3,579 down, 46,421 to go

By the end of the day today, I should have 15,000 words of a 50,000 word novel written.

As part of National Novel Writing Month, I am joining thousands of people across the country who are attempting the ridiculous and idiotic task of completing a novel in a month. The idea is just to sit down and write, without thinking, without self-editing - something that is very hard for me to do. You're talking about a person who will take an hour to write a perfect lede before I can complete a freelance assignment. It makes the money per hour ratio very low.

So I am only about 12,000 words behind so far. And I met up with some friends the other night at a local coffee shop for a "write-in" to try and boost my word count. But there was this couple sitting directly behind us, and it was painfully obvious that they were on a first date. A lot of that get-to-know-you type conversation was happening.

But when I heard the guy talking, very loudly, about how much better he was at his job than any of his co-workers, how he has had three wives and 8 kids with 7 different women, and how his doctors tried to persuade him to go on meds for his ADD, we all wanted to turn around and tell her to run, run as fast as she could and never look back.

But what broke the camel's back for me was when I heard the term "beastiality" mentioned. Seriously. I'm not lying. After that, I couldn't concentrate on anything else but their conversation, which was very anti-climactic after that.