Night of Writing Dangerously - Part 2

I am nowhere near finishing my novel. At 38,417 words, I have just finished chapter 14 and I have 32 chapters planned out for this book. It's pretty insane. When I finish NaNoWriMo, I need to keep writing because I'm still going to have at least 10-14 chapters left to write by that point in time.

However, last night's Night of Writing Dangerously definitely helped me knock out some of my word count! I wrote 4,000 words last night. Yay!

There were a group of four of us that carpooled down to the Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco. I didn't dress up in the noir theme that they had going on (and, once I got there, I wished that I had), but Kyleen and her son, Curtis, did. And they looked spectacular.

It took us about 3 hours to get there. Surprisingly, there wasn't as much traffic on the Bay Bridge as we thought that there might be, so we got there early. We didn't get in until, 5pm, however, so we stood around, watching people come up in their amazing costumes and I felt jealous of all of them. The first picture is of our entire group, together, right outside the ballroom. From left to right, it's Terry *(the woman who let me come to this event as her guest), Kyleen, Curtis, and myself.

 

 

When they finally let us in inside the ballroom, we were awestruck. It was absolutely gorgeous. They had table upon table set up for competitions such as word sprints. I knew I wasn't going to win any of them since I'm not that fast of a typer but it was fun to see people so excited.

 

 

 

 So, as you can see in the picture above, there was a Candy Buffet at the table right behind ours. And yes, we munched on candy until we were too sick to want anything else but real food, which wasn't served to us until 7:30. So, after we sat down, we just got to writing. Terry won the first Word Sprint and, with it, won a book but had to wear a flower pot hat until the next word sprint:

I was jealous of her book. I'm definitely going to the book store today in search of it. Then, we also had cards to compete word-wise with other tables:

Mostly, though, we just ignored most of that stuff and write. Chris Baty, founder of the Office of Letters and Light and NaNoWriMo, came up to talk around 8pm. At one point, I went and got my author's photos done and I cannot WAIT to see them when they come out but I fear that might not be for a while. Then, before we left, we had the most amazing (and kind of disgusting) creative doughnuts served to us. Mine was a mixture of Captain Crunch Cereal and what tasted like Krispe Kreme frosting:

 

We called this one the nose bleed:

There were just tons of doughnuts. There was a doughnut that looked like a hamburger with bacon in the center, and doughnuts with cereal and just every other thing you can imagine on top. I was so sick of candy and sweets by the time the doughnuts came that I took about 2 bites out of my doughnut, threw it away, and just went back to writing.

So, as I said, I wrote about 4,000 words. I met Chris Baty, who told me that I could come work for him if I lived close enough. (Which would be awesome! Gotta convince the boyfriend to move us to UC Berkley for grad school now.) And I just, overall, had a good time. We got a bag with the awesome Night of Writing Dangerously logo on it and, inside, lots of cool stuff, including an offer to edit the first 15 pages of my novel for $35, which, unfortunately, I do not have the money for at the moment. On the flip side of things, I think I'm going to try and raise my own $200 next year and not go as a guest. And I'm going to dress up in whatever theme they have. (Hope it's steampunk.) Here's to hoping!

 

Excerpt from Chapter 15:

Naomi scoffed and pushed him, and, as Farren fell backwards, fire unexpectedly spurted from his fingers, lighting the couch closest to him on fire. As the flames began to eat their way through the silk cushions, Micaal yelled at his apprentice for his clumsiness and inability to ever be a proper blacksmith, Raneese began to roar with laugher, and her apprentice, Tren, leaped from where he was sitting on the couch, clutching The Book of the Gods to his chest, and yelling at all of them. In the midst of the craziness, as Micaal began to shake Farren by the shoulders, pointing to the flames, Damian pushed his way through the crowd and put the fire out with a short spurt of water from his hands. The damage had, unfortunately, already spread through half of the couch, eating up most of the beautifully embroidered cushions. Adrianne giggled along with Piper and Raneese as Tren jumped up and down, the book pressed to his chest, shaking a finger at them and cursing them all in the name of the gods. Damian had to jump between Micaal and Farren, who, fire at their fingertips, faced one another in a duel of control. It seemed more like a duel of out-of-control than anything else.