Well, the words are there — I’m a little ahead of “schedule” (having done slightly more than 1667 words a day), but the title of my journal entry today (I keep journals about my writing as I write in MacJournal) is “WTF is the plot of this book?” There’s a major coincidence in the setup of the book that I thought would resolve itself in some surprising and interesting way, but no resolution has showed itself — in fact, what the plot has done so far is tie me in knots and leave me nowhere to go. So I sat down to work a few things out before I continued to write, because apparently I’ve written enough today to be “ahead.”

Of course, if I redo the plot, theoretically I’d have to toss a bunch of pages. But this is Nanowrimo! And you don’t toss a word, you just put a note in saying, “Fix this in the future” and you keep on writing.

I know I said I would outline. I did. I’ve said it multiple times, I’ve discussed this with writing friends, I know that having worked out the plot ahead of time would free me up to just write. (I’m not one of these people who thinks outlining kills spontaneity and creativity. In fact, I think it frees you up to write as creatively as you want, because you know where to go and all you have to worry about is the actual writing.

Next time, I am totally outlining. I mean it.

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I just listened to WriMo Radio (the weekly podcast) and evidently Week Two is well-known as the location of “the wall,” so I’m hoping that that’s all this is. They also use the metaphor of “climbing the Himalayas and meeting the Yeti” which seems like an unnecessary, though hilarious, metaphor for the feeling.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. I’d been looking forward to this for some time, at least for the past month, when I realized I really needed to take a break from the novel I’ve been working on since last Nano and work on something new for a while.

Well, I guess it’s kinda new: it’s in the same series as last year’s. (It’s a mystery series.) Same main characters, different crime. And so far I’m 5005 words into it, so I guess I’m having a fairly good time so far! I want to get ahead of the game a little, especially in regards to Week 2 (when everyone hits the Wall and has no idea what to write) and Thanksgiving. But hey: 2500 a day, I’ll be done by November 20th.

Well, it could happen.

Writing is never like “taking dictation” for me. I read that over and over again from various people. What it’s more like for me is that I see a scene and I try to write down what happens, with enough set decoration to set the stage and enough internal monologue to provide a little humor along the way. I’ve never been given a plot in one single lump — I always have to play with things to put it together. Apparently I am not on a hotline to Inspiration Central: everything I come up with comes from me, not the Great Ether.

Of course, if the Great Ether wants to show up and help out and give me a little boost, I am all for it.

And now, after 3200 words today, I am going to go take a little break.

Update: I have no idea if I’ve mentioned this before, but my handle on the Nano boards is “Dianeofnka”, in case you want to friend me. And let’s face it: it’s all about having long friend lists. And the 50,000 words, of course.

I’m going to do National Novel Writing Month again this year. Finding the time to produce 50,000 words in 30 days was a total pain in the ass last year, especially through Thanksgiving, but doing NaNo completely changed what I’d been doing up until that point. Since we’d moved back to Silicon Valley I’d basically not written at all, spending an insane amount of my free time doing things like World of Warcraft for free, while it was beta. Well, I did NaNo, and WoW went commercial. I haven’t played WoW since, and quite frankly, I haven’t missed it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t finished the rewrite of last year’s NaNo novel, which I’d been aiming for. Finish the 2004 novel, get started on the 2005. I think there’s still a lot of good stuff in the 2004, but I’ve allowed it to become a nine-headed Hydra. A small, annoying voice inside of me is wants to find an outside voice to tell me how to handle the problems I’ve run into, but one of the things I’m insisting on to myself is that I stop doing that. You know, be your own expert. I’ve tended to be one of those people who’s going to learn any moment now how to write a novel/write a screenplay/etc., but what I’ve learned (over and over and over again) is that while you can learn some aspects, the best teacher is just sitting down and doing it. In my case, a couple of times.

Anyhow, I’ve prepared for NaNo by putting my little progress bar in the right-hand column there. It’ll be at 0 until November 1.