NaNoWriMo...

I find this sort of ironic. Throughout my undergraduate career, I told myself I'd do NaNoWriMo but inevitably chickened out because I had "too much to do." Four years in a row, I chickened out.

Well, guess what. I finally broke. As a first year graduate student who also happens to be teaching (or attempting to teach?) a bunch of freshman how to write, I am participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time. It's a desperate act. I'm a desperate individual. I want to finish the novel I've been working on for three years. It is time.

I'd like to say that I've finally mastered the art of time management and that, although my workload is exponentially larger, I have everything under control. But that would be a lie. I still procrastinate and reading still takes time (theory reading takes obscene amounts of time). I'm just frantically scrambling to finish my "small" sets of weekly work before November arrives.

Hey, I've never claimed to be completely sane...

Anyway, in honor of the approaching madness, I've complied a list of the five craziest writers I've heard of/admire most (in no particular order of craziness or admiration):

1. Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing, anyone?)
2. Jack Kerouac (hobos and mushrooms and booze, oh my!)
3. T.S. Eliot (because an Insane Asylum is not an appropriate way to separate from a spouse)
4. Sylvia Plath (Bell Jar...mhmm)
5. Lewis Carrol (tea time, anyone?)