NaNo: Day One

Today is the start of National Novel writing month. Today -- in roughly thirty minutes -- I'll open up MS Word and start struggling with my first 1600 words.

I have to confess. I'm already about 5,000 words into my NaNo novel, and it's not from working on it earlier today. I wrote about 10 pages on it earlier this year, though my intention wasn't to cheat -- honestly! -- my intention was simply to write a short story. When I reached page 10 and realized that I was still stuck on the character's back story, and that the back story was going to continue for at least another ten pages or so, I knew that I wasn't dealing with a short story any longer. I was dealing with a novel.

At which point I promptly dropped the project and set it aside as my NaNo novel.

I'm a little grateful to have those 5,000 words already down, as it will be a bit of a buffer in case I hit any nasty cases of writer's block, or for my 3-4 day work-related trip to Bella Coola later this week (where I may or may not be able to write, depending on whether I can wrestle my dad's laptop away from him for those few days).

Am I actually intending to keep some kind of a record of my NaNo progress here in the blog? Yes. Do I actually think I'll be successful? Well, that's another matter altogether, but it's still worth trying for, I think.

Having said that, though, non-NaNo-related blog postings might become fewer and further between. On the other hand, they may come more frequently, as what was intended to be a quick NaNo update becomes a longer, rambling blog-post.

If anything's almost guaranteed to suffer this month, it's the stick figure dramas and the King Cover reviews -- both of which are in dire need of an update (King Covers are badly needing some linkage over on the right hand side too, I think). If you see either a SFD or a King Covers post anytime in November, it can mean only one thing -- I have a writer's block that I haven't been able to get past, and I'm now working desperately to distract myself by doing *anything* other than thinking about it.

Off to write now. 1600 words today will be easy. Should be able to do it without breaking a sweat.

Of course, tomorrow's 1600 words will be a bit more difficult. And Wednesday's more difficult still.

Better get these 1600 taken care of while they're easy.