I’m hopelessly behind and have no reasonable expectation of ever catching up by the end of November deadline. I know what the general story is, but when it comes to writing scenes that make any sort of sense, I’m completely stalled. And the stress of being so far behind is really interfering with my actually sitting down and getting any writing done. The idea of this is no longer fun, it’s a chore, and a painful one. I realized yesterday, after I had a big argument with Stephanie about how we scheduled our time this weekend, that this is ridiculous, because this is a stress I can control.
Unlike the other stress that is occurring in my life right now, which includes, but is not limited to:

1. The Stress of The House that Would Not Sell
2. The Stress of Attending Meetings with Potential Renters Who Do Not Show Up to Appointments 2/3rds of the Time
3. The Stress of the Shitty Roofers Who Would Not Show Up To Complete Their Work
4. The Stress of Attempting to Merge Two Households Worth of Stuff and Not Knowing What to Get Rid Of
5. The Stress of The Weather that Rains Every time I Want to Rake Leaves
6. The Stress of the Looming Apocalyptic Chaos That is The Impending Holiday Season (refer to Ghosts of Holidays Past)
7. The Stress of Four Cats Who Just Don’t Want to Be Roommates
8. The Stress of Not Being Able to Get a Good Night’s Sleep And the Ensuing Problems of Walking Through Every Day Fuzzy Headed and Bleary-Eyed
9. The Stress of the Work Projects That Spiral Out of Control
10. The Stress of the Cascading Style Sheets That Just Don’t Seem to Work in IE6, No Matter What Hacks I Apply (AKA, I Hate Microsoft, Part 987)

… The stress of NaNoWriMo is one I imposed upon myself. So I hereby release myself from the the deadline, in the hope that I’ll actually be able to accomplish the task at some point in time, because at the very least, the story I was planning on writing cracked me up, and I got much further in the task than I was ever able to do before.

Okay, I really, really have the plot all worked out and I’m very excited by my idea, which I think is fun, entertaining, and a Big Idea, also.
But I have to do some more research, in the form of purchasing the Historic Plan for our neighborhood, at a cost of $5, from the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Society.
Back in a flash to get caught up on the actually writing. And if you been following along with my blog posts over the past several days, you can see hints and drops of my idea scattered among them. Except for the Slush Mug commercial; that’s just silly fun.

My word count for day 1: 1281 words.
That sucks! I spent most of the day trying to figure out the plot, which I should have had outline in October. It didn’t help that I had my teeth cleaning appointment and the chimney sweeping appointment. Also, the dog barked all day along. Apparently Cthulhu is hiding under our deck again. Pesky elder god.
And today I have a cardiologist’s appointment, and the furnace guy is coming to work on our radiators. Ah, well. I’ll do my best.

National Novel Writing Month is November 1st, and the sign-up for it begins this Friday October 1st (I managed to skip the entire month of September in my head). One of my friends participated in the past and is going to again this year. Here’s the scoop:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I’m going to throw caution, inhibition, sanity, free-time and probably dignity to the wind and sign up. (Doing the math…. hmmm, hmmm… 1,667 words a day. Eh. I could do that.)

Who’s with me? Anyone?