4597 (almost 10% done!)

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My fingers stopped typing. “Damn,” I thought. “This novel is just not getting anywhere. My pacing is just too slow and all I can think about is word count. I was hoping that forcing myself to be creative might spark some burst of brilliance, but this is definitely not it.”

Just then, the phone rang. I answered it on the first ring with a curt, “Hello?”

“Madeline?”

“Yeah, this is her,” I said, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. “Who is this?”

“It’s your creative energy calling. You just need to forget about the word count and focus on writing the kind of story that you are good at.”

“What, I should be writing a Remember WENN fanfiction? I won an award for one of those!”

“Uh, no. I think NaNoWriMo strictly forbids the writing of novel length fanfiction. Plus you don’t want to be one of those lame Star Trek people,” her creative energy said. “And who would the audience be for a Remember WENN novel? I mean, there isn’t that many fans left. The show ended back in 1998.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Plus I’d rather come up with my own characters and whatnot. It’s just that I need to get my heroine into Baltimore and away from the dullness that is Wisconsin.”

Her creative energy laughed. “So do it! It’s your story, you can do whatever you want to.”

I thought about that for a second. My creative energy was right. It was my story. I could do whatever I wanted to with, including speeding up the story. So I did.

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After deciding to take the job with the Baltimore Free Library, the next month of Madeline’s life went by very fast. She gave notice at her job, but managed to continue working full-time. The commute was not so fun, but Madeline appreciated that her boss was willing to work with her. The trip to Baltimore was uneventful, but she did manage to find an apartment to move into in the same apartment complex that Kelly lived in.

The trip from Wisconsin to Baltimore ran fairly smoothly, although there was a bit of a panic on Friday morning about making it to the apartment complex before it closed at five o’clock. Madeline needed to get the keys so she could move in before five, or else she was toast. Despite the hilly highways on West Virginia and western Maryland, the U-Haul trailer filled to the gills with her stuff managed to make the trip into Baltimore in record time. Madeline received the keys to her new apartment and moved in all of her stuff in an hour and a half – a record for her family.

Madeline’s parents convinced her that it would be best if she started working right away. “Seriously Maddie,” her father said, “if you just wait two weeks for the next pay period to start, you’ll just be bored and lonely. Plus then you’ll get paid sooner.” So she decided to start work the Monday after she arrived in Maryland.

The weekend before she started working was busy as her parents helped her arrange the furniture and put up curtains in her new apartment. Madeline’s mom had insisted on buying most of the things before moving to Maryland, including area rugs to cover the hardwood floors and curtains. Madeline hadn’t been too happy about having to get everything in Wisconsin and then hauling it all the way to Baltimore, but she acquised. Later, after getting into Baltimore and not being sure where a Target or Wal-Mart was located, she understood that it had been a good idea.

But there were still a few things that she needed in order to have a smoothly running household, and the family tried to find a mega-store to buy the last minute things at. Apparently no one knew where a Target was located, so they ended up out on the beltway, driving to White Marsh.