Last Monday Lillian and I spent a couple hours at the Santa Rosa Central Library, plugging away on our word count for National Novel Writing Month. There were about a dozen people there, all ages and both genders represented. Most, but not all, wrimo-ers were using laptops. I admit it looks tempting, but my old laptop is too heavy to lug around. Maybe when I treat myself to a new netbook in early 2010 I will become one of the cool kids, but not now. And, to be honest, I like the physical sensation of a pen skating over paper. Yes, thank you, I do know I’m weird.
The library has a librarian who is a champion of Wrimo, and they let her start her regular shift three hours later than usual on Mondays, so she can be a resource to the writers—and resource she is! She comes in with her laptop, a stack of encyclopedias, dictionaries, history books and a thesaurus or two. She will guide you toward anything you might need for your work that night—a word for dark purple, a good book to read on California in the 1940’s, a reference for time-travel theory. She also brings coffee and tea.
I’ve said before that there’s something about the concentrated energy of the write-ins, especially in the library rotunda, that helps me focus and makes me productive. I can’t do it today, but I hope to get in at least one more Monday write-in at the library, as well as two or informal ones other places.