NaNoWriMo-ing Progress Update o-rama

I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year. In case you're unfamiliar, the idea is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I've never really been able to participate before because I've always had a show opening in November. Ok, not always, but I think 2003 was the last time I didn't have a show opening in November.

About a month or so ago, I had several ideas swirling around in my head to write about. My main challenge for myself was to write something simple and grounded in reality. I was pretty confident. Then October hit me like a sumo wrestler on energy drinks. I did quite a bit of traveling, and after returning from a business trip to Ireland, I was immediately thrust into the show I was directing that ran in October. (You can read about Fear over on my other blog.) That show consumed pretty much every ounce of creative energy I had, and when it ended, it was suddenly November 1st.

I had nothing. All those ideas I had were either gone or no longer inspired me. I lost a day or two, got behind, panicked, and just started writing. Actually, Diana started writing for me. Sitting next to me on the couch as I sat staring dumbly at a blank Word document, she reached over and typed the word "happy" with auto-correct faithfully capitalized.

So I started with the word "Happy" which became a person's name, because how else do you start a sentence with the word "Happy" any other way without involving quotation marks?

Did I write something simple? Something grounded in reality? Hell now. I'm writing something incredibly complicated that is of course a sci-fi/fantasy.



Still, I'm enjoying the story at least and I want to know where it's going. Or rather I want to know if it's going where I think it's going and I want to see how it gets there.

Then once I get this out of my system, maybe I can focus on something simpler, more grounded in reality, possibly even something non-fiction (which is Diana's suggestion based on how well I write the odd blog post). In any case, I'm significantly behind in my word count, and as I can't seem to average more than 1,000 words a day, I just keep slipping further away. I can get there though! I want to. It's a challenge. Eight days into it I'm at 8,318 words.

Ok, 8,317 once you minus the one that Diana wrote for me.