This past Wednesday, Nov. 19, I ventured to a library branch near my home on the east side of Columbus, Ohio. The occasion? An evening-long "write-in" for National Novel Writing Month, which challenges participants to write every day in November until they have a complete - or mostly complete - manuscript.
I'm not currently writing a novel, but I am co-authoring a nonfiction book with Chicago businessman Raymond Lambert about his legendary Chicago comedy club, All Jokes Aside.
I figured being among other writers in an environment filled with books would spur my creativity. Unfortunately, when I got to the library, there were two only people in the room that the library had set aside for the write-in. And rather than aspiring novelists, both of them looked like students toiling away on homework.
Despite the absence of my fellow writers, I fired up my laptop and got to work. But after a half-an-hour, any sense of motivation I had when I walked in had long since disappeared.
It wasn't so much the fact that I was the only writer in the room that got me, it was fatigue from not getting much sleep the night before.
I guess I was a fool to believe I could be productive in such an exhausted state. But at least I got a little bit done. To quote the classic Doobie Brothers song "What a Fool Believes": "What seems to be is always better than nothin'..."
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