50,210!

that's it then. i finished. i won. i'm done. i wrote the last words this morning, after an almost completely sleepless night. i don't know why i couldn't sleep. yes i was thinking about the end of this thing and wondering what i will do to fill the time now that it's over. probably what i will do with the time is sleep, because i've been getting up between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning to write every weekday this month. tomorrow - wow! - i can sleep until 6:30!

yeah. now what?

i'm pleased that i was able to bring the story to a questionably logical conclusion. and of course i left it open for the possibility of a sequel. i actually have plenty of time to write more before the deadline of midnight of november 30. i have three days. there are doubtlessly gaping holes here and there. there was that instance about halfway through when i felt stuck and decided to leap my story forward in time and basically start anew; that could use a smattering of revision. but i'm not proud; i don't feel the need to fix everything or write thousands more words just because i have three more days. i could; don't get me wrong. oh, i could. but i made it to the goal of 50,000 words, the story is complete enough for its purposes, and i am done.

maybe later i'll revise it some. i'm not saying no. but i think at the moment i'm needing a break from it.

anyone wanna read the thing? shout out and we'll talk about it. note, of course, that it isn't pretty. far from it. also note, again, that i'm not proud.

45,298

it looks like a thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, doesn't it? well, it was fine. mine was the blue plate. i just plonked the hen on top of my side dishes.

yes, we had a good day yesterday. we ate from our overflowing plates of food. such absurd bounty. we listened to arlo. we had a fire going in the stove and we sat in front of it and played a spot of monopoly. oh, but kara smoked me good. just like jennifer used to when we were kids. my strategy was to buy every property i landed on, to the point of mortgaging properties to buy new ones. i did acquire some worthy chunks of the real estate but i never quite made it out of the hole i'd dug for myself. alas.

today i wrote 3,488 words (kara was at work.) it's some of the worst writing i've ever done and i was giggling as i wrote it. dreadful stuff. it's fun, though. and i'm thinking it's about time to try and wind things up, storywise. at this point i sort of have a nonspecific plan. so it should be fine. i'll probably finish on monday or so. that leaves me with three days to spare.

39,596

weird dream this morning. it had been a while since i'd had such a doozy. i was in a bus depot or a train station, sitting on a bench. on the bench opposite were two people with a horrific disease. their skin was disappearing. it was so thin as to be transparent. some of their bones and viscera were transparent as well. the process was uneven over their bodies but i could plainly see their internal organs, their pulsing blood vessels, their ribs, their skulls, the matter of their brains. apparently the condition was extremely painful to boot, as they both seemed to be writhing and convulsing with agony, a bit like the demons in this movie. perhaps their virtual skinlessness allowed entry of passing contaminants in the air. (they didn't look like the woman to the left there; i don't know why i added that image.) the knowledge came to me that i too might have this disease, whatever it was. evidently, laboratory tests were pending. i was gripped with the terrible fear that i had contracted this horrific ailment and that my days were numbered. symptoms would be manifesting imminently.

then the dream turned to jack bauer of "24"; he was working in the depot, unpacking magazines from those plastic double-hinged bins (his were orange) and stacking them on the racks at the newsstand. he had been fired again from the counter-terrorism unit in los angeles. it was very sad for me to see him so reduced (i used to have the job he had in this dream, though not at a bus depot), but he did not appear dejected. au contraire. he was enthusiastic about his chances for getting back to his (sometimes) government- sanctioned cruel interrogation techniqes and daredevil rescues made famous by that hailed television program.

anyway. then i woke up. and did a bit of writing. the writing is going all right. just over 10,000 words to go. i'm in pretty good shape. although i sometimes think i'm taking the whole thing a bit too seriously. there is a local message board on the nanowrimo site talking about how to elevate word counts by never using contractions, by elaborate and unnecessarily descriptive passages, by use of the passive voice, etc. i confess i have disdain for these tricks. i am actually trying to write a decent story. i know it's not really a decent story, my story, so perhaps i'm simply foolish, but i like to think it has the potential to be a decent story, some day.

and tomorrow's thanksgiving. how about that? i have a three-day weekend: tomorrow, friday, and saturday. yay. tomorrow it's just me and kara. we'll make a fire in our little wood stove thing. we're eating hens, stuffing, potatoes, and brussel(s) sprouts. we have a couple of bottles of wine. we have apple pie and vanilla ice cream. we'll eat. we'll listen to arlo guthrie's "alice's restaurant" while we do so, and we'll surely sing along with the four-part harmony. we might watch a movie or two. (i'll do some writing in the morning.)

and it's 43 years today since jfk was killed. incidentally. and robert altman died the day before yesterday. those items are probably not actually related. but i'm not particularly happy about either.

32,985

i did some okay writing today, if i do say so myself: 3,975 words. whew. i'm glad to be through the 20,000s, which reportedly can be a barren stretch of pain. i've had the day to write, as kara is at work, and i guess i made the most of it. good boy me. i'm done writing for today, though. i'm tired. i'll be back at it tomorrow before work, though.

this here's frank o'hara, one of my favorite poets. i didn't know frank was going to be in my story, but there he is. today he's watching over me. i referenced two of his poems in my novel today, two of my favorites, "steps" and "poem"; he surely was one for the titles, wasn't he? i like his work.

i went back to see doctor dan yesterday. unfortunately, my fats are still wonky. they're a hair better than they were, after the fish oil and an alteration of diet, but they're still wonky. i'm becoming something of a dab hand at the old phlebotomy, at least the receiving end of same. the blood nipped from my vein yesterday will be checked for iron, copper, and hepatitis. if nothing definitive is found, doctor dan threatens an ultrasound.

i'm not sure how i feel about that. part of me thinks: ooh, fun, an ultrasound! another experience, right? a bigger part of me doesn't at all want to be someone who needs an ultrasound, of course. oh well. we'll see what happens. nothing's scheduled yet. i see doctor dan again in the middle of next month.

oh, and for the past month or so i've been having migraines, so he gave me some drug samplers: zomig and relpax. i haven't tried them yet. he advised taking them at the first signs of a headache, and by the time he gave them to me i already had a headache. i took some ibuprofen this morning and now i feel all right.

is it time for my generation to start falling apart? my friend christa recently had what could be a tia and a colleague of my wife's, who is younger even than i, was just diagnosed with colon cancer. christa, for one, seems to be okay, though it's still not sure what's happening there. maybe it's my turn?

frank o'hara died at age 40 after being hit by, of all things, a beach buggy.

in other, perhaps more hopeful, news, we bought a door yesterday. we don't have the door yet but we don't have the money any more either. someone will come by the monday after thanksgiving and perform what the salesman guy called a "critical measurement." in something like eight weeks, then, a door will arrive along with people to put it in place. i look forward to that day. it will be in early 2007.

25,440

i made it to the halfway point this morning. crossed that line. sheesh. i'm still not off track. i'm enjoying writing this section much, much, much more than i enjoyed the entire second week of writing. perhaps future readers will let me know if one section is preferred to the other. if you want to see a snippet of the thing, the work in progress, such as it is, look no further than ... here. it's from what i wrote yesterday, from part 2.

i totally forgot to write about jury duty last week! well there actually isn't anything to say. it was a bust. my group didn't even get called to the courthouse the entire week. i had to work my regular job the whole time. i'm a little down about that, but it's not such a big deal. i don't know what i missed. and i got my check today from pierce county, compensation for my efforts: $30 for 3 days of showing up. i'll cash it this weekend.

friday kara is off because she works the weekend. i have a doctor's appointment in the morning and a door salesman is visiting our home in the afternoon. with all of this rain this past week our front door is swollen again. it's extremely annoying to have to tug the door open and shove it closed with such force. oh i want a new door! i think we'll go aluminum even though kara's skin is already crawling at the thought. (she loves wood.)

because kara is working the weekend i'll have all day saturday to write. the hope is to have another little explosion of words over those two days, friday (the doctor's appointment isn't until 10:45) and saturday, to give me some leverage for the rest of the week.

and good god, thanksgiving is a week from tomorrow! that's crazy talk. though the three-day weekend will be good for my writing!

23,674

wow, i haven't blogged in a week, or 9,899 words. very sorry about that, though there's perhaps been less even than usual to say. i've been writing, if you can call it that. the story has been stagnating in a terrible sort of way. it took all the fortitude i had this morning to not type "and then he woke up," rendering the prior 60 pages all a dream, and essentially starting the damn thing over.

i did the next worst thing and started a new chapter set a year later than the nonsense that preceded it. it's still an abandonment, but perhaps it will seen artistic in the long run, and not the cop out that it is.

wow - i only wrote 9,899 words in week 2, as opposed to 13,775 words in week 1. that's truly terrible. i've not been keeping up with my daily quotas but trying to play catchup on weekends. this is no way to do this thing. i'm not technically behind, i suppose, because of my initial explosion, but i'm on the verge.

anyway. any news? it's been a stormy week, rainy and windy, and max has relieved himself indoors several times because he doesn't trust me enough to go outside when i'm holding the door open for him.

i have a new writing goal for 2007, involving creating a short story a month. of course i had the same plan more or less for 2006 and that fizzled early, mostly because i decided to rework the thing i wrote during the 2005 nanowrimo. that project fizzled too. oh pathos. i will be better in ought-seven.

how are y'all?

13,775

argh. it seems one day i write well and the next day i struggle. tomorrow, then, i should have a good writing day. this morning i have just been slogging, and writing stuff i would never keep if i weren't pushing for a word count. but i guess that's the point of this exercise.

the courts don't want me today. i'm a little bit hurt. i'll be transcribing instead. oh well. i rather hope they want me tomorrow. just because. my opportunities to get on a jury are dwindling.

kara and i watched a documentary called sir! no sir! yesterday evening and it was riveting. it's about the soldiers in the vietnam era who were against the war. excellent film. it made us good and angry. i think it's important and highly relevant. everyone should see it.

kara and i put our ballots in our mailbox yesterday morning, along with disk 5 of season 4 of "24." voting is important. now, yes, the weather in this part of the country yesterday was torrential, relatively. heavy rain and heavy wind all day. max was afraid to go outside and he peed three times inside, right by the fridge, and pooed once. inside. but that's not what i'm talking about.

the postal carrier picked up kara's ballot and the dvd but left my ballot in the box. it was there under the mail dropped off for us. i was mad, kara was mad. carelessness on the part of the postal service. perhaps the weather could be blamed?

oh. i have to get to work.

9,998

i'm two words shy of ten thousand! i'll reach the 1/5 mark today; of that i have little doubt. i'll write for about two hours and then i'll go to work.

it feels like so long since i've done my job, because of this jury duty business, but it's only been a week. i hope i remember how to do it.

oh, and here's a picture of the gun lynne almost shot willem with on page 4. (ancient history; i'm on page 27 now.) it's a 9-mm makarov. pretty, huh? we'll see that gun later on, one way or another.

i'm a bit ahead of the game, word-wise. i'm doing fine. still, i'm feeling under the gun (if you will; i wouldn't) to get my daily quota in. story-wise, i'm not vouching for it.

i did learn yesterday that in march there'll apparently be a whirlwind month-long editing session for the tripe i'm writing now; that might be worth looking into. for right now, though, i gotta get crackin'.

5,106

boom! the starter pistol rang out at 12 a.m. on the first. i actually slept through the shot but was up and writing about four and a half hours later. writing writing!

i went to the courthouse for 9:30 a.m. and got my name called for a superior court case. whee! however, the defendant evidently got cold feet and pled guilty before i could even step into the courtroom. alas. maybe next time?

i got home early and wrote some more before kara came home and we drove up to seattle to see stephen king be hilariously longwinded on stage.

i tend not to like his books all that much but he was a good one to see as nanowrimo began, simply because his output is massive. hence, inspiring. he did look a little shrunken, after his 1999 pedestrian-versus-automobile incident and a recent bout with pneumonia involving a collapsed lung not unrelated to the aforementioned accident.

he's still vital though, and folksy. he was certainly fun to see. he likes to tell stories, and he did go on and on, but it was enjoyable. apparently he doesn't make appearances like this so often.

we made it home and now we don't have plans to return to seattle again until january, when my sister and edwidge danticat come to town. a bit of a break until then, and i welcome it.

so! words! i broke the 5,100-word mark today and i feel all right about that. i'm actually a little bit ahead of the game, wordwise. the story?

oh who knows? there was an accident on the docks; a man was killed quite thoroughly. meanwhile the main characters, a couple named willem and lynne, are pregnant, and she's having violent nightmares. where will it go from here? where could it possibly go?