Not a lot of words tonight, but this time it was by design. My mid-week slack-off night.

After all, Lost is on!

I had a lot of things I wanted to do tonight, and figured I wouldn’t get much writing done. Still I sat down now and then, out of force of habit. The laptop say there beckoning to me.

And I ended up getting some words down. Sweet.

Hitting 50K is going to be trickier than I thought, though. When the story was ‘broken’ it was broken because there was no way I could fit that story into 5oK. But the fixed story is rushing towards ‘The End’ a bit too rapidly. I don’t want to hit the end before I hit 50k!!

These are pretty artificial problems, of course. NaNo problems. I’ll work it out. There’s no sex in the story yet. I could layer in 10k words of pr0n easily!!! 🙂

After the weekend I’d found I’d written myself into a corner. So tonight I spent some time plot-doctoring by throwing ideas around with a friend, then sketching out a rough outline for the rest of the novel.

So not a lot of words tonight, but I accomplished more than what is shown by the word count.

After a few days of stumbling, I feel like my NaNovel is back on track. Today I wrote more than I have in any other single day so far. And my characters are doing things, and growing a bit. The world is starting to coalesce. Its feeling good again.

I couldn’t do this without the support of friends and strangers. Thank you all!

So another night when the words just refused to come. Every little thing was distracting me, then I’d sit down and just stare at the screen. Write a few words and drift off again.

I’ve decided that 8 hour meetings are not conducive to my writing. But the weekend is almost here and hopefully I’ll be able to put my nose to the grindstone and catch up.

I wanted to thank you folks who left such encouraging comments on my last post, by the way. I don’t think I would’ve even *tried* to write tonight if it hadn’t been for you.

No words today. I’m empty. Numb.

Tonight I got to invent an evil race. 🙂

You see, my novel is schlock fantasy. It has humans and elves and…when it came time to have a race of bad guys, I wanted to stay away from the tried and true orcs or goblins or what have you.

So far the race doesn’t have a name, but my characters refer to them as “Bead People” for reasons I shall leave unspoken for now.

My plot is finally starting to take off, although I fear the story will grow larger than 50,000 words can contain.

This feels really, really good.

Tip: I stopped listening to MP3’s and started tuning into Internet Radio, in my case Live365. With a continuous, virtually ad-free stream of ambiant music, its easy to just lose yourself in the words.

I’d hoped to generate truckloads of words today, but I was just too tired to keep at it consistently. Tonight I’ll get to bed a lot earlier and hopefully can break my single day record tomorrow.

Although…on the other hand, to quote Michael Stackpole quoting someone else, “My wordbag is empty.”

Our intrepid heros finally got moving today, but now they’re stuck again. They’ve got an enemy to fight (fantasy, after all) but I’m not sure if I can make this a satisfying conflict, since the enemy is a creature that is intelligent but not really sentient.

Maybe I need a plot bunny!

A belated update… I submitted my word count and stuff just before midnight tonight.

I’m pleased with the wordcount, but not with the story. I’ve always read about how characters take on a life of their own and do things that you don’t expect them to do. Well I’m experiencing that now…except my characters refuse to get their arses in gear!!! They’re prone to navel-gazing rather than action.

Mind you, I’m not letting that get in my way. The goal was to write a 50,000 word novel in November. NOT to write a GOOD 50,000 word novel in November!!! This is my first NaNo so I’m just focused on finishing. Next year I’ll focus on trying to do something worth reading.

My super-double-secret goal, by the way, is to finish by Nov. 22. Why? Cuz that’s when the XBox 360 comes out!