Just squeaked in 1,700 words yesterday, which leaves me at 30,720 words for the month. I’m low on energy, even lower on ideas, but still standing.

I see a few obstacles on the horizon that may very well keep me from 50,000. I’ll be away from home at least two days due to Thanksgiving. That’s not very conductive to writing. Also, there is evening ice hockey. I have a game Monday night.

So my game plan is to keep writing as much as possible, as many days as possible and get as close as I can to 50,000 on the last day. Then I’ll try to beg my wife to let me write that day until I reach the goal. We’ll see how it goes, I guess.

Still writing. Still on pace. I wrote 1,800 words yesterday and am at 29,000 for the month. Not sure this thing will be any good, but I know I’m learning a lot. I’m about ready to “level up” I think.

The funny thing is I’ve quit NaNoWriMo at least once every day this month in my mind. Sitting at word zero and looking up at word two thousand can be a scary thing.

Thanks to everybody that has been hanging in there with me and stopping by here every day. I promise things will be better next month. Who knows, I might even catch up on my sleep and my reading next month. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I didn’t blog yesterday, to be honest, because I didn’t really have a lot to say. Don’t have a lot today, either, but I figured I’d post so you didn’t forget about me.

NaNoWriMo is going well. I wrote another 2,000 words yesterday which gives me 27,175 for the month. I don’t know if this is even going to wind up being a good novel, but I’ll worry about that later.

I’ve been tinkering a little bit on blogger, just to see what you can do over there. I had no idea it was so easy to change templates there. Maybe I’ll switch someday. Here’s just a little something I threw together. Thoughts?

If you really want to know what I’m doing you could always follow me on twitter. I added a little link under my “picture’ there in the sidebar.

#nanowrimo moment of truth for me tonight. If I can’t get close to my goal for today, I’m throwing in the towel.

That was a tweet I posted last night through rapidly blinking eyes, just after we got everybody in bed and I settled down at the computer to begin my NaNoWriMo writing for the day, 0 out of 2,000 words written. This wasn’t one of those woe is me posts. I really meant it.

I’m just feeling really exhausted lately. It’s throwing me off a bit. Yes, I quit drinking pop. However, I’m still drinking coffee, so I don’t think it’s a lack of caffeine. Maybe it’s just the 15 days in a row of staying up until midnight. Or maybe it’s the baby waking us at 5:30 AM every morning and the hockey game at 6:30 AM. Whatever it is, I’m running on fumes. Again, that’s just weird because I have conditioned my body to function on very little sleep now that we have kids.

Take the events before I wrote that tweet. Gave the son a bath, played a little wii fit, fought with the daughter over what clothes she would sleep in (she HAS to choose), and then finally I read to my daughter in her bed to get her to sleep. The night’s literary masterpiece was Garfield the Easter Bunny.

I love reading to my daughter, but last night was a struggle. In fact, I fell asleep while reading and wound up dreaming and speaking words that weren’t in the text. I can only imagine what she thought of this, though she must not have noticed because she would have corrected me. Anyhow, once I finished reading, she rolled over and closed her eyes, meaning she was ready to sleep. And I closed my eyes just for a moment, to rest them of course. Eventually, I drug myself out of her bed and trudged to the computer, that word count taunting me.

The only thing keeping me writing right now is my competitive spirit and all of you. I mean I spent the whole of last month talking about NaNoWriMo and getting you all worked up for writing in November. I couldn’t very well give up, not halfway through the month.

I wound up writing 1,700 words somehow. Maybe it was the popsicle power boost. I’d didn’t make it to my daily goal of 2,000, but I got close enough to keep going for another day.

And so it is. I write on. One day at a time. Anticipating the day when I face reality and just give up, but also pushing that fateful day back each time I meet my goal.

I’m drained, to tell you the truth. All my writing is going towards fiction, right now. Sorry bloggy people. So, I’ll do the lazy thing and post a video.

I think I demonstrated last month I’m a huge fan of Super Mario Brothers. Well, a new Mario game is coming out next month for the Wii. Not only that, but it’s old school side-scrolling platformer (like the old ones for the NES and Super Nintendo). Anyhow, here’s some video footage of the game:

This to me is just like hearing a song from when I was a kid. Same exact nostalgic feeling.

Not a lot new here. Writing. Working. Eating. Sleeping (a little). And baby wrangling.

I’m also fighting off a cold, although I’m trying really hard not to admit that to myself. It’s not terrible, just a bit uncomfortable.

With being tired and a little under the weather, I have been fighting the desire to take the easy path and quit NaNoWriMo. I haven’t quit yet, and have in fact been writing 2,000 words a day. Still, it is going to be a long month.

The only other thing I did was shoot some basketball free throws at work for a local charity. People pledged to give a little bit of money for each basket we made. I made 18 out of 25, which isn’t so bad for an aging fart like myself.

Right. Off to write.

If love is a battlefield, what is writing? A pain in the neck? A gift from God? A bologna sandwhich?

I don’t really know. One thing I do know is that writing a novel is very difficult. The good news is the more you do it the easier it gets. As long as you don’t give up. And as long as you don’t mind throwing away, or at least putting aside, the first few 100k words you write.

I also know that I’ve already written more words this month (13,637) than I’ve written in all the other months of this year combined. I got 2,000 or so words written yesterday, which doesn’t catch me up to where I need to be, but does get me on the right track.

As eveybody knows, Sesame Street is 40 years old. Here’s a clip I particularly enjoy. Elmo and Robert DiNero (for real).

What’s that sound? Oh, that’s just the sound of the wheels coming off. Nothing to see here. *hurl*

So, yeah, I did absolutely no writing the past two days. Zero words. That leaves me with 11,634 words written for the month. About 1,702 words behind.

What happened? Well, we drove to Pittsburgh on Saturday morning and returned on Sunday. I was too exhausted to write either night.

Now, I did build in five days of no writing into my play before the month started. So technically, if I average 2,000 words a day for the remaining days, I can still miss three more days and still hit 50,000 words. That said, being this far behind is a scary thing.

Let’s not think about that. Instead, why not check out this amazing animated short: Pigeon Impossible.

As of last night I’m at 9,731 words, less than 300 words off my goal of 10,000 (to average 2,000 words a day). Last night was a struggle for sure. Yes, I wrote 2,000 words, but I nearly fell asleep while writing and was up until midnight.

Right now I wish I really was Mario, because I’d eat a flower or mushroom or leaf and power-up. Unfortunately, I’m not Mario and if I eat at least one of those things I could get arrested.

I will know by the end of the weekend if the wheels have come off or if I pull out a miracle. It really is 50/50 at this point.

Still, I’ve written a lot and I feel good.

I’m sure you are all tired of NaNoWriMo talk. I am too. I’m at 7,802 words as of last night (only 200 off my goal) and I feel like there is a very real chance I won’t survive the month.

So, something different. Did you know Sesame Street is celebrating its 40th birthday? If you go to google.comthey have been displaying Sesame Street themed headings this week. Pretty cool.

Even better, Sesame Street is having a vote on the “Best Sesame Street Ever!” and allowing people to vote on their favorite segments of each decade. Right now it’s The ’80s. Even better is Grover’s intros. I love Grover, even though he was The Monster at the End of This Book.

Be careful though, NaNo’ers. You could waste some good writing time over there.