So I went to DC, and I wrote.
I began my novel in Peregrine Expresso in Capitol Hill.
The next day, I took a train to Philadelphia, and I wrote.
I went back to DC, and I slacked off for a bit, but then I went to a Write In at Yola in Dupont Circle.
It was my first Write In, and I loved the experience, despite the two girls having a very noisy conversation, oblivious to the fact that everyone, but everyone, around them was studying or reading or trying to write a novel in a month. I met some super friendly people and scribbled for a happy hour or so before meeting a friend to go to see the Capitol Steps.
The next day, I had grand plans to write in the Pain Quotidien on 6th and Penn after church, but NatWest scuppered those plans by blocking my bank card and causing me to spend hours and lots of dollars on the phone to sort it out.
But then, the day after that, I finally, finally made it to Politics and Prose, for an event with Erin Morgenstern (whose successful novel, The Night Circus, started out as a NaNoWriMo novel). It's a wonderful place - with a name like that, how could it not be - and they have a coffee shop downstairs where I sat with another WriMo and scribbled my way to a writer's high.
The next day, I went back to Peregrine Expresso to see my new friend who had offered to marry me and my cute British accent so that I could have a visa. (Note to any immigration people reading: I'm pretty sure he was kidding.) While I was there, I wrote a little more, before heading to the DNC headquarters to do some phone banking. (Because, you know, if there's one thing I love more than phones, it's cold calling complete strangers who probably won't understand my aforementioned accent.)
The day after that (we're on 9th, if anyone is following), I got a few words down in Café Milano in Georgetown before my salmon and fennel dish arrived...
... then I paid a pilgrimage to the soon-to-be defunct (sniff) Barnes and Noble and its Starbucks, where I sat at a high seat by the window...
.,. and then I walked back to the hotel, dropped off the books I had accidentally bought in Lantern Books, and popped into another Write In, this one at Panera Bread at Dupont Circle (you'll note from the fact that the trees in front are not autumn colours that I borrowed this photo from Google Images). I had trouble with the ordering system, but made it downstairs with my orange juice and my cookie eventually. It was distracting down there: there was a Spanish lesson going on right behind me - it was hard not to think, "hey! When I move here, I could do my lessons in Panera Bread!". (Immigration people, if you're still reading, I of course will only do this if I have a visa that allows me to engage in paid employment.)
The people who were writing there were of a talkative disposition, which ordinarily I wouldn't have minded, but I didn't have very long, because owing to the distractions of Georgetown I'd got there later than I'd meant to, and I had to rush off after an hour to go and hear Umberto Eco at the 6th and i Synagogue. I was glad I had some moral support around me though, to ease my distress at having penned the words "she was drowning in his blue eyes".
By 10th, I was hitting my stride, and mourning my imminent departure. After an afternoon at the Newseum and a yummy dinner at America Eats with possibly the most delicious pecan pie I will ever taste, I joined the write in at the now familiar Starbucks on 3rd and Penn. (It's close to We the Pizza and to where the Hawk and Dove - sob - used to be; i.e. it's where I would hang out all the time if I worked on the Hill.) Amazing Starbucks, complete with a real-looking open fire in the very quiet and studious upstairs part.
I was just hitting my stride after a twitter break (ahem) when they kicked us out of there, though. I wrote a little more downstairs and then headed back to my hotel...
where I made up my quota with my newfound determination, or possibly to avoid packing, and thus the thought of leaving.
The next day, I boarded a plane to LA, just like Josh Lyman did all those years ago to go and get Sam. I fell way short of my word quota that day, but I did manage a few pages up in the air.
I had ideas about writing some more after I got to my hotel - if you can call it a hotel - in Pasadena, but I was stressed and tired and tearful (perhaps at the prospect of being so close to Bradley Whitford) and so I never quite made it.
The next day was sightseeing and catching up with Brianna (yay), and the day after that when I'd had plans to go to a write in, then All Saints Church, then the mid-month NaNoWriMo celebrations in LA, instead I made a last minute decision to spend the day with her. Which was lovely, and her church was fab, and we visited a posh hotel beloved of Presidents (with good reason), and ate the first cupcakes I've actually enjoyed in America, but still, it was one of those times I wished I could have cloned myself and been in two places at once.
We rounded the day off with a delicious meal at Russell's - so that's what a hamburger ought to taste like - and then I spent a happy couple of hours in a Barnes and Noble. ("Does Bradley Whitford ever come in here?" "Who?" "He's an actor... Josh Lyman from the West Wing? He lives in Pasadena." "Oh, yes, he's a regular." You are so totally making that up, given that a minute ago you didn't know who he was, but I want to believe you, so I am going to.) Next door was a Starbucks - open till midnight, ah, civilisation, how I've missed you - and I planned to sit and make my quota if it killed me. But the seat by the window that I'd had my eye on got taken before I could get there, and the people who sat themselves next to me were very talkative, and wanted to know all about me. I have a hunch they were famous in some way - one of them was very whacky and wearing a weird hat, and the other told me her sister used to live downstairs from Allison Janney in New York, which is confusing since I thought Allison Janney lived in California, but anyway - but to cut a long story even longer, I got no writing done.
So the next day, I was determined. I wandered round Old Town Pasadena and looked round All Saints Church, then spent a happy rest of the morning in Vroman's, which is an amazing independent bookshop, where I succumbed to a Pasadena tshirt and the novel "Helen of Pasadena" (which actually was not bad, and unexpectedly made me cry. I wonder if Jane Kaczmarek has read it, and if she cried too?). It also has a café, so I sat and wrote there...
... and then, after paying a small visit to the Pasadena Playhouse and sighing over the Artists' Entrance, where, if any of you would like to donate a few hundred dollars or a couple of thousand airmiles I could potentially meet my hero in just a few months' time, I went to Sabor 2 which is where some of the write ins were held. The coffee was not that nice and the people were not that friendly, but it was a cool place.
And then I got on a plane, and then another plane, and I came home to frost on the ground, tenacious jet lag, a trip to the UK, and about 40,000 words still to write. By 19th November, I had a choice: full steam ahead or give up. I wasn't going to be half-hearted about it and get to 25,000 words. I tweeted and asked for advice, and my fellow WriMos were very encouraging, for which I am eternally grateful.
So I wrote in the spare bed at Tim and Jacqui's flat in Stockwell, and then on the train from London to Oxford for the wedding...
... and then I wrote in Giraffe in Victoria after Church...
... and then I wrote in bed, and then I wrote on the Eurostar back to Belgium...
... and then I finally stopped international travelling and wrote some of the rest of my novel on trains between Nivelles and Brussels ...
... but mostly at my desk in those final few days when I had to crank over 20,000 words in not a very long time. I could have sanitised and tidied it for you, but this, minus the tissues which I admit to throwing away, is what my writing table looks like. I am an artist. It's okay to be messy. It's part of the persona.
I know it's not pretty, but it got the job done. So maybe the moral of the story is there is no need to be somewhere interesting and different to do NaNoWriMo. Wait, no, that can't be what I was trying to say...
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