Day 3

First, I couldn't write for most of the day because I was stuck under a sleeping baby, but I managed to use that time to read a whole novel, Beige by Cecil Castellucci, which turned out to be helpful for my NaNo novel, since it dealt with bands and musicians, and so does my novel.

Second, I finally got time to write at night, and wrote about 2,400 words, so I'm still ahead of my quota for this point in NaNo. Yay!

6825 / 50000 words. 14% done!

(I only wish my new computer didn't keep moving my cursor to random places while I'm typing!)

Day 2

I had trouble getting started today, and thought I might have nothing left to say. I got past that, luckily, but I only managed to squeeze in some writing when I wasn't really planning on it (my original plan to write at the library was thwarted), and what came out seemed quite random! I haven't read over it, so who knows what came out?! It's hard to find time to do this with my baby. But I'm still over quota, at least.

4422 / 50000 words. 9% done!

End of day 1

2194 / 50000 words. 4% done!

Yeah, I'm over quota, but not that excited because it's a jumble of words. I've described some of the same things more than once and introduced some characters more than once in different ways, and the timeline is already tangled. It will have to be tamed later! Still, it's something.

A new year!

This was last year's NaNo blog, but since I stalled and stopped early last time, I'm taking it over for 2007's attempt. This time I'm starting again with one of the ideas I tried and gave up on last year on day 1, but I started from scratch with a new document. I didn't even refer to my old notes, files, or even character names until I'd already written 785 words.

This time I'm writing without a map. For my NaNo 2002 novel, I didn't outline or anything, but I had fairly clear characters in mind, and the basic plot and plot turns. It changed as I wrote it, but I knew a lot about where I was going, and I wrote it in a strictly linear fashion. For other novels I've tried to write, I have a basic plan and write them chapter by chapter. This time...I'm just writing scenes, just writing ideas, maybe skipping around, and maybe writing things just to try them out, even though they probably don't fit into the plan. I barely know the characters, and I'm not sure of all their relationships. I have maybe 2 major points of the plot, and...that's all. It's scary, but it's also so freeing not to worry about sticking to some plan or getting it wrong, that I think I really could get through 50,000 words this month, though they may not end up telling a whole story if you read them straight through!

I've never been as open to writing a crappy first draft as I am right now, and it's kind of exciting. I look forward to just playing with words. E.B. White once said, "I dive into a story the way I dive into the sea, prepared to splash about and make merry," and that's how I'm diving into NaNo this year. (Of course, he also said, "Writing is hard work and bad for the health," but I'm going to go with the first quote for now!)