NaNo Eve

This may be Halloween for most people, but for over 100,000 crazy souls, it is NaNo Eve. The night before NaNo begins. Am I ready? No way! We somehow acquired a Miss Munchkin on Saturday afternoon for an extended stay. She went home this morning. So I am exhausted from lack of sleep (she does not sleep through the night when she stays at Grandma's), shell-shocked from her continual (and improving) efforts at talking, and hurting from being pummeled by a 20 month-old toddler climbing all over, up and around me. Somehow, until I saw the announcement in my e-mail box this morning, I had forgotten that November 1st was just around the corner. I mean, I had almost a whole week right before Miss Munchkin arrived … but time seems to have slipped away.

One good thing about time slipping away is that I have not spent hours and hours contemplating my plot and characters. In fact, I have the barest of outlines and only a slim idea of my main character. Last year I had so much planned ahead that I felt burnt out by the whole thing before I even began writing. We will see whether not knowing everything in advance (or thinking I know everything) will work better.

Another good thing is that Penelope is home! She was home again for a couple of days last week, but then her check engine light came on, so she had to go back to the shop. But it was just a vacuum hose or some such thing easily taken care of, so she is back home today. That means that David can take himself to class and I no longer have to drive people everywhere. More time for writing!

The goal for NaNo is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That breaks down to 1,666 words per day. And since I already know of a few days here and there where I will not be able to do any writing, I figure I need to do at least 2000 words per day, and it would be way better to do 2500 words per day. Wish me luck! I'll try to keep my count updated here, but if you don't hear from me for a few days, hopefully it is because I am busy writing the Great American Novel!