Chance meeting: a good sign?

Today was our school choir's annual pilgrimage into Sydney Town Hall to participate in the Celebration Concert, raising money for children's charities. Basically, I help escort the (very well-behaved) students into the CBD on a bus, fill in time shopping while they rehearse with the rest of a 1000-voice choir, then take them to their dinner break, and back to enjoy the concert. Not a terribly difficult set of tasks.

As we were getting off the bus, there was my good friend, Jean Prouvaire, on his way to the annual Sydney kick-off meeting of 2007's NaNoWriMo, the (Inter)National Novel Writing Month at Books Kinokuniya.

Was I on my way to the meeting?, he wondered aloud.

How fortuitous! I'd received an official email about NaNoWriMo, but I hadn't made a note of the date; last year these two annual events didn't clash. I had a few hours to kill while the students rehearsed, so I was able to meet up with him at the coffee shop (which had no coffee; their machine was broken. Sigh.) Also at the meeting were my Star Trek Meet-up buddies, the_real_adamj (who went to the kick-off with us last year) and KillRaven (whom we didn't actually know as a fellow Trek fan in 2006), plus about 40 others. KillRaven deserves extra kudos: he finished his novel last November!

Once again, we are supposed to produce about four typed pages daily to achieve the goal of a whole novel manuscript completed during November 2007. Wish me more luck than I had last year; at least this time I have no report cards to write in November!

Of the 400 or so Sydneysiders who attempted NaNoWriMo last year, about 40 supposedly achieved their goal. Not bad odds, I guess, although that may also mean that statistics say that only an average of four people at today's meeting will achieve their word count. (Or maybe all 40 were at today's meeting? Nah; wishful thinking.)

The concert was great, too, by the way. The finale was a medley of Peter Allen songs. "Tenterfield Saddler" gets me in the tear ducts every time! It really is one of those special Australian songs. If I could only capture some of that nostalgic emotion for my NaNoWriMo manuscript...

Sunday's magic number: 92.2 - back up again. I thought I was doing well, too. Damned fund-raising cake days. (What's that point about muscles having a heavier mass than fat?)