This left me with a few more ideas: something cracktastic about unicorns (because unicorns are awesome), the semisecret idea that’s definitely getting written next year, and what two other Wrimos in my region are doing: adapting Jonathan Coulton songs as novels. Of course I probably wouldn’t be able to do anything with the book afterward, but that’s not why I’m writing it. And yes, this means that technically I am writing fanfiction. For a song. Which is probably really nerdy, especially when you consider that the musician sings about nerdy things.

Anyway, the song is “Dissolve from JoCo’s newest album (which you give a listen, by the way). Now I have to figure out exactly what happens to make everything awful–in other words, a plot.

Fun side note: This story, like the one I wrote on the first, is told in the first person with a male protagonist. Both of these are rare for me, but the decision was such a snap judgment that I rolled with it.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Awhile back a few folks at the NaNo forums (*cough*cosmam*cough*) talked me into doing a 50k day one. I accepted this challenge and took it today. And well… Let this Google doc of my progress tell you how I did (spreadsheet also courtesy of cosmam). Note that I was significantly behind for most of the day but apparently rule at catching up.

I wrote only 3k at the midnight kickoff at my place. The last folks left at 3am, and the party was lots of fun–we had ten people show up! David’s evil scheme to put me behind on 50k day worked, but it didn’t put me down. As soon as everyone left and I cleaned up the stuff that was actual mess I went to my room and started writing and caffeinating. I took a couple of 15-minute power naps throughout the day but otherwise stayed up all night, and I used Dropbox to write nearly 1k on my way to and from tutoring today. This was probably the vital 1k that saved me, as I finished with barely ten minutes to go.

And then I had a celebratory drink; if I hadn’t succeeded it would have remained untouched until December.

Oh, and the best part? I hit THE END on the book too.

#50kkillmenow? #50kkilledit.

But now I sleep since I haven’t done much of that over the last few days. Mmmm, sleep.

There were things I would have liked to finish before the first, like journalling and writing other pep talks, but they’re things I can do later. I don’t have to have my pep talk for the ninth ready right now, though it would certainly be nice. And I don’t have to have my Night of Writing Dangerously donor pep talks ready yet. But the laundry’s done and I have clean clothes and I have food ready beyond the frozen dinners that I’ll probably be eating tomorrow and I have my Adopt a Day pep talk for the day after tomorrow and I’ve paired all the newbies and mentors and I’ve sent a friend something she needed that I had and I’ve done my first @NaNoWordSprints session and I haven’t died. Yet.

And I’m hosting a midnight kickoff party at my place, and ten people have already said they were coming. This includes the friend and me who planned it. Holy wow.

All things considered, I think I’m in pretty good shape. As the sign one of my co-MLs got me yesterday says, “Keep calm and carry on.”

I think I can handle that.

The madness is nigh.

Now to finish things before I sleep.

That is all.

But there are things with definite deadlines, like my pep talk for Adopt a Day on November 2nd and putting prompts into my Twitter client to be sent out for the @nanolanta account and doing laundry. I might not like pants, but it’s cold out now and I think the other MLs at least would notice if I wore the same ones two days in a row. Think I could wear sweats to the kickoffs tomorrow?

Still, two more days until NaNo. Sunday, then Monday, then the madness begins. Let’s do this.

He should be. Now I have almost as many newbies as mentor spots to be filled, and that’s not including the many more newbies I could theoretically take. Matching the newbies and mentors is taking a lot more time than I anticipated, and they’re coming in faster than I can pair them up. Aaaaaaaaah.

And I was hoping to clear the queue by the first kickoff party tomorrow. I’m in the single digits on the newbie front, so this may or may not happen. We’ll see.

But yay, the first kickoff party is tomorrow!

But I made a paper to-do list today in order to make the to do list more manageable. Unfortunately I really did feel overwhelmed today and really did need time off everything to make sure my mental state didn’t get worse. The thing that helps best with keeping me in a good state of mind: writing. So write I did. The good news is that I’m much closer to catching up on all my journaling. Since this is a huge thing on my to-do list before November, this is much better news than it sounds. The not so great news is that more things will be happening this weekend, especially with all those kickoff parties.

I also fixed rice for simple meals over the next couple of days (stir fry, anyone? You have to have cold rice for that), though the real cooking will probably happen on Sunday between two kickoff parties. Time to start planning those things out.

Tomorrow I’m really going to need discipline if I’m going to do all the things or even most of the things. It’s time for me to make a real schedule for the day. But that can wait until morning.

And more things keep coming up. I meant to get some of the writing done this afternoon in between giving NaNo stickers to a student hosting write-ins at my alma mater, but I decided to gatecrash the math department instead. This was fun; I met one of my NaNo newbies (weird coincidence, eh?) and talked to two of my professors. I had both of them in the spring, so they had no idea of my noveling craziness. No, that’s a lie. I had one of them for a fall class sophomore year. Forgot about that. But somehow he didn’t see the noveling crazy, maybe because the class was a bigger one. Some things are best left for after graduation, I guess.

So here’s this year’s Pre-NaNo to-do list.

* write pep talks
-three NOWD donor pep talks (contact donors to see when they’d like the pep talks)
-one Adopt a Day pep talk (by 2 Nov)
-two regional pep talks (by the end of Week One for one, the other is more flexible)

* catch up on journaling to this point
-I have two major events left, but these are major events. We’re talking weekend-long events here. This may take most of my spare time over the week.

* Cook food so I don’t have to cook as much during the first week or two of Nano
-I have four frozen dinners and five packs of ramen for November first and those nights when I really don’t feel like cooking, but I don’t want to eat these the entire month. Even though I’ll be away from my kitchen for about a third of the month (the Overachiever Invasion, Night of Writing Dangerously weekend, and Thanksgiving weekend), I still want to eat reasonably healthily, and cooking in advance and freezing meals is a good way to make sure I do so.

* Acquire the last few needed groceries before starting all this cooking.

* Various ML stuff.

* Three kickoff parties the upcoming weekend. For those in the Atlanta region, there’s one on Saturday evening followed by two on Sunday. See this thread for details and how to RSVP. (It’s so close!)

And then the noveling begins…

And miserable I’m making him, for I just snatched up the main plot, which is making Matt go “Greeeeat”. The two remaining genres are the ones I’ve been rooting for him to write from the beginning (adventure and mystery). I know (or suspect) almost everything else that has been claimed so far, which influenced my decision on what to take. Luckily everything worked out in my favor.

Now to figure out a plot for Matt. Thank Baty my region’s hosting an online plotting party tomorrow, and guess who’s talking about plot? If you guessed the Matt himself you would be correct. Bwahahaha.

But he could get revenge. As you may know the top donor to my Night of Writing Dangerously fundraising page gets to choose the plot of one of my NaNo novels this year. He has suddenly taken a great interest in that. Uh-oh.

If you want to make my co-ML miserable, you have until Sunday at 5pm Eastern time. Tell him Sushi sent you.