Batting .400

So, another November has come and gone with YT falling short of the mark. Trouble is, Sebastian Lock and Liz Macaulay started sniffing around the problem of cars stalling in the rush hour, always in the middle of the block, but they never took off. Couldn't figure out how to get them on the trail, and they didn't hit it off into some kind of recognizable partner relationship.

So, your Bricoleur has gone two wins in five tries. Perhaps having an artery opened in real life, twice in the two months preceding NaNoWriMo, trumps the old epigram:

Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.

Just as with his teleporting drunkards in Year Two, or the dot-commers on the make in Year Four, your humble author thinks there's a good plot to be fleshed out into a real book with Twenty Three Slow. Trouble is, doing so requires inspiration and real work. YT is obliged to point out that the current best-selling Sara Gruen novel, Water For Elephants, started life as a NaNo novel. No doubt Ms. Gruen would say that a) the first draft, done during NaNo, was something she had to write, and b) not anywhere near the level of construction and polish of the published version.

This has been YT's lucky year. No, really, heart attack and all, this year has stood head and shoulders above the run of mostly mediocre years stretching back to when YT didn't even think of himself as middle-aged. So, not winning the lottery, and relaxing into NaNo instead of charging full speed ahead, those aren't such bad things.

Resolution for 2009: remember the First Rule, write something every day. YT could have hit the goal, even with achingly pedestrian prose, had he followed this simple rule. Ah, well, onward.

Word count after 30 days: 26,811