I used my 10x50 monocular since conditions didn't justify the scope, and the nova was bright enough to be visible in the glass.

Everything went wrong.

As Napoleon once said, all major battles are fought where four maps come together. None of my atlases showed the entire field, and if they did, it was at the wrong scale. Uranometria showed too many stars, and Sky Atlas didn't show enough. On top of that, the moon and the streetlights washed everything out, and the nova is almost directly overhead at my latitude, so I couldn't get comfortable to search for it without lying flat on the ground.

The nearest naked-eye landmark was the little asterism of Delphinus, but it was invisible to the naked eye in the glare, although I did manage to find it in the glass. On top of that, there were clouds. So I couldn't look for more than a few minutes without gettng interrupted.

Then there was the problem of consulting the charts, which required fumbling with a flashlight and reading glasses, lying down and getting up and leaning over to read them. AAAARGH.

But I think I saw it. A little star that looked just like all the others...I think I was looking in the right place... where the charts said nothing should be.

Wow. I've never seen a nova before.