Back in the Saddle

Alright. The chips are down, and the die is cast, and any other gambling western metaphor that we can come up with that sounds good you can fit in here as well.

This year's project is a little different than my usual fare in a couple of ways.

First: I'm shorts-ing it. For me, that's not quite pantsing as I have a loose kind of "covering the important defining bits" version mapped out. Essentially the beginning, the high point, and a couple of options for the end. Normally, I'm outline girl and have the entire book plotted out scene by scene (see Project 2006), but Visual Boy (still the husband) suggested that I might be a) stifling my creative mojo and b) using up the fun parts of writing early by my "have it all planned out" approach. Having been my primary editor and sounding/bitching board on every other major writing project I feel it would be remiss to ignore his advice. Hence the shorts-ing.

Second: There is no work make-up time available. In previous years, I had a gig where I could (when necessary) work in a couple of pages of stuff during the day if I needed to and even (cover your eyes previous employers) call in "sick" or just take an extra day off for the fun of it to work on the project. Now that I'm a corporate trainer, there is no wiggle room. Me being out sick last week called in any remaining favors that we had in the training department and so other than the already publicly mandated Thanksgiving holiday, there will be no spare days off in November to make up ground.

I'll talk more about the project itself tomorrow, but here are my rules for me this year.

Rule #1: Posting at the end of the day is required. It's a good way to keep me honest and on track. Last time through it was one of the things that helped me process through pretty well, too.

Rule #2: No posting until you're done! The lure of the blog is a strong one, so after today (which I'm working out as a planning day because I hadn't actually decided until this morning to put my money where my mouth is) until I've done my pages, I'm not allowed to wax poetic about the project.

Rule #3: I still have to do my chores, but I can't do them instead of writing. Nothing makes me want to clean the house more than having a writing project. I actually found myself a moment ago saying 'You know, these toilets could really use a good scrubbing. I mean, I should do that before I go get my writing organized. It'll only take a minute.' And anybody can imagine how much I ADORE scrubbing toilets. (This COULD explain why Visual Boy is so keen on me doing a writing project...)

The Plan

The NaNoWriMo goal is to write a 50,000 word novel starting Nov 1 and ending midnight Nov 30. It isn't going to be pretty, and in fact most of you will probably never ever see what comes out of my head because it's going to need mega editing (see difference the First), but a good thing I keep in mind is you can't edit what isn't written down. So, I write it, and then I can edit it later.

29 days (today won't get words)= 1724.14 (rounded up) words per day. Last time I tapped out at 2600 per day realistically (see January '06 processing). I also don't write on Friday and Saturday typically (it just doesn't happen). And, I've got some family obligations this time around I didn't have last year that I will need to work in on those days, too.

So. I'm going to give myself a daily (excluding Fri & Sat) goal of the 2600 words with the exclusions putting me at 21 days, which still leaves me make up words on each day if I hit my goal so that I would end up with 54,600 in a perfect world. It also gives me a couple of days of grace period if(when) they happen. And I can use Friday and Saturday when I have the chance or need to make up pages.

Also New Moon is coming out this month. So there will be girly screaming time required in there somewhere with my (already bought) midnight tickets.

So, that's the start. I'm going to go put together some things so that I can set up my work space and dig in to the writing bits tomorrow after work etc.