Max dated so many boys throughout the course of the book that I had trouble keeping them straight during my constant state of NaNoWriMo exhaustion

Ya know, I thought flipping the calendar into December would mean this whole NaNoWriMo whirlwind would behind me. Or at least that the hard part would be over. Sounds reasonable, right?

In fact, I had this awesome plan that included me spinning through the editing process in four days during my trip to Mexico. But much like my beloved protagonist Maxime, I have a way of ruining even the best laid plans. I’m about a quarter through the editing process: I’ve staged a solid red-pen attack through the first 60 sixty or so pages.

Most of the edits entail switching verbs around, and re-writing numbers to comply with fiction rules rather than the AP Style rules that I’m used to (in newspaper journalism, we write out one through nine and use numerals for 10 on, while in books I guess I’m supposed to spell out anything less than 100 — I’ve found about  25 errrgh, twenty-five instances where I need to change numbers around in the sections I’ve edited so far). Some of them are more embarrassing.

It could be worse. I’m often entertained by the mindless mistakes that made their way into my first draft during half-asleep writing sessions well past midnight over the course of November. IHere are a couple of my favorite gems (Commentary furnished by ExBoyf, who took a crack at editing some of these chapters before I got around to it):

Simple misspellings:

Forgotten words:

Obvious exhaustion leading to a lack of basic knowledge of spacial relations:

This might just be my favorite one...

Here, Max is locked out of the car. She's obviously leaning against the door, not the seat...

Woohoo!

A total lack of creativity:

Seriously, because I'm sunburned, and sun block costs 250 pesos per bottle here....

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an Irish-American couple in a resort town in Mexico must be in want of sunscreen.

Seriously. We lobestered it out today. For once in my life, I’m actually less red than my vacation mate. SMB is all kinds of toasty red, whereas I was actually able to stay on the beach for an extra hour or two tonight to edit and research literary agents for my NaNoWriMo creation.

We’ve been in Riviera Maya since about noon on Monday, and I have loved every second of it. Monday was sort of a wash, since we woke up at 3:30 a.m. to get to the airport on time. Once we got here, we walked around a bit and got the lay of the resort — it’s huge. Sprawling even, and I’m eternally impressed by all it has to offer — before grabbing a bite to eat and going to bed. I slept from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. without a single interruption. It was heaven. I even mentioned to SMB today that my eyes seem bluer than they have been in a few months, due to all the rest.

On Tuesday, we went to Tulum, which is an old Mayan kingdom. So. Cool.

After we saw the ruins there, we headed over to Xel Ha, which is this natural lazy river. We snorkeled (my first time ever — I found a fish that looked just like Dori from Finding Nemo), rode  zip line, checked out the beach, tubed down the lazy river, got stung by fire ants, and enjoyed the open bar. Yes. Open bar. I’ve been enjoying several of those over the past few days. Our resort is all-inclusive (God bless you, Mexico), and I’ve discovered some personal favorites among the half-dozen bars on the grounds, including the swim-up bar and the one we literally hung out at today, where the seats are swings.

Today we lounged about a bit. And by lounged about, I mean I worked on some post-NaNoWriMo book editing and agent scouting as I previously said. I also edited chapters one through three. SMB read like an entire book — it still mystifies me that he’s able to read that quickly. In fact, he’s read about 50 pages since I started this blog post. I totally thought I’d be done before him, but he just beat me… We also kayaked a little around the ocean here. I still can’t get over how blue it is.

Tomorrow I’m going to do a scuba diving demo, because SMB wants me to get certified so I can scuba with him. We’ll see if I have a panic attack underwater. If I don’t, it should be a go. Also, there’s bocce here, so we’re gonna roll for a bit tomorrow. (Shout out to my bocce team! What What!) I hope we also have time for beach volleyball, but I think that will depend on how our skin’s feeling. Of course, there’s a canopy at the swim-up bar…

Last night I wrote about how scared to death I was about the idea that maybe — even after everything I’ve done this month — I might not hit the 50,000 word mark by November 30, like I’m supposed to.

Then I woke up this morning, earlier than I had originally planned and looked at my calendar. November 29 meant I had two days left to crank out the 4,000-plus words I needed to type to finish this thing. But it’s also sort of a holiday for me. Today’s my Dad’s birthday.

I don’t say much about my Dad on this blog, especially when you factor in how much I say about my mother. I guess I take him for granted a bit, the way all kids take their parents for granted when they’re around. But my Dad is one in a million.

When I was 8 years old, I told my father I would be the first female president of the United States. He didn’t laugh. He told me to go ahead and make it happen. When I was 10, I told him I wanted to be a writer. He didn’t tell me that making a living as a writer is near impossible; he told me to make that happen too. When I was 13, I told him I was writing a book. He challenged me to get it done without letting my grades suffer. When I was 17, I wrote my fifth book. He bragged to his friends.

Then, when I was 22, I found myself jobless, in need of a place to stay for a summer after my internship at a magazine failed to turn into a permanent job. He didn’t tell me “I told you so.” He started calling me “roomie.”

That’s the thing about my Dad. No success is too big for him, and no failure is really a failure. He promised me once that he would always be there for me when I fall on my face, regardless of how old I am when I take the topple or how muddy I get at the bottom. When I first moved to Connecticut and tried to make a living wage out of a meager salary, he pumped $30 or $50 or sometimes $100 into my bank account almost every month when I’d call him to tell him my bank account was empty, as was my refrigerator and my gas tank.

All I had to promise him in return was that when I finally sold my first book someday, I cut my first check for a ski condo for him to spend his golden years by the slopes. I’d give anything to be able to earn a fortune and turn it over to him someday.

Will I? Who knows. Maybe I’ll never get the chance, but when I woke up this morning, I thought to myself, “You know what, Margaret? You can make a down payment on that today.”

So happy birthday Dad. I finished this book for you.

I have two days left. Two. Days.

That’s how I’d say it. My main character, Maxime, would probably add in an expletive or two, because she tends to curse like a sailor when she’s stressed out. And I’m gonna go ahead and drop a secret on you: I’m stressed out.

I have to write approximately 5,000 words in the next two days. I know. I know. I’ve done that in one day before, but that was a fluke. A total freak accident. And I don’t have the luxury of time to bank on another freak accident coming my way. So I’m just going to sit here and sulk and think about all the ways NaNoWriMo has ruined my life in the past 28 days: Like the fact that I haven’t really seen my friends; The way the bags under my eyes have swelled to new dimensions that can barely be disguised by concealer; Or the three-to-five pounds I’ve packed on by spending an additional two or so hours on my tush every night.

I think it’s the last one that bothers me the most, since I’m six days away from a vacation to Mexico, where I’ll spend most of my week in a swimsuit. Curse you NaNoWriMo. 

Don’t ask me how I did it, because I won’t be able to explain today’s sudden, unprecedented burst of productivity. Especially when you factor in the fact that I went into work early today and cranked out three full stories during my shift. I should have been a total puddle on the writing front tonight. But somehow I made it through with more than 5,000 words in one day — finally breaking the 40,000 word barrier.

Yeah. I’m surprised too.

I got home from work a little before 7 o’clock, at which point SMB came over to drop off my cheesecake pan (I’d left it at his place after my last baking endeavor, but needed it back to make a raspberry white-chocolate cheesecake to bring to his extended family’s tomorrow night for dessert). We grabbed a quick dinner and he left me alone for the night so I could bake to my heart’s content.

After that, I even squeezed in a Syracuse basketball game. #WeWon

And somehow, amid all of these potential distractors, I one-upped my previous best day by almost 2,000 words and got myself back ahead of the progress bar. It’s the kind of productivity that can only be rewarded by one thing. An excerpt.

Here’s a little snippet from Maxime’s first (and last) date with a grad student named Todd, during which she locked her keys in her car:

There are two ways to deal with something like this.

The first is that you call AAA and have them haul their asses to wherever the hell you are, and pronto, before you turn into an iced caramel macchiato. But that wasn’t exactly an option for me.

I’d let my AAA membership run out about a month ago, simply because I hadn’t been able to scrounge up the fifty dollars required to keep me up to date.

Then there’s the second option, which entails calling whatever local tow truck company you can get a hold of and coughing up eighty dollars for them to take approximately four minutes to jam some sort of lever into your car, leaving a scratch and a dent that will remain long after your pride has healed over again.

But I didn’t have eighty bucks. All I had was a gas tank in desperate need of some low-grade fuel and thirty bucks to feed the car, my cat and me until payday on Friday.

I was, as they say on the farm, up shit crick without a paddle.

Forget the paddle. You don’t even have a damn canoe that floats you fucking idiot.

“Well, you have AAA, right?” Todd asked.

I hate him. 

“Of course I do,” I said, pulling my wristlet out of my purse again, and flipping through its various contents until I found my AAA card. I didn’t know what to do, so I just pretended I was totally fine. This wasn’t a huge deal, and I definitely had a plan that would work out — no skin off my back.

I called the number on my AAA card, which bounced me to an operator in Upstate New York, where my account was originally registered to. After a couple minutes on the phone with an operator, they transferred me down to a Connecticut operator who said she couldn’t find my name on file.

“That’s weird,” I said, shrugging my shoulders in exaggeration to Todd who was leaning against my car, watching the entire conversation unfold. “Let me read my number again.”

She still couldn’t find it, she told me.

“Maybe it’s because the account’s with a different region?” Todd offered.

“Maybe it’s because the account’s with a different region,” I told the operator.

Perhaps, she told me, but there was nothing she could do for me until she got it figured out.

“Well what do I need to do to figure it out?” I asked as a shiver rolled through my body. “Should I just call upstate again?”

“Are you with anyone else?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I told her. “I’m here with a …. A friend.”

Todd looked at me with a quizzical smile.

“I wasn’t about to say I just embarrassed myself on a first date,” I told him, slapping my hand over the phone receiver.

“Do they have AAA?” she asked.

He heard her, and nodded.

“Uh, yeah. Hold on just a second,” I said, handing Todd the phone.

He grabbed his wallet out of his fleece pocket and began reading his account number to the operator. There was no need for him to repeat it. Unlike mine, his was legit. Someone would be there within thirty minutes she told him.

Todd hung up the phone and leaned back against the car. I was staring at the ground in an effort to avoid humiliating myself any more than I already had, and only saw the tips of his feet.

“It’s kind of cold out here,” he said. “Do you wanna go wait in my car?”

I smiled sheepishly and tipped my head back upright.

“You don’t have to wait with me if you don’t want to,” I told him.

“You kidding me?” he asked. “You want me to leave you alone in a dark parking lot, in the snow so some pot-bellied dude can come over here and break into your car for you? I don’t think so. Come on. I’m parked over here.”

He clicked a button on his keychain as we walked over to his Honda to unlock the doors for us.

I’ve got to get me one of those keychains. That way I wouldn’t have to lock the doors from the inside and I’d never lock my keys in my car again.

Not that I lock my keys in my car often; before that night it had only happened one other time. Of course, my car had been running that time and when Cynthia called the police to ask if they could help us, the dispatcher sent a ladder engine from the Syracuse Fire Department. I thought it was the most embarrassing moment of my life, until I topped it in a snowy Starbucks parking lot with a balding grad student I didn’t care to spend more time with.