NaNo Blogging: The Goals

It is November first. The crazy train is rolling. Pep talks are floating through the ether. Buddies are being found. Word Wars are being waged. I've....written almost nothing yet. I've got a title, though, so that's something. It's just hard to get up for it today since I'm in the middle of personal tragedy. And the thought of having fun seems somehow wrong.

Still, I think that although I'm going to be chugging along slowly for the next few days that I'm actually right on schedule. My master plan calls for me to be blocking out scenes and then writing them in and, sure enough, although I've yet to produce a drop of prose, I woke up bright and early this morning and sketched out the entire first chapter. One thing I learned from doing the Frenzy and scripting since is that preparation and planning like that pay off dividends down the line. You don't have to have everything laid out before you but having a general idea of the overall scheme is preferable to just blindly heading out into the wilds of your plot. It's not quite there yet, I think I need a few more scenes to slot between the pieces I have as filler, to presever the ebb and flow, but I think I know the notes I need to hit along with the themes and images I want to juggle. And if I can set down and write at least one of them out tonight, I should be meeting the minimum daily word count at the very least.

Anyhow, on this, the first day of the NaNo, I thought I'd lay out my goals heading in, These are, in the best NaNo spirit, completely flexible and I'm not concerned with whether I'll reach them or not just the journey towards them. But this year, the second year I've ridden the crazy train, I wanted to throw caution to the wind and be ambitious.

• One: Write every day, no matter what.
• Two: Write at least 100k or double the 50k count.
• Three: Write a finished, completed novel, even if it's one that needs massive editing afterwards.
• Four: Write some good prose while keeping that inner editor safely locked away.
• Five: Make some new friends.
• Six: Mentor a newbie.
• Seven: Crush Soluna, drive her before me, and hear the lamentations of her word count.
• Eight: Bring down someone else from the hundred+ k club.
• Nine: Blog and post on a forum at least once a day.
• Ten: Get over my grief about losing my childhood pet.
• Eleven: Have fun.

If it works out, next year I'm going to try and see about writing a publishable novel. But, for now, just running the race well is what I'm shooting for.