Wheeeeee.....

Once his name was changed to Pete, Joe Keene proved to be the key that unlocked a whole lot of words yesterday, which paved the way to 50,019 words as of 9:00 pm tonight. Thanks for the encouragement -- it was kind of a wild trip letting my story come to life. At many points I sat back and watched it like a movie to figure out what was going to happen. Have I mentioned that Script Frenzy is just four months away? My fingers may just have recovered by then.

Joe Keene

Just four days left in November. I was far behind leading up to Thanksgiving weekend, but have pounded out about 12,000 words. A couple more hours today and I'll be on schedule at 45,000. But my brain must be a bit fried, because I just typed the name of a new character, Joe. Needing a last name, I wrote Keene without thinking. Then I said Joe Keene out loud just to see how it sounded. At least I didn't name a character "Ima Foole." Though check with me after 50,000 ... Ima may find a spot in the story after all.

20,000 words

As of tonight (or should I say this morning), NaNoWriMo participants around the world have written 1,251,762,334 words. Which is kind of mind boggling. There are at least 3 people in Fort Collins who have already finished their 50,000 words, including one guy who did it all in the first week. As for me, after a quick start the first week, the second week gave way to work and kids, but I tried to make up for it Saturday and managed to get to 20, 443 words. Some of which I like. A few of which strung together made me laugh and others which made me cry. I guess that means I love my characters (some of them) and hate some others (in a good way, of course). Not quite entirely on schedule for success in November, but 20,443 words closer to getting this story out of my head than I would have been if I hadn't started. And that's pretty cool.


  

Getting started

Wrote for an hour before the kids woke up and three hours after they went to bed. Official tally: 2551 words. The fact that I just spelled words "rods," then "works," then "wods" before getting it right could be a sign that four hours a day may not be doable on many days. But for today, so far, so good.

The Setting ...

According to the official NaNoWriMo site there are just under 9 hours until November (in the mountain time zone, that is). And then the keyboards will be unleashed. I'm excited to set the tale in motion, bits and pieces of which will be posted here. In the meantime, visit Rico, Colorado -- which looks an awful lot like my fictional town, Sunshine Basin.

Over the next month I'll populate the town, design a ski area and a renowned mountain school, dial up some drama for locals and visitors alike, throw in a few endangered species and some immigration politics, then threaten the whole arrangement with a mix of natural disasters and human greed.

Only time will tell if it's half-baked or toasted to perfection. Bring on November!

A journey of 50,000 words begins with ...

a first blog post. On Monday, I'll join thousands of other writers -- and wannabes like me -- for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo ). Every year for the month of November it's a full-out sprint of writing - 50,000 words in 30 days. The idea? Turn off your inner editor and get the words on the page.

I've had a novel bouncing around my head for five years. I've got characters, settings, death and other conflict, injustice, jealousy and revenge fully formulated. I even know how the story ends. But not a single word written down, because my inner editor has me paralyzed with fear of sucking. That and I'm a single mom with two young daughters, a full time job, a dog, a cat, a house that never quite gets clean .... Which makes NaNoWriMo perfect -- it's all about quantity, not quality. Which means my characters -- Abbey, Margo, Erik, Diana, Lewis, Gary, Beth, Natalie, Bryan, Chuck ... even the lunatic Marianne -- will finally come to life in about 1700 words a day.

And it all starts in just two days! The prose will not be pretty. It will not be publishable. But, instead of sparkling ideas floating around my crowded brain, it will be prose. At the end of November, I'll have 50,000+ words on the page. Some of them I will even want to keep. I'll be about halfway through with a draft of the story. And the pressure lifted from my brain will be liberating. Who knows where I might be able to go with a little extra room in my brain. I might just be able to Touch the Sky.