Justine Larbalestier

reading, writing, eating, drinking, sport

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New York City has gone nuts »

Who am I kidding?

I was going to finish up one of my long-promised posts on writing, which I’d planned to encourage all those NaNoWriMo types. Something on how to get going, or characterisation, or how to push forward even though your plot died.1

But who am I kidding?

Like everyone I know my concentration has been totally shot by the US election. I’ve been writing and rewriting the same sentence of the Liar novel for the last three weeks. This afternoon when all our attempts to work failed, me and Scott went and phone banked. The Bowery Hotel was overrun with volunteers, using their own phones to make calls to people all over the country,2 telling them where their local polling station is, giving them a phone number to call if they need a ride.

Last election I knew maybe two people who volunteered and I thought that was amazing. This year I have friends working for the Obama campaign in California, Florida, Kentucky, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. There’s a whole YA for Obama site. Here in NYC it’s all anyone is talking about. At my hairdressers, at the gym, in the laundromat, at our favourite cafes, at the cheese shop, everywhere!

I cannot wait for tomorrow. I cannot wait till there’s a result—a good result. Because then I’ll get my brain back. Fivethirtyeight doesn’t need my constantly refreshing it anymore and I suspect the Liar novel would like me to work on more than one of its sentences.3

Let it end now, please.

If you’re USian go forth tomorrow4 and exercise your democratic right: vote!

  1. Write like the wind! [↩]
  2. Particularly battleground states like Indiana and Ohio. Wow, they must be sick of all those phone calls. Though I gotta tell you all the people I spoke to were lovely. Chock full of enthusiasm and rearing to vote if they hadn’t already. [↩]
  3. You’ll be shocked to learn the Liar novel has more than one sentence. There’s at least a few dozen. Possibly more. [↩]
  4. If you haven’t already. [↩]

Posted by Justine at 1:00, 4 November 2008 under Excuses, Liar Book, New York City/USA, State of the World, Writing life |

Comments

  1. Tim Says:

    I know what you mean. I’ve been sitting here, attempting to write assignments and even trying to procrastinate with NaNoWriMo but only finding myself getting monumentally sidetracked by election-fever! I have to say this is very much the way I felt during last year’s Australian election, even though this one is for a country that is not my own!

    Still, I managed to get some writing done (even if it was only a post for the YAforObama forum).

    Also, good on you for volunteering. I think of all those noble people giving up their time (and money!) to help fight for a cause they are passionate about and I only have admiration.

    November 4th, 2008 at 8:54 am

  2. rockinlibrarian Says:

    —(Particularly battleground states like Indiana and Ohio. Wow, they must be sick of all those phone calls)

    Oh yes! I’m an Independent in the swing state of Pennsylvania! I gave up answering the phone at all sometime last weekend! But to you and your friends’ credit, most of the calls I was getting were recordings, which are possibly more annoying, although easier to hang up on.

    November 5th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

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