Almost mid-way...

In terms of the month, not the novel.

It's been pretty rough so far - mostly my fault, though. I've had a year to get ready for this month and I did nothing to prepare for it. I'm not a big fan of outlines and plotting ahead of time, and what I've done off the top of my head in the past has turned out reasonably... readable. But this 'novel' is going from bad to worse to not-so-bad to worse than ever.

I'm sitting at almost 7K, which leaves me with 18 days to crank out 43K. Not impossible, but it's going to be a challenge due to work and the fact that I'm losing interest in continuing with it. But - and this is so incredibly important I can't stress it enough - I'm going to finish this monstrosity by midnight on Nov. 30 because I have to.

This is more than a exercise in making deadlines or proving that I can write what may pass as a novel - this whole month is becoming a way for me to purge bad writing (and methods of writing) from my system and to get back into the motions of writing. Sure, pressuring myself to produce a 50K novel in a month may seem a bit extreme, but when you've gone a year between writing because you've put up a mental block, sometimes you need to have all the pressure in the world to be sitting on you to realize what you're doing right, wrong and what you shouldn't ever touch again with a 10ft pole.

On December 1, I'm going to print out my 'novel' and tuck it away with my other ones, and I'll likely only pull it out for a laugh or to share with friends who haven't been to my website. I'm also planning on reading a lot, and re-reading the books that I've enjoyed in the past. What I won't do is stop writing. I can't go another year without writing for no good reason - if I want to do this for a living, I have to practice, and that's what this month is - it's practice.

I'm going to try to figure out another backstory as to why I took my main character's parents away from them and how three old women came to live in their house overnight - believe me, it's way harder than it sounds, what with trying to keep it from sounding too teenager-y or sci-fi - and hopefully get a few hundred words plunked down before I hit the hay.