Yay!
Yeah, I hear you on the writing a story you love for NaNo. I almost wish I hadn't. The story I did has some good plot bits but the writing and such is awful and it has more holes than swiss cheese.
And it's painful to work through hoooooorrible prose when you want a story to be a thing of beauty and all that. ;-) I wanted to figure it out, not just keep writing without knowing what I was doing.
But all's well that ends well. I suppose.
And for a NaNo ending present...kinda...I now own a *manual* typewriter. 'Cause gosh knows the electric one wasn't luddite enough fer me. I didn't want to say anything until I figured out if it was gonna turn out to be a doorstop or not. ;-) It was on eBay, the opening bid was a dollar, and it was a seller only a few hours from here, so shipping was under six bucks. Didn't think I'd win the auction, but...oops. Oh well... It is *the* ugliest typewriter I have ever seen - matches the nasty yellow color of my toilet - but after a tiny bit of cleaning, it works dandy. And it's loud and obnoxious and has a very nice typeface.
Wonder where its been. It has a plate on the back from a shop in Zurich, and the extra characters (usually there are a few besides numbers and punctuation) are umlaut letters and such. Also has the z and y reversed - German keyboard layout. And it's obviously been very well-used. Paint all worn off the corners and plenty of scratches. Probably has had some interesting adventures.
Found a new ribbon for four bucks, cleaned out the gunk around the typebars so they aren't sticking anymore, and I'm in business.
Yes, I'm crazy, and I don't expect anyone to understand. ;-) But I think I'm in love with the thing.
Guess I should grab dinner, now that I've spent the whole evening playing...
Oh, and here it is in all of its hideous, worn, baby poop yellow glory:
