The San Francisco Post

Okay, I’m in San Francisco, yay!

Getting here took a bit longer than I hoped. I drove myself to the Buffalo airport for the first time – had the usual last-minute getting delays and maybe a 25 minute line at US Peace Bridge customs, so I didn’t get to the airport as early as I hoped.

But the plane from Buffalo to Chicago was delayed too. I was worried about missing my connection – the flight from Chicago to San Fran was supposed to leave at 6:15 local time, and the plane from Buffalo touched down around six, then took at least five minutes to taxi in to the gate. Once I got up the jetway to the gate desk there was a nice gentleman who looked up my connecting flight number, and told me my gate number in C concourse, and I was off like a shot, running down those moving sidewalks, down the connecting passageway from B concourse to C concourse, struggling not to yell at people who were just standing in the way. It was around 6:17 when I got to the gate desk in C concourse – was I in time?

Was I ever. The plane to San Francisco wouldn’t be taking off for more than 2 hours. 😦 So I wandered up and down C concourse, got a personal pepperoni deep-dish pizza, (which I wasn’t impressed with; maybe I shouldn’t have picked the vendor with the lowest price,) then went back to the waiting area for my flight and tried to write, only got a few hundred words done before they started boarding.

We landed in San Francisco maybe ten minutes to eleven, pacific time, and after waiting for my carry-on, (which I volunteered to gate-check in Buffalo) at the baggage claim, I made my way over to the BART station in time for the 11:30 train into the city. Coming out of the BART station near my hotel, looking around for the street my hotel was on, a large black guy came up to me, asked me what I was looking for, offered directions, and then asked for some money to get food with. I pulled two dollar bills out of my wallet and he seemed upset that I wasn’t willing to go up to three. His directions included a wrong turn too.

Blogging live from a write-in

The write-in is starting to wrap up at this point, actually – somebody is packing up to go. But it was a great session this afternoon at the Williams Coffee Pub at the Power Center in Burlington.

There were six wrimos in attendance, including me, and all of us reached our write-in goals. I wrote over 3000 words in two hours and a bit, and somebody actually reached 4k. We had a ten-minute word war, and I gave out stickers and prizes from the goody bag, and there was good food and beverages and raffle tickets and many descriptions of crazy, fun plots.

I’m already looking forward to the next write-in, Sunday afternoon.

And my word count is up past 26k, Whoo-hoo!

NaNoWriMo Day 1

It’s started!

I just passed my first 1000 words, (1145) thanks to 2 morning sprints and an afternoon sprint. Soon I’ll be heading down to a write-in at Williams Coffee on the Pier. Whoo-hoo!

It’s so great to be in the crazy excitement of Nano again, and to be doing my best to lead such a great region. Hopefully I can get up to 2778 words for today – that’s my daily quota to reach 50k by November 18th. I’d feel like I was letting myself down if I didn’t ring the bell at the Night of Writing Dangerously in San Francisco again.

How’s November treating you so far?

My Nano ML’s journey has begun, kind of

I went to meet some writer friends and fellow Wrimo-ers at a new coffee shop this evening, scouting it out as a possible Nanowrimo venue. One of the friends is a many-times Hamilton ML, and I’m joining her as Nanowrimo Co-ML for the first time ever. We decided that the place, the Mulberry cafe, would be a pretty good place for a Kick-off party, because we can reserve their gallery room, but maybe not so good for a write-in as the only tables with outlets are also closest to the loud music.

I’m very excited about being a Nanowrimo ML for the first time, but also a bit nervous about the responsibility, and of having to keep up with my friend. I’ve been ML for Script Frenzy before, but that was always fairly small and low-key. I’m going to need to up my game for November. It should be a fun challenge.

I also got two short scenes finished for Block Revision, and Elizabeth Twist got a page and a bit scribbled in with her pen. (My Co-ML brought a netbook, but wasn’t able to get any writing done, blaming the music.)

So it was a great evening.

Falling for Nanowrimo, too literally.

Current word count: 8,006. Yay! At this rate, I’ll be finished too soon, on November 18th.

My main character just made the transition from Science Fiction through to a fantasy framework, after the aliens transferred his brainwaves into their crystal.

Unfortunately, I was a little too wrapped up in the story when I got off the B-line bus on my way to the write-in tonight. There was a loose projection in the sidewalk that I tripped over, and actually had a moment where I thought “I tripped. Can I get my balance back? No, I’m goin’ down. Dammit, I can’t help but land on my bag, I hope I don’t break anything expensive.”

I didn’t break anything at all, as far as I can tell, but I skinned my knee, and also the fabric of the dark blue pants I was wearing. Which suggests that sometime during November I should probably squeeze in a couple hours to go shopping for new clothes.

Have you suffered for Nano over the last few days?