So, no progress on the NaNovel today. It’s depressing to see that ‘words behind’ number grow, let me tell you.

But I realized I was so fractured that I wasn’t getting anything done because I was trying to do everything at once. So tonight instead of NaNoing I finished up an article that’s been kicking my ass. It’s one I never really wanted to do; I just kind of fell into it. Someone asked me if I would be interested in doing it and I think I said “Maybe” or something, and she took that as a yes and the next thing I knew it was my assignment.

Anyway I just sent it off. Hopefully it’ll be accepted as is and I’ll be done with it. It wasn’t due until next Monday. I have another due the following Monday but then I’m free of writing obligations aside from NaNo. (Well, I’m waiting on a piece of loaner equipment for another piece, but I’ll worry about that when it arrives.) Anyway, my *hope* is that I can quiet my mind and use Friday evening-Saturday-Sunday as pure NaNoveling time. Alternatively I might jump on the other article and get that going and get it done early…we’ll see.

When last I wrote, my novel had taken yet another turn, and a pretty fun one. I’m not going back to read anything because that makes editing way too tempting. But I know in my heart that the first 7-8000 words I wrote will be cut if I ever try to polish this up into a submittable book. It took that long to get the flow going.

In other news, my apologies to those friends out there who’re leaving me comments and not having them show up. The damned spammers are killing me, again. It takes a long time to filter through the spam and find the legit comments. I saw an article in Wired a few months back about an infamous spammer who was found bludgeoned to death. I know this doesn’t reflect very well on me, but all I thought when I read that was “Good, he deserved it.” When you make your living by irritating the hell out of people…you have to be building up a pretty damned big karmic debt.

OK, I *finally* shook off the blahs and got my sorry ass in gear. No, no, don’t look at the work count..I’m still a tad behind there. But behind the scenes I cleared up a lot of little niggling things that were leeching psychic energy away, and I remembered that having a bit of a ritual helps with my writing.

As always, my friends, old and new, have been incredibly supportive and I’ve been drawing huge gobs of power from them.

My MC and his faithful sidekick are on the run now, fleeing down alleys and hiding out in seedy taverns, so things are starting to get interesting in the book, too.

I’ve decided to give myself today off. I’m already feeling stressed and burnt-out, though not just from NaNo.

Is this the sophomore slump? Or is this that weird situation where the less you have to do, the harder it is to accomplish? I’m not sure. I’m just really having a lot of trouble quieting my mind so the words can flow. I keep jumping back to problems I’m working on for my freelance job, or articles I should be writing. Last year when I was working, I’d come home from work and leave the job behind. I guess because I’m working from home and at crazy hours, I’m having trouble ‘shutting down’ that part of my brain.

As to the book itself, it’s… meh. So far I think last year’s was a lot better, but then I don’t remember what I thought of that one on day 5.

Bonus event: Now that I’m posting regularly, the spammers are flooding the site. No, you don’t see them. But I’m having to moderate 50-100 link-spams comments every day. Vermin. I detest spammers and their bots.

Well it hasn’t been the most auspicious of beginnings.

Problem the first: The NaNoWriMo web site is tanking hard. I can’t even access it to post my word count, so my little counter gizmo isn’t updated.

Problem the second: A water main broke and I had no water all day, which made my morning a major chore and had me off kilter all afternoon. Granted I should’ve been able to rise above that.

Problem the third: I had decided I was going to use Scrivener as of last night. Then I got a beta key for Jer’s Novel Writer and fell in love with its margin notes, so I transcribed everything from Scrivener to JNW. But then I found out that JNW really isn’t ready for prime time. I was spending more time fiddling with trying to get it to accept notes than I was writing. So then I transcribed everything back to Scrivener. *sigh*

That all said, I think I got about 1,800 words done. I’m aiming for 2,000/day, so I’m starting off behind. Of course the day isn’t over yet.

As to the actual writing…it didn’t exactly flow at first, and I spent a lot of time naming people and filling in Scrivener’s ‘research’ panel with notes about the characters. But by the end of my writing session it was feeling a bit better.