1 Day Until NaNoWriMo - tentative decisions

I have just about three more hours until I can officially start writing my novel. I entered my synopsis and came up with a temporary title and cover just to have the info on my NaNoWriMo profile. I'm so nervous that I'm not going to be able to do this, or that I won't like the end product.

Ohh, why do I have to follow the rules? I would've started a long time ago, while I was still fearless and determined.

2 Days Until NaNoWriMo - a magnificent obsession

Give me one pure and holy passion;
Give me one magnificent obsession;
Give me one glorious ambition for my life:
To know and follow hard after You.

To know and follow hard after You;
To grow as your disciple in Your truth.
This world is empty, pale, and poor
Compared to knowing You, my Lord.
Lead me on and I will run after You;
Lead me on and I will run after You.

We sang this song in church last night and it hit me hard. I haven't mentioned it yet, but I think my call to write (not just participate in NaNoWriMo) is straight from God. Every day, it becomes more clear.

I need to stop trying to work every little theme and character in my NaNovel and realize that I can spend my whole life writing books as long as God keeps giving me that joy. There's no end in sight, really. December won't be the end, nor will be college. A calling is a calling. There's no escape from this, even if I was looking for it. And I'm glad.

3 Days Until NaNoWriMo - the perks of theology

I'm upstairs in my school's computer lab wasting a few minutes before my theology class. Basically, theology is going to be my saving grace (ha, ha) three times weekly during November. It's not that theology is boring -- really! Rather, it goes completely over my head and swoops around, bypassing me again, several times each class. I sit on the front row but I still can take nothing in.

How will this help me in my NaNoveling experience? Well, it's simple. I've been using the past few weeks to brainstorm. It's gone very well so far, and I don't intend to let Friday be my last chance to make use of my theology class -- no, sir! I'll be utilizing the 50-minute segment each and every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in November to expand on my so-far unnamed project of literary abandon. Hallelujah.

EDIT: I think I was smote (smited?) for posting this before theology. When I showed up in class this afternoon, I took my usual front row seat and brought out my outline to mark up during the lecture. Before the professor began, however, he called me up to the front of class and used me as part of his metaphoric illustration.

His illustration had nothing to do with the distracted manner with which I sat in on his class, but was based strictly on my front-row position. Thanks, God, for your sense of humor. My hand was shaking so badly when I finally got back to my seat that I had a hard time writing in my usual tiny cursive between the lines of my outline.

5 Days Until NaNoWriMo - goodbye pre-November blues!

Last night (or, rather, early this morning) I finished a seven-page chapter outline of my NaNovel. This sounds like a lot, but it was mostly just a compilation of several pages of miscellaneous handwritten notes that I'd amassed in the past few weeks. Mostly I've been using my theology class to brainstorm and generally flesh out my story. I'm a little overeager to name the project because it's starting to seem so real!

Today I wore my NaNoWriMo '08 shirt for the first time to celebrate my early-morning, 2,700 word accomplishment (yeah yeah, I know my outline doesn't go toward my 50k total word count!). Anyway, it just made me feel good. (:

Oh, and I also just listened to this song by the Avett Brothers called "Denouncing November Blue (Uneasy Writer)." What a crazy coincidence of a song title, right?! The lyrics don't really have much to do with my current situation, but it was still pretty fun.

7 Days Until NaNoWriMo - on 14th century epics

So I'm quite sure World Without End is the best choice for my November reading. It would certainly take me until the start of December to finish it under normal circumstances; while the month is ruled by noveling, however, it will be the perfect distraction. At 1,000 pages, World poses no risk of me, the reader, getting caught up and finding myself determined to finish it in one sitting (re: The Hunger Games). Similarly, its chapters and subsections run about a dozen (looong) pages, so it's the perfect break from whatever activity in which one is previously engaged.

So yeah. That's my justification for dedicating my November to an epic of historical fiction.

If you're actually seeking an update on my NaNo preparation, rest assured that I am finding ample time to plan and scheme the contents of what is becoming a piece of mainstream fiction. (I categorize thus because I will be pulling from several different genres, and I feel rather unoriginal even in these early stages of planning.)

Happy trails!

11 Days Until NaNoWriMo - lament of my own inferiority

I just finished reading Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. All day I have been quite unable to put it down. I devoured that book. The characters, the structure -- all of its combined elements kept my fingers glued to the cover, flipping the pages, poring over every word.

I'm pretty much afraid I will never be able to meet such a standard if I were to write a YA novel. (I'm especially thankful for the balance of action and dialogue after reading the Inheritance Cycle.) So, here I must lament my own inferiority, and realize that I'm going to have to really persevere through November and get all the practice I can.

In the meantime, I'll just allow myself to gleefully mourn the fact that this is going to be yet another series that, as more installments are released, will rule my life.

12 Days Until NaNoWriMo - on leisurely reading

So... three more days have passed, and I have made no more progress on the intense planning of my sure-to-be-awesome NaNoWriMo novel. I did, however, finish three books in the meantime. Pretty amazing, right? Not really. One of them was Brisingr, the third installment of the teen-geared four-book Inheritance Cycle (it began with Eragon, which I'm quite sure you've probably heard of). It's taken me a few weeks to make time for this series, as I wasn't completely invested in it. Last night I began (and finished) The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, a short children's book which would have broken my heart, except that I, in my cunning and Potter-series-bred reading brain, figured out the ending about 50 pages too soon. So there was that down the drain.

After The Miraculous Journey, I read the first couple of chapters of The City of Ember, which is this post-apocalyptic young reader's book about a civilization living underground after some undefined disaster aboveground. The city is suffering as their supplies dwindle and their electricity threatens daily to give up. Two unlikely kids find the way out and escape in the final pages of the book -- leaving me desperate for the second book, but mad at myself for having done a four-book run to Barnes and Noble just yesterday (hence all the fresh literature). Anyway, I just finished Ember, and it was really impressive. I have The Hunger Games (yes, the YA book recommended my Stephenie Meyer herself) and World Without End, a big-girl book -- a 1,000 page sequel to another 1,000 page book that was my summer reading senior year. So, I'll be pretty well occupied for at least another week.

I say all this to assert that my reading will help me in my NaNo-writing experience. I'm sure it will... won't it? (Or will it just distract me during November? We can only wait and see...)

15 Days Until NaNoWriMo

So. First thing's first. I'm participating in this year's NaNoWriMo. It's going to be a crazy month, and I figured a blog on which I could vent and alleviate writer's block during the weeks of November would be helpful. I plan to keep this thing to update my progress and generally complain about my self-induced habit of procrastination.

I'm working on detailed outlines of my NaNo novel. Right now there's magic, time travel, and cute boys involved. And an evil dictator, some college, an assassination... it's going to be a good time.

I'll keep you updated.