Too Ready

To be honest, I've never been this ready for NaNo WriMo. Last year at this time I was frantically trying to pull together an outline, figuring out how to believably assassinate Churchill, and having long conversation with my husband about the best guns to fight dragons (if you want to know more about all that, you'll have to check out my blog every Saturday in November, where I'll have samples of my past NaNo WriMo Novels for Sweet Saturday Samples). 

This year's outline has been done since the beginning of the month. My research is in a neatly stacked pile. It's all a little unnerving. It seems too complete. Too easy. I have a nightmarish vision of me sitting in front of my computer on November 1st, my outline and research in front of me, and not having the slightest idea where to actually start. It might have to do with the fact that usually I have a few scenes kicking around in my head that I'm aching to write down (I always write down scenes ahead of time if they come to me because I tend to forget if I don't; It's torture not to be able to before NaNo WriMo). This year: nothing. A few vague ideas about using school newspaper articles to drive the timeline in the plot, but that's about it. And a fuzzy picture in my mind of hundreds of students storming a detention hall. 

But what fun would NaNo WriMo be if there wasn't some glitch. Sitting down and having 50k words slip easily out of your head and onto the screen doesn't seem fun at all. It's exhilarating to email my friend Kris at midnight asking her how the heck am I going to get to 50k when the story is winding itself up at 30k? I love wasting my time scouring the NaNo WriMo forums for truly hilarious plot bunnies (Oh yes, you have to check that forum out). 

I did a random search on author's who've published their NaNo WriMo novels (... it looks like I may be the first ...) and ran across a blog about why a guy hates NaNo WriMo and why we should too. I couldn't quite understand the gist of his ramble, but I think it had something to do with NaNo WriMo giving people who've never considered themselves novelists a chance to try their hand at it. I think he might've been jealous. Jealous that anyone can try to be a novelist in November--and that anyone who puts their mind to it can succeed! Jealous that we're all going to have a blast writing bad fiction, pretending that November 30th is an important deadline, calling ourselves novelists. Jealous that we get a kick out of being seven thousand words behind with only hours left. 

November just can't get here fast enough ...!