NaNoWriMo Day 3 + 4

Yesterday, I attended a local write in for the Birmingham municipality. I was late to the very start of the event since I was having a blast in inflatable jumping pens and slides at my fiance's niece's birthday party. I'm amazingly out of shape but having a chance to play like a child was refreshing. So, by the time I went to the write in, it was well underway. I felt nervous, but noted that the Little Professor Bookshop had a nice indie bookstore feel, and they graciously hosted the write in on their upstairs level.

I'm not quite sure what I expected at a write in though in all honesty. Lots of writers communing and outwardly commiserating on the toils of making a word count? I probably should have thought it through a bit more. I encountered a set of tables on arrival, full of people typing in silence. It was a sea of earplugs and laptops accompanied by a frantic pace of typing. I felt awkwardness on noting that no seats were available when I arrived, so my social anxiety took over and I just sort of stood there paralyzed by my awkwardness. Luckily, my municipal liaison noticed me standing there and brought up some more seats for me and my fiance to sit in. My fiance worked on coding a new video game idea we've been bouncing around between each other for a while until his laptop died at which point he left his seat to go downstairs and wait for me to finish my words by playing Pokemon Y. 

And so I sat upstairs with my AlphaSmart 3000 staring at me in this silence. I then began to write. I wrote for about an hour and a half with a few minor breaks to stare off into space and let my mind meander to the next plot point. The event began to wane down and some of the local writers began to wander off. I took my leave too after feeling drained for the day. I grabbed an issue of Writer's Digest for later processing that I'll probably nibble at throughout the course of the week.

Once I arrived home, I sat down at the computer again with playing WoW as my main intention. However, I kept feeling mentally pestered by my work, and I just had to begin writing again. My fiance prepared me a cup of coffee and I sat there for several hours bouncing between writing and running dungeon raids in WoW. At the end of the day, I found that I'd written a total of 3000 words, an amount I don't think I've ever matched in writing fiction and that I've only matched under the immense pressure of a large research paper put off until the last moment. My total word count was now around 7500. 

I didn't continue to have quite as much steam today while at work. I got in a good number of words and pushed myself to over 9000, though. WHAT? NINE THOUSAND? Yes, I've already surpassed how far I got during that NaNoWriMo so many years ago while I was in high school. I felt exultant, like crying from the joy of my accomplishment. Even if I refuse to write another word about ants, I'll be further into this work than I've ever been into any other before.