"Instead she had made a soup of a potato and a wedge of sliced cabbage."
11/08/13 6:39 pm Nano
The uncommitted wrimoer had thought she'd go to the library in the afternoon so that she could do another writing session the way she had done the previous day. Though she had not liked everything about the work the previous day, there had been a satisfaction in being able to sit in a somewhat public space, where she could watch people come and go as she wrote. The machine had been somewhat uncomfortable to work on, but then once she had finished working, she felt good about it. She had not spent an inordinate amount of time on it. She had come close to her quota, though she had not made up the back quantity she needed for being on target.

At home she had found out how to find all the comments she had made on the social media. She gathered those together  - just the ones that seemed interesting - and added them to her writing. Was it cheating? Since her writing project was of such an oddball nature, (or perhaps not), she figured the social media writing was fair game. At one point she had considered somehow converting the writing she did by hand in her journals. That would mean much to much transcription for her though.

There had been a discussion thread with other wrimoers over whether they wrote by hand or by computer. One person said they wrote by hand, but then revealed she just wrote her initial plans by hand. Any writing that was not Nano she did first by hand. With Nano, there just was not enough time to have to transcribe.

Every time the wrimoer sat down to write she would realise she had again forgotten to jot down notes on things she might write about. There she would be left again having to remember off the top of her head anything to write about or just hope an idea would come up.

She was again listening to the radio as she tried to write. Her attention was split between the writing and listening to any stories on the radio. She hoped that she might get ideas from the radio - anything that might trigger her opinions on issues.
Was that cheating?

She had wanted to say for ages how annoying she found the voices on the radio in recent years. The reporters seemed to be younger with what seemed to be false cheerful sounding voices which always rose and fell in predictable tonal patterns. It was getting so that she had to turn off the radio more often because these reporters and announcers were so hard to listen to.

6:59 pm

No, she was not going to try to take a word count yet.

The weather had been too cold and windy to go out to the library. Instead she had made a soup of a potato and a wedge of sliced cabbage. It was cooked in the leftover pickled beets juice from the home canned jar of  pickled beets that her student had brought her. The pickled beets had been delicious and beautiful. Her mouth watered as she wrote and imagined those pickled beets. For the potato cabbage soup she had added some water and a salted seasoning. When this was cooked to tenderness she had put a spicy dijon mustard and several slices of cheddar cheese in her little bowlful of the soup. That too was delicious. The soup was wonderful even without the mustard and cheese. She could barely get it put it away in the fridge because she wanted to keep eating it. There was not much left.

7:07pm

She wondered what else she could write about. Had she said that she had already done her handwritten journal? Just for something to write.

She did not want to write literally about the stories that flowed through the radio. Nothing had provoked her.

She had been sleepy quite a bit that day. Not sleepy for the whole day, but periods when she found herself falling asleep and wishing she could just go lie down to nap. She was rarely willing to do that because she usually had visions that she would sleep too long, perhaps sleep away the day, and find herself waking at dusk. The day would have disappeared.

She was hitting that point of wanting to tally the words to see where she stood with the writing. Had she now decided that this was how she would continue the writing? To just sit down and continue writing about nothing much. But again this evening she had switched to intending not to write. That had meant she would probably give up the writing. She would not want to have to get behind and then decide to try to catch up. There was that part of her that simply wanted to play the game. It was a game as she saw it. If she was not ready to decide, then she had to do it so that she would not be behind if she did decide to continue. There was that silly logic again.

She also thought she was experiencing that weird dizzying effect of looking at the screen too much. At least this screen was smaller and did not have the huge expanse of space that the text had to cross as it was written.

Perhaps she could guess how many words she had done. That might justify having a peak at a word count. If she guestimated by the time she had spent, it was only 920 words.

7:28pm 930 words - wow what a guestimate!

She had looked and now she wondered how she could write anymore for the evening. There seemed to be just too much she had to make up.. What were those ideas and insights she had wanted to write about?

If she gave up now, at least she had gotten some kind of amount written towards the target. She was again falling asleep. She would have to stop. Perhaps she could pick up later in the evening or in the middle of the night.
7:38pm 1021 words

9:16 resume
She had spent quite a bit of time browsing on the social media even though she was still falling asleep, though not as badly when she'd been doing her writing. The Nano thread was now talking about dealing with 'he said, she said' - did one get tired of hearing all that, and what could one do instead. She had chimed in that she thought Agatha Christie hardly used any 'he said, she said'. That had been what struck her most pleasing about Christie's writing, that she had bypassed that kind of quoting almost completely. She let the dialogue run together. It made for a faster pace of dialogue.

And now she was remembering that she had wanted to write about the interview she heard the previous evening - an interview with the writer Stephen King. She was glad to know that he did not plot out his books. The fun for him was in finding out what the story was. That was why he wrote them, to find out what the end was. She always liked hearing that about writers - that they did not know where they were going with their writing.

Now she was hearing someone pounding on a door somewhere, downstairs she thought and very loudly so. It had sounded like a door had been slammed and possibly raised voices. She heard footsteps pounding too, but the footsteps of the woman downstairs always pounded. Yes, she was hearing raised voices. Was this the boyfriend or the son?

The day before the handyman had had to change or fix something in the lock downstairs. She wondered if it was because the neighbor had had the lock changed.
She did not want to have to call the police. But it was sounding like she might have to.

She called the police. In this case there had been nothing she could see because she was in bed, but she could not see anything on the porch anyway - the porch roof covered any view of the porch, with the exception of one corner towards the front.
9:30p - 10:20pm

It had been another one of those almost frantic nerve wracking calls to the police as the dispatcher spent all that time taking down her name and getting a call back number for her, while she tried frantically to describe what might be going, Frantic because she wanted them to get here while something was going on instead of after. After the call, she had heard, now she was quite sure it was indeed the downstairs neighbor, come out the door and call out "J". Later the wrimoer realized the neighbor was saying her boyfriend's name which sounded similar but was not the same as the name she' d thought she heard.

The cops had come. The wrimoer opened the kitchen window to let them know it was she who'd called and that it was the apartment downstairs that the problem was in. But the policeman almost demanded that she come downstairs to talk to them. She did not like his tone. "Can you come downstairs" "I'm not dressed, I'm in bed." "Can I come upstairs to find out what happened. I don't want to talk to you through the window." Same difference - she would have to get dressed and come downstairs to unlock the door. There was something not right about this situation. She had never had to speak with the police when she called them She always stayed out of the picture. She did not want to be involved in the fracas. Did this mean she would not be calling in the future? She was upset.

She pulled on some clothes and went down to talk to the cop. But she was so angry with the situation and so busy telling him this - I don't understand why I have to be involved with this. He said he needed to find out what happened because it was a possible domestic situation. The son showed his face, looked at her and said it was not him. Later she wondered if they had thought he was the culprit and hauled him off, but she had not seen what happened after she went back up. She told the police she did not know what happened. She had heard these tremendous noises and madly tried to call the police. She could not see anything from upstairs. She said again that she did not understand why all of a sudden of all the times she had had to call police about situations with neighbors she had never had to tell the story. The policeman spoke of possibly wanting a statement from her because he needed to find out what happened. She caught sight of his partner.

That was scary too. That fellow looked very unintelligent, lethargic, what she called pluchey. A dead withdrawn face, lacking human connection. She felt almost sorry for the cop who spoke to her that he had this fellow for a partner. The dead beat cop, pulled the storm door open. It was quite cold out. She told him bluntly and coldly to close it. The cop who'd been standing inside had decided he had given up on his argument with her and said to his partner that they were done here.

She did not know what happened after that. She went back up steaming and was still steaming almost an hour later. At least she had managed to get some of the story down. She tried to call one of the other neighbors just to tell that one that she had called the cops. One of the phone numbers was on call forwarding. When she tried the other number, the dispatcher was calling her back to confirm if there was still anything going on.

It had been such a strange experience. Almost most frightening was to see this other person as a policeman. That was of concern. He had struck her as someone who would love to believe he could exert the power of his uniform. She also wondered how he could possibly have graduated from the Police Academy.
10:44pm

She had been just about to tell that she had had to come back to the writing because when she went to enter the evening's entry into her spreadsheet and worked with it more so that she could see at a glance where she was with her quota, she had realized she was now quite far behind in the quota. She had better at least try to make the daily quota for that day. Thus she had just started doing more writing when this incident had occurred. It had at least given her something to write about. She was not sure she had even told it properly. She thought perhaps she should be telling more about arguing with the cop. She had been so stubborn about it. So upset with him. Not at all interested in helping him with his policing problem. But she just had not understood why she needed to be involved in it. She felt it would certainly give her pause before calling again. She had told the cop that. She had asked him - Do you not want me to call when something happens? He said, No they wanted her to call.

10:50 pm 2243 words
Her FB comments
so, i write up to 2k words a day longhand in my personal journal. Love writing by hand. The Nano is madly typed on laptop, a plotless mess of unknown direction, but not a transcription of the journal. Dont know why im doing the nano or whether to continue. One day at a time w it. - it has no real 'novel' vision or concept. The experience of madly typing like that is interesting and enriching for itself, so far...
 at 8:28am

They each make for different kinds of writing don't they? A typewriter gives another tone entirely. I think one's thinking processes may be different in each medium/method. Some writers will only dictate because they feel it needs to be oral - as close to actually speaking to people as possible.

2380 words
Resume 11:16pm
At last she had only 110 words to catch up to where she needed to be. That was such a small amount surely she could do that little bit.

The house was quiet now. The heater had just turned off. It was either hot with the heater on or cold almost as soon as it was off. That was what she hated most about the cold weather. There did not seem to be a way to keep a consistent temperature. She had to wear socks or her feet would freeze in the kitchen, though not necessarily elsewhere. Now she was finding she had to put on the big sweater when the heater went off. When the heater came back on she had to tear off the sweater or risk getting very overheated. It woud be a long winter ahead.
11:21pm 2526 words

At last she was ahead on her word count - by just a few words.