NaNoWriMo!

Yes, it's that time again!

What time, Zaz? I hear you chant. (Okay, bear with me here, I'm having a good day.)

It's time to try and write a 50,000 word novel in one month again!

Oh yes, I am crazy. My first year of college and WHAT am I doing? Trying to write a novel, during November, which inevitably ends up being the busiest month of my year. Guess what I've got next week? A MIDTERM! YAYYY!

But I love November, I honestly do. It's exciting, somehow. It feels like a month of new beginnings, a time to try things. If I fail, at least I've gone for something, you know? At least I'm not just sitting out my life doing absolutely nothing.

And, for once, I'm ahead of schedule! I want to be cautious about this, but it feels so good to be actually where I wanted to be at this point. 11943 words! I just wanted to be at ten thousand today, and I'm almost at twelve, even though I'm violating the technical rules by working on something I've "started", if 189 words counts as a start. But I'm (obviously) not counting those words towards my final count, and as the reason stated for that rule is "we don't want you starting anything where you're too attached to the characters", I don't really see it as violating it at its heart, since I started without feeling too much attachment to the characters, and they've already changed a bunch of times. Plus, the ideas attached to those 189 words were just things I loved too much not to try. It's something I'm really just writing for myself, and it's making me happy.

Of course, there will be BAD days. This I know; I've learned by now that writing is not something that just happens smoothly and easily (even if it may feel like that right now). There will inevitably be that one day where I break down and go, "all right, that's it, this novel sucks and I am a terrible writer." But this time, instead of trying afterwards to pick it up with brilliance again, I'm going to try and just write some CRAP and get beyond that point and finish.

We'll see what happens, and you, faithful readers of this blog---by which I mean maybe 1.5 people---will get to hear all about it!

So right now I'm just feeling good about it. My character's shifting a bit and I'm having tense problems and it's WAY too wordy, but wonderful things are happening on a very, very small scale. And I have high hopes for finishing this one. Bet you this---it's not even cockiness, but this satisfaction---will come back to bite me in the ass soon enough, but now? I feel good.