious to my foul mood—3:08 AM.  Ugh.  “Nicolae,” I said without turning my head, “go home.  It’s an ungodly hour.  I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

Nicolae is the vampire sworn to protect me by an oath to my father—the father I never knew.  He also had the worst habit of popping in unannounced in the middle of the night to check on me.  It woke me up every time, even from a dead sleep, because I could subconsciously feel the change in the room and it set off little alarm bells in my head.  Tonight was especially bad, though, because I had gotten to sleep less than an hour ago.

“Ava,” he gasped, “help.”

I sat straight up, adrenaline surging into my veins.  Nicolae never, ever asked for help.  I’d seen him single-handedly take out an entire coven without requiring any assistance from me.  I scrambled for the switch of my bedside lamp and flicked it on, throwing the room into stark light and deep shadows.

He was crouched at the foot of my bed, his body hunched in on itself.  The left half of his shirt was shredded.  A wound in his side that looked suspiciously like a bullet hole was bleeding steadily.  It was his eyes, however, that put me on edge.  Blood red and practically glowing, those eyes meant trouble.

Snowing in Austin

Originally uploaded by jessie.mihalik

-Jessie

…me!  Just over fifty-one thousand words in thirty days.  NaNoWriMo is complete with hours to spare.  Hours.  Woo hoo!

And now for the editing.  Oh, the editing…

So tonight I finally crossed the halfway mark in NaNoWriMo, right on track for the month.  However, it took a valiant effort today because I was behind.  I didn’t write at all last Thursday because of work, Friday I didn’t quite hit my daily goal, and yesterday I only wrote a few words because I was being lazy.

All of that added up to a goal today of 5510 to stay on track.  Yeah, over five thousand words.  Today.  Holy crap it adds up in a hurry.

I made it.  It took most of the day, but I did it.  I demolished my goal.*  How did I do it?  Blood, sweat, and tears.  Or maybe just diligence.  One of the two, for sure.

Like the Nike ad, the best advice is Just Do It.  I didn’t really want to write five thousand words today.  I’m in the middle of the book.  My characters are dumb.  The plot is going nowhere.  All I’m writing is dialog, which I hate with a fiery passion.

None of that matters.  What matters is that I’m doing it.  I’m writing and I’m forcing myself–for the most part–to stay on track.  I will win this year, if I have to drag my novel, kicking and screaming, across the line.  It may come to that.

*Okay,  I wrote 5614.  Not exactly a huge jump over 5510 but I’ll take what I can get.

Dustin and I dressed up for a NaNoWriMo midnight write-in as “The Doctors Horrible.”  Yes, we both dressed up as Dr. Horrible for Halloween.  I made the coats and we bought the rest at Harbor Freight.  We couldn’t find white rubber boots so we did without.

It turned out pretty good except that the vast majority of people we talked to during the day didn’t get the reference.   “Dr. Who?”  “No, Dr. Horrible.  Yes, it has Doogie Howser in it.  Yes, it’s funny, I promise.”

The write-in was at Dragon’s Lair, a local comic book/game store and I’m happy to report that the people there are much cooler (they recognized us).  These are my people.  :)

A pic:

The Doctors Horrible

You’ll notice that I’m missing the pocket.  I made it, I was just too lazy to sew it on last minute.