What am I thinking?

I mentioned that I was doing NaNoWriMo this year, right? Well, I commented to my brother the other day (back in October) that I was interested to see how I'd do with my full-time job plus trying to write a 50,000-word novel. Well, I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that... it's tough. I leave my house before 8:00 AM, and don't get home until after 5:30, at which time I skip straight to supper, and with all of our extra evening events, I'm not usually free to reach the computer until at least 7:00 PM, and usually later (those nasty dishes, goodness).

Plus, I'm still trying to get used to the job, so I'm needing as much sleep as I can get. Which means I'm just not tempted to stay up until all hours of the night writing words I know I'll be disgusted in as soon as the month is over. But, I said I'd do my best, so I will. Also, I've given several friends a hard time for electing not to do NaNoWriMo this year, so I think it's only fair that I prove that it can be done. And even if it can't be done, an attempt can be made. There's no sense in deciding before you begin something that it's too hard to do.

Then again, that's what I say now. We'll see what happens as the month drags on!

A month of crazy

Well, we all do crazy things. As November approaches, and NaNoWriMo with it, I realize that my days of fairly regular blogging will no doubt come to an end. NaNoWriMo is a crazy program in which you write a novel (well, sort of a shorter novel, checking in at only 50,000 words) using only the 30 days of November. I've only done it once, but I'm hoping to again this year. Which is why I don't think I'll have a lot of excess time to be blogging several times a week.

A big problem I've been trying not to think about is this: I do not have a plot. I think that maybe perhaps I have sort of something I could use as a plot-type thing, but it's really not all here. Last year I had a similar problem, but it ended up coming to me, and I was able to write a story in about 56,000 words and be done with it. But I'm not sure that such helpful inspiration will strike me twice. My younger brother (did it last year, doing it again) keeps on going on about his story, and how he's got it all figured out, but I just don't work that way. Prewriting was always my least favorite part of English--sometimes, in fact, it was so problematic that I would write the whole essay, and then go back and write an outline based on what I'd actually written. I'm not suggesting that that's a good way to go, I'm just saying, that's how I roll.

Which means that when November comes and several thousand people are out there, cheerfully writing stories that have been outlined in their heads for months, I'll be tapping at the keyboard, killing off random characters, adding a lot of adverbs, and trying to get my word count up. It's a sad, sad month I'll have ahead of me.