Well, after all my angst yesterday over the NaNoWriMo prewriting stuff, I loaded up the rough draft of my novel-writing how-to, and discovered that it was already reformatted to work on two weeks of prep time (instead of the month I thought I’d used), and that all of the assignments were written out, and all but one of the lessons that go with them.
So, it turns out, I’ve got about one hour’s worth of work to do over the next two weeks, to take care of all that stuff I was woeing over yesterday. That doesn’t count my own prewriting, of course, but I can find time for that. It was the technical writing I was worried about. Turns out, that’s done.
So I spent about an hour (off an on) on Facebook yesterday posting that material and chatting with my writing group, and there’s some real excitement to get started. I can’t wait.
In the evening we had the last of our monthly summer picnics for Britton Road. T– was really looking forward to it (as she always does), and with them going out of town it seemed like a really good idea to go along and spend the evening with my family, away from my computer. Of course it didn’t hurt that T– was bringing two gallons of my chili recipe to compete in the chili cookoff, so I knew I’d get a great dinner out of it.
Turned out, I didn’t do so well. Before I’d finished the short walk to bring the crockpot from our car to the picnic tables, I found myself struggling to breathe. I thought, “I’m not that out of shape” before I realized what it really was. Too many people. I ended up spending an hour and a half huddled over my little bowl of chili, trying not make eye contact with anyone but K– or N–, and mostly just focusing on my breathing. It was a real waste of what could have been a fun evening.
I got through it, though, and when we got home there was a whole Thursday night’s worth of comedy to watch, and we watched it all (quite in spite of the late hour). That was fun.
Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.