It Begins!

Word Count: 2,111

NaNoWriMo began earlier at midnight, and I arrived at my regional NanoWeen write-in with some seven minutes to spare (thanks to Alex for providing terrible directions but at least we got there).

That night I rounded up some 1100 words in the company of a ring of writers who've done this sort of thing for a few years already, and everyone was comfortable tapping/scratching away at their word counts. I've found "Word Wars," aka spontaneous starting pistols of "everyone write as much as you can in 10 minutes" to be really productive. It's strange: I shouldn't have anything invested in a quick turn of competition, nor did I actually want to beat anyone there, but when someone says "quickallthewordsyoucanfitnowgogogo" my mind quits dinkin' around and types.

I am SO grateful to myself for writing 20 Nights In Paris, the rough attempt at Chewing On Eden, in 500-word bursts earlier this year. Using that draft as a stepping stone is preventing me from stalling too hard in the early stage of NaNoWriMo, a sort of on-rails portion before I continue to expand on every little detail. Yeah, dinner in fiction lasts forever when you're choking down a word count. Haha, the best part is that Don only just arrived in Paris in that rough draft before I stopped. The title location wasn't even fleshed out!

That'll do for now. Libraries are awesome for isolated writing. Next Sunday I'll see how well group writing goes.