The Journey Begins

I’m sitting in the Prague Airport right now, waiting to be allowed wait in line to go through security. Oh, yeah, modern travel. The idea that wireless Internet connectivity is a basic human right, right up there with clean drinking water and oxygen, has been slow to take hold in this country (though some parts of Prague are embracing the idea), but I do have access to electricity, so I feel an obligation of sorts to open up the ol’ blog and type something.

Not that there’s much to say, yet. Metro, bus, terminal, check in, get passport stamped, sit. My layover may yield more stories, depending on the policy of the airport concerning overnight stays in the terminals. It’s a long layover.

Well, the travel part of the day (starting in the evening) hasn’t amassed any significant events, but it was a pretty good day doing some shopping with Delilah. No big deal, but a nice break in the frantic cleaning/packing cycle.

I’m sitting right now at the start of one of those moving walkway conveyor belt things to help folks traverse the long corridors that typify modern airports. This particular moving walkway is not moving, however. I would say that roughly half the people who approach it stop on the threshold, pause, and when the conveyor doesn’t come to life they back up and go around, preferring to walk next to the conveyor at exactly the same speed they would travel had they just kept going. Too much thinking. It’s a malady I know only too well, myself.

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A soulless hotel bar in Dublin. A well-poured pint of Guinness. A lighter wallet. Free WiFi. A really annoying television program on the flat screen. Won’t be getting much done here.

But I am here, and that’s not such a bad thing.

May as well post this, because I can.

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Only I couldn’t. The journey continued in an uneventful fashion, and now I’m in Annapurna’s World Vegetarian CafĂ©. A whim, really; I was heading for Flying star but overshot and the rest is history. I ordered a green chile cheesburger, but they were out of cow. I got the Lebanese Wrap instead, and while it doesn’t have any real Lebanese in it, it is very tasty anyway. The Chinese tea with rose petals is remarkably good as well.

I just got my official NaNoWriMo winner badge. Woo Hoo! I’m still allowed to work on the story for the rest of the day, though. It’s starting to get good.

Late Night, Last Minute Thoughts

I’m tired.

How the hell am I going to be ready to get on a plane tomorrow?

I really should respond to the emails from B, S, Iv, D, J, H, SB, Is, E, L, A, and M.

Maybe I should set an alarm for the morning.

Only 1100 words to go. I could nail that down tonight. Er, this morning.

I’m tired.

Logorrhea Monday

This morning I woke up with a head full of ideas, scenes and interactions, motivations and conflict. I couldn’t wait to get to work. When I woke up this morning, I was a writer.

To be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve felt that way. It’s been a while since I’ve thrown off the heavy blanket and jumped out into my cold apartment because the story beckoned. This morning I was so wrapped up with writing that it wasn’t until later that I thought, ‘wow! I remember this!’

What happened yesterday that would make today so exciting? Ten thousand words. NaNoWriMo is drawing to a close, and I was way behind. It was either punt or prodigy. Sunday evening I clocked four thousand words. Not a bad day’s work. Then there was Monday. I still had momentum coming off Sunday, but it was almost noon when I started. By midnight I had 10,000 new words, plus change. At that rate it would take a week to produce a draft of a typically sized novel. The best part of days like that are that when the paragraphs start piling onto the page one after another, they’re usually pretty good. Today I woke up and all I wanted to do was keep going. Man, that feels good.

I didn’t really get any lift from last year’s NaNoWriMo, and this year I was almost at the end before it happened, but here I am, less than twenty-four hours from a transatlantic flight, I haven’t packed, I haven’t cleaned my place, I haven’t bought locally unique Christmas Crap, and all I want to do is keep writing. Just like old times.

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