I know I'm behind, but I've cracked the 10,000 word mark and I am happy.

I'm about one day behind. Writing at work has actually been an amazing boon to me, since I am able to do less and less writing at home nowadays. I'm starting to think that now that the seeds have been sown - I can be productive at work, I'm getting back into the habit of sitting down every day and writing - if perhaps I should continue to bring my laptop to work with me long after NaNo time is over.

The plot is progressing, althought he pacing sucks - I am not cut from novelling cloth, I am a short story writer through and through. However, plot is happening, even if it slow and boring and horrifically paced. The story is moving, and I'm finally approaching th moment that spurred the entire idea of the novel on.

I may not get to it today, really, but I will get to it soon, and I am excited about it.

Hope all goes well for you.

I can see myself falling into the trap I fall into so often during NaNo; I fall behind (4000 or so word behind at this point, since I wasn’t able to really start until yesterday) and even though I have a moderate level of enthusiasm for what I’m writing, thinking about catching up is starting to make me anxious and is discouraging me.

I know the whole purpose of the month is to “just write;” there’s a word count goal, sure, but even if you fall short of the goal, you are to have experienced “thirty days and nights of literary abandon” (which is like, the best slogan ever).

The problem is, I either get so caught up in the word count that I wind up writing these long-winded passages that lead nowhere and don’t add anything significant to what is always and already thin plot, or I get so caught up in making the story move along so that I don’t fall into the above trap, my writing become scarce and minimalist (but not in a good way like Hemingway) – “this happened, then this happened, then this happened.”

The one good thing is that while I was writing yesterday, subplots and minor conflicts began to come to light in my mind; I feel like some of what’s going to happen is a little clearer now, given what I put down yesterday. \

I realized that Joy is not going to be her best friends’ darling, that they will be jealous of her exposure, and even her friend’s boss will resent her for taking business away from his bakery; her family will be bitter because of the way the film crew wants to portray them in the movie they’re producing; Joy will not be able to content herself completely with just the affections of the boy she thinks is into her… I’ve got a few things going on that weren’t even a glimmer yesterday.

But 4000 is such a daunting number – even though when I was in college, taking Creative Writing, I’d do that as an assignment all the time (4500 word stories). Something about knowing that I have to fit it into a coherent narrative (some NaNo-ers will no doubt say I don’t; that it doesn’t have to make sense, and that’s what December is for – while I try to stay true to most of the NaNo credo (no plot no problem, silence the inner editor, no deleting), that’s one thing I stand firm on – it has to be a coherent part of the story) makes it all the more challenging; I can’t just do a four thousand word free write, which would be all right, I suppose – I have to do four thousand words that somehow mesh with the four thousand I already have.

I’ve got a few hours today at work in which I will be free to work on my NaNo, since Kurzweil Support is bust until we get a new scanner and I’m fairly uninvolved in Band (I just need to find an electric outlet in the Band Room). I’ll report back later about how that went.

Hope your NaNo’s are going well. Cheers.