Sigh.
2004-12-04 4:15 p.m.

I got up early to hit the spa. It was gift to myself for only losing part of my mind during the month of November. I was facialized and my muscles were pummelled. At one point the masseuse freaked out at how my foot was twisted.

"Oh my god doesn't that hurt?"
"Does what hurt?"
"Your foot."
"What's wrong, is it twisted?"
"Yeah, your foot is totally retarded."

I didn't even know that my foot was doing anything interesting. My joints just twist and turn any way they want to. Despite being told that my foot was retarded, I still tipped her. Afterwards I came home and slept for two hours. I still feel like I could sleep for another day.

0 People have tried to sell me Viagra
Sneak.
2004-12-03 9:49 p.m.

Loki sneakking up on the table before Thanksgiving dinner was served. Later on he tried to eat the flowers.

2 People have tried to sell me Viagra
Meh.
2004-12-02 9:39 a.m.

I was doing all right for a couple of days but reality had to bitch slap me down again. I have no patience for people anymore. I nearly beat up a family of five because their children were annoying and ill behaved. Really, I�m usually much calmer about these things.

Maybe it�s the whole Christmas thing. I was able to ignore the holiday season for much of November only to have it slapped in my face now. Our company has the Christmas Elves (read building maintenance workers of union 477) decorate our building during Thanksgiving break. This year they are doing a very demure winter nature scene which is so much better than last year�s A Psychedelic Alice in Wonderland Christmas. That was just wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Alice asleep in the big chair looked more like a crime scene. It looked like someone had busted a cap in that poor girl�s ass. But I digress. Every day downtown is bogged with frazzled Christmas shoppers, gaudy decorations and badly recorded Christmas music in the elevators.

Bottom line: Christmas. Meh. It�s a good excuse to drink wine and hang out with friends but I�m going to try not to freak out this year. I�m not going to mail out huge amount of Christmas cards to people who don�t really care about me. I�m not going to freak out about finding the perfect dress (maybe the perfect shoes).

5 People have tried to sell me Viagra
My cableless fortress of slackertude.
2004-12-01 3:27 p.m.

I decided to be an uber slacker today and took the afternoon off work. I woke up stuffed up this morning and feeling really tired. Plus I am experiencing the general depression that I tend to go through when I finish writing a novel. I tried explaining it to one of my friends.

"It's like all my lovers have left me and all my friends are dead."

It's kind of strange having to remind myself that some of the memories I'm experiencing aren't real. I have all these associations with Hawthorne Street that are from my book. I keep looking for people that don't exist. I reach for the phone to call someone that I made up. It's weird. I need to get back to reality.

When I got home there was a Comcast guy on the telephone pole across the street. When I got inside, no cable. I called Comcast and another van came out and they reattached my cable. What was up with that? Someone's going to get their ass chewed out.

2 People have tried to sell me Viagra
Gracias.
2004-11-30 2:24 p.m.

First of all I have to say � Oh my goddess I can�t believe I did it. Again. I�ve done NaNoWriMo four years in a row and I actually finished a novel the last two years. Absolutely amazing. Maybe by this time next year I�ll be pitching Blood for Persephone to publishers and agents.

Some thanks are in order. ~clears throat and puts on tres chic reading glasses~ First I�d like to thank Francesca for karaoke novelling, skanky chinchillas and for teaching me that it is possible to write a half a novel in one week. Thanks to Wisegoddess for the pep talks, sex talks and for being the only person I know to walk around in Winnie the Pooh slippers in a coffee house. Thanks to Josh for writing some hysterically funny stuff in my notebook when you were really wasted. I�ll show it to you someday. Thanks to Loki and Trinity for keeping my legs and shoulders warm during those long writing sessions on the couch. Thanks to my family and friends for letting me delegate the hell out of Thanksgiving so I had extra time to write. You guys rock. Thanks to my writing group for keeping me inspired and for teaching me, to, love, commas. Thanks to all my friends for not getting pissed at me because I haven�t called, answered my phone or checked my e-mail. You�re totally getting cool Christmas gifts this year as soon as I knock over that liquor store. Thanks in advance to my company for letting me print out a bunch of copies of my novel on our laser printer. Together we can deforest Oregon. Thanks to Chris Baty for being insane enough to come up with this concept in the first place. It was cool drinking a beer with you.

Thanks to the people that only exist on paper: Thank you Cassidy for showing me that you can be a cool heroine without beating the crap out of people. Thanks Micah for being such a sexy virtual werewolf boyfriend - all those sleepless nights were worth it. Thanks Ramses for letting me name you after a condom when my brain had given out. You were a cool psychopath. Sorry about the internal burns.

I'll be doing a quick once over of the novel to clean up grammar and typos then it'll be online for your reading pleasure for one week. Stay tuned.

4 People have tried to sell me Viagra
With 10 hours and 58 minutes to spare.
2004-11-30 1:02 p.m.

Dear Novelist,

It is our supreme pleasure to inform you that our internationally renowned team of word-counting robots have completed their judicious assessment of your manuscript, and have passed on this final, binding decision:

Winner.

Wow. You've really done it this time, writer. Where the vast majority of National Novel Writing Month participants abandoned ship at some point in the journey, you bravely persevered, continuing your literary quest in the face of ridiculously long odds.

In one month, you have written more fiction than most people create in a lifetime. You have dared to dream big, to throw long, to say: 'Enough of the self-critical crap, and the hemming and hawing. This time I'm going for it.

And you pulled it off with aplomb. In just four weeks, you built vast worlds and set them in motion. You created characters; quirky, interesting, passionate souls with lives and loves and ambitions as great as yours.

And most admirably, you managed to find time to do it all while juggling the demands of work, school, friends and family. Most people barely have the strength to make it through dinner at the end of a tough day. You dug deep, and found the energy and resolve to make wild, deliciously imperfect art in the midst of a horribly hectic life.

It's an amazing accomplishment, and we're proud of you for seeing it through.

3 People have tried to sell me Viagra

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