It was my Sunday off from writing, but I wrote anyway. Trying to do my best to contribute to the war effort against Connecticut. I had my mind made up to write 3,000 words tonight, but after a burst of inspiration that lasted about 2,000 words, creative motivation fizzled out like a candle in the wind (<--metaphor=prime example). All I had the energy to do was update my word count at the Nanowrimo website and update my little progress bar there. These two rituals follow a writing session, no matter how late I'm getting to bed. So, no excerpt update tonight. ~~~~~ But my 7-foot Nanowrimo pencil is primed and ready for yellow spraypaint. I conceived the idea when trying to come up with something cool and shocking to stake our claim at our reserved section when we have write-ins. A lot of ML's use table tents or table cloths or banners. I can't afford to construct/rent/whatever a "table tent," and my search for a cheap paper table cloth never resulted in anything usable. So I brainstormed, and a 7-foot Nanowrimo pencil is what I came up with. Basically free, but for the $2 in yellow spraypaint I bought. I rolled Priority Mail boxes (shhhh...don't tell the post office) after I took an Exacto knife to them in order to make fold-lines to create the classic pencil hexagon shape. Tia helped me cone these old brown manila folders Mom gave me, to serve as the pencil tip. And we wrapped a pink pillowcase around Forest's soccer ball and stuffed it into the end to make the eraser. The pencil is huge. So, it's sitting in the garage drying. The spraypaint wouldn't stick well at all, so Mark dragged out a can of white primer we had laying around. The pencil is huge and white right now, but by tomorrow afternoon, it will be yellow. Not the true golden-yellow everyone knows and loves, but at $2.90-something a can for the gold, 97-cent bright yellow will do just fine. I intend to keep The Nanowrimo Pencil for next year and the year after...until it falls apart. It ought to be donated to some "Oversized" museum somewhere in a tiny tourist town in Obscure City, USA. If we never get our pictures in the paper again, The Pencil should.