National Novel Writing Month Update

So far I've written every single day of the month, at least for an hour and a half. So far I'm probably a little bit behind the pace. I'm at around 5,000 words and the pace is probably 6,000. So I'll need a couple of days of major, not just average production.

But that's the technical side of it. The actual process is really exciting. Knowing that you have such a long-term story up in your head, that you have an idea of where it's going and what will happen, but that surprises keep coming up. It's fun. You get excited to sit down and start writing again. Not only because it's the only way the story will unfold, but because it's you that's putting it all together. This is one of the toughest parts of writing: getting excited about sitting down to do it. But when you have so much that has to happen, you never sit down and think "What am I going to write about?" because you have so much to do.

I wrote an outline on day two and have been sort of following it, but even through today I'll be through part 1, or at least through the introductory part of the novel (novella, whatever). I still need to get out of the US, get my guy into the air (which he's done), and into the other country, where the real meat of it starts. So when you realize that you've written so much and you're only getting started, you get excited. This is something epic. Maybe not to Tolkien or S. King, but to me it's the longest I've ever gone with just one story, one set of characters. Actually, I just double checked that and I'm wrong. I wrote a kind of experimental thing, non fiction, during christmas last year while I was here in chicago, alone, with Mindy on a cruise, and I went 23,000 words in about 5 or 6 days. Which is incredible. But it's non fiction and it isn't very cohesive. Still, this is something else entirely, it feels totally different.

Better get back to it.