It's going to be a crazy week, one that illustrates my dual identity as writer and educator. I've been plugging away at my Nano and doing well, until tonight. Yesterday I reached 18500. It's a bit after nine and I just don't want to do it. Maybe it has something to do with going back to school.

School....this week includes calculating grades, preparing for conferences on Thursday while trying to get ready for the NCTE convention in NYC this weekend. I confess that I am cityphobic and the thought of driving in terrifies me, but I don't have too much of a choice. I paid, and that other group paid, good money for me to go. It's bad enough that I can't go on Thursday because I couldn't get the day off and it's conference night. That leaves me with Friday/Saturday/Sunday. The conference does extend till Tuesday, but I knew I'd never be able to get the time off.

And I only have a hotel room for Friday night. So I'll probably crawl home exhausted some time on Saturday afternoon. Unlike writing cons, my first activity starts at 7:00 a.m. and my latest one ends at 7:00 p.m. What's really funny is the best part about NCTE is meeting the authors, who include Holly Black this year. There are quite a few other notables, but most of which don't write genre, except someone I think is called Pierce Ridley or Ridley Peirce...probably wrong on that one.

When will I write? Don't know.

Then I said I would go with friends to a SWFA event in NYC a week from tonight...very exciting, but I will still have to get up at an icky hour to get to school the next morning, the morning my grades are due. EEK. There are not too many things worse than teaching with no sleep. It makes me an especially cranky Evil English teacher.

Mmmm... it's 9:28. I only had five hours sleep last night and I still need to write. Maybe I shouldn't have spent those hours earlier grading papers. Oh well.

Happy writing to my fellow masochistic NaNoWriMos!