NaNoWriMo, UT Version

So I may have mentioned once or twice (or never-- it's been that kind of semester) that I started a NaNoWriMo/Script Frenzy club on campus with TARDIS Girl, co-conspirator extraordinaire. We decided to call ourselves Frenzied Novelists, because that was the best we could come up with to encompass both events. A couple of other people came along for the ride, and we have something like 55 people who have joined us in our noveling and other writing craziness (we're the only creative writing group-- that we know of-- at UT, so we've flung open our figurative doors to any creative writing types, not just novelists).

Our recruiting poster from earlier in
the semester.

The Sunday before NaNo ended, I got a couple of text messages from TARDIS Girl that someone from the Daily Texan (the campus newspaper) wanted to interview her. Which I thought was all well and good and fabulous-- the more publicity, the better, right? I was just sad that they waited until the end of NaNoWriMo to write about us, but hey, I'll take what we can get.

Later that afternoon, the intrepid reporter called me as well, so I spent the rest of the afternoon in an excited frenzy while I was also trying to do homework, finish my grad school applications, and write some more of my novel. The article (you can read it here, if you are interested) went live before I went to bed that night, and I read it quite happily until I came to this line: “I’m taking more hours this year than I did last year, but it’s actually been easier,” she said. “It’s definitely been an exercise in time management. You kind of get this feeling like you’re on drugs, like you always have to be doing something.”

Yes, that was me that said that. Or rather, me that didn't say that. I said the bit about time management, and I said the bit about always doing something, but I most definitely did not say anything about writing being like doing drugs. First of all, I have no basis for comparison, and secondly, that's not the sort of thing one says to a complete stranger who is writing down one's every word.

So the next morning, TARDIS Girl sends me as text wondering why on earth the reporter had chosen my quote about doing drugs. I told her I didn't know, considering that I never said it in the first place. And once we were done being mortified, we decided to have some fun with it, posting it all over Facebook and Twitter (we even made it onto one of the Twitter daily round-up things), as well as cutting out the article, highlighting my quote, and hanging it up in the Undergraduate Writing Center for the amusement of our coworkers.

A couple of days later, one of our coworkers told us about how last spring, the Daily Texan grossly misrepresented some activities of one of the fraternities on campus, so that the organization got lots of hate mail. Yikes! That makes this little goof seem rather small by comparison, being as we've yet to receive any mail at all.

Have you ever been interviewed? Misquoted? Both? What do you think I should say next time?