Day 18: Disaster!!

Wordcount: 30182
Minimum: 31032

I'm not done writing for the day, but I wanted to give an update.

The last few days (days 14, 15, and 16) I have been on track with writing but have not been able to update this blog. In particular, day 15 I spent on planes and in airports, traveling back to Boston from Berkeley. Day 16 I spent kicking around in Boston and then driving to western MA to pick up my cat from my in-laws. (I got to walk down the Infinite Corridor at MIT--I was there once before in a text adventure!) So far, so good--plenty of time in transit means plenty of time to write!

Then, on Day 17, disaster struck! My computer hadn't charged up completely the night before, I think due to a problem with the electrical outlet, so I was only able to write about 600 words in the car. No big deal, I thought, I'll just write the rest when we get home. But then when I got home, I quickly realized that I had somehow failed to pack up my computer charger! Oh no! How am I supposed to work on my novel with no battery in my laptop? There was just enough juice left for me to send the file to myself on Gmail, but that was all. This made Day 17 my first day of sub-par wordcount. Total bummer.

But, it's not the end of the world. Darling Man got his cranky desktop computer working for me to use, and it turns out I can also get online at the library. Since the file is just in rtf format, and I've sent it to myself through gmail, I can easily just open it up on any computer using Google Docs. Consider this my plug for Google Docs--it saved my NaNo and my neck!

(On the downside, I'm finding Google Docs gets pretty bogged down with the large size of my file. Apparently 30,000 words is kind of a lot! I ended up starting a new document for the day's writing.)