Falling Behind

One week in (okay, it's 11/09, but I'm rouding down and calling it a week) with NaNo and I am falling behind: have lurched past the 10K mark word-count-wise, but am in dire need of inspiration and ideas. Still hoping to slug it out with the word count and see what pops up during the process, but even if I hit 50K it sure isn't gonna look anything like a novel. I just don't seem to be in the groove this year, and am now distracted by news from home about a health challenge that has taken a deeply scary turn for the worse. It's hard to feel creative with that lurking in the background. Perhaps if I had a plot worked out I could focus on a specific scene and write my way into not thinking about the bad stuff. But staring at a blank page, feeling sad and worried... nuh uh, not working out so well today.

Ready, set, go!

Nov. 1, and NaNoWriMo begins again. I'm already procrastinating working up a giddy enthusiasm as I tank up the caffeine reservoir. 7:25 am here in Hawaii, which means most of the rest of the world has cranked out their first day's word count by now. I don't mind starting out "behind" because on 11/30 I will have (apparent, though not actual) extra hours to finish. My great plans to have some kind of story line in place by now fizzled and are lying in a dessicated heap by the side of the road somewhere. I do, however, have a premise, and I did finally manage, over the past couple of days, to get curtains made and up in my office. This may sound like a low priority, but with seasonal sun-shift southward, glare has become a problem here on my trusty computer screen. The eye strain and splitting headaches that have started to crop up after a long morning at the desk will not help with the NaNo thing (or any other desk-related thing), so taking a couple days to get "make curtains" off my to do list was worth it.

I'm going to go pound out my day 1 word count now, starting with a killer first sentence.