Monday, November 28, 2005

Welcome to the Nanowrimo ICU, where, if you listen closely enough, you may be able to hear the whoosh of life support and the death rattle of my Nano novel.

I think it might have pulled through if it hadn't been for ISBN-13.

Instead of taking time off to write, I've been stuck at work converting ISBNs in a catalog to ISBN-13.

It's evil. We call it... "the trece."

This is not to be confused with my designer counterpart and teammate, Tracy.

So when I'm going around telling people "the trece" killed my novel, please don't misunderstand.

Oh well, I think it's a decent idea and I'd like to actually finish it in a way that doesn't embarrass me. I'll put it on that shelf downstairs next to the sweaters I intend to finish and the t-shirts I'm going to someday cut up and sew into useful things like underpants for the whole family.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, thanks for informing us of the critical ISBN-13 conversion mandate! Can you believe that I had no clue that this was on the horizon?! Nor that there was an ISBN-13 Readiness Directory or an ISBN-13 Task Force. It kinda feels a little like Y2K all over again. Do you think I should prepare an ISBN-13 disaster bunker and stock it with cans of Spam and bottled water and all my favorite 10-digit ISBNs in case the transition doesn't go well?

Regarding the critical-life-support-death-bed condition of your novel...maybe you could just think of it as being in a Stasis Pod like you see in science fiction movies...or cryo-frozen so that some yet to be discovered "cure" in the future can bring it back to life.

quantumtea said...

Please don't abandon the novel to the shelf of doom! You can work on it in other months. It's worth finishing, and you can do it!