Regular readers might have been expecting a bit of a report on my NaNoWriMo progress after I started 10 days late but with great enthusiasm.

Excuses for not writing this week? Let me count the ways … or at least give you the abbreviated collection of bad reasons I gave myself for not writing. Starting with going back to teaching after nearly a month off (hey, more exhausting than I remembered) and leading through various dramas up to spending a fair whack of time helping out a friend with a problem, I didn’t even get back to my NaNoWriMo novel draft on Saturday when I probably did have time.

But because all of you out there in internet land know that I’m trying to do NaNoWriMo, I can’t fail. At least not yet. One of the “pep talk” emails that the NaNo people sent this week mentioned that this year we’re lucky that there are actually five weekends in November, so we have an even better chance of finishing. That gave me some extra inspiration, and since I know I can write fast when I have to, I started out again this afternoon.

The interesting thing is that everything I’ve written so far is kind of the back story to the real story I plan to write. Or, it’s the part of the character that I hadn’t imagined yet. The story I have for Agnetha, my main character, really starts when she’s around thirty, but I started the novel in her childhood and right now, she’s in her mid-20s and about to marry. The story is twisting around in directions I never dreamed. I’m seriously hoping it will twist the right way to get me into the story I actually want to tell once she hits thirty, which should be next chapter.

I know I talked a lot about having a good plan for this novel before I wrote it, but really, I don’t. This first few chapters are coming out completely unplanned, simply following chronological order, and otherwise everything that seems to be building the main character’s personality and everything that will have a bearing on how she behaves in the future, when I get to the “real” story, is coming out from some completely subconscious part of my brain. It’s an interesting process.

To reiterate the plan thing, I still would, someday, like to write a novel that is superbly planned before I begin to write. One of two things could happen: I could confidently write the novel, knowing where it’s going and therefore planting all the seeds I need in advance; or alternatively, I might discover that whatever I planned has no way of really working out on paper and my characters take me all over the place, to completely uncharted waters. I have a feeling it might be the latter, but I’d still like to try it, just in case having a detailed plan actually does make everything flow better. But I guess that’ll have to be next NaNoWriMo. For now, I’m going to struggle to get this one done: current required word count is 2,900 words per day. Do-able, especially with two more weekends after this one, but I wouldn’t want to get any further behind. Please send me good writing vibees …

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