I couldn’t sleep. I finally gave up at around 5:15, which means today is not likely to be a great day. At the moment, in fact, I’m sitting in the dark, only the glow of my computer screen lighting the room, with one dog cuddled up on my arm, the other on my legs, wishing that I could sleep as well as they can.

Yesterday’s words–eh. It was a day of jumping on every distraction. I finally quit when I found myself editing, not writing, but after I shut down the computer, I figured out where my problem lay (dialog going backwards) and how to fix it (reverse the order of the conversation). Today’s first task will be to get back to that problem and switch it up. I think I made it to about 700 words yesterday, so still way off the word count I need, but at least it’s forward progress.

I did discover–and I wanted to call it serendipity, but it really wasn’t, it was just research–a wonderful book that I spent a chunk of my evening reading, called Learning from the Voices in My Head. When I (spoiler!) wrote about someone with bi-polar disorder in my third book, I was a little uneasy, but I have plenty of experience with the condition. Right now, I’m writing about someone who could be diagnosed as schizophrenic, and I don’t want to minimize or make light of the condition. The book is written by a woman who has learned to live with the voices she hears. It’s definitely going to get mentioned in my author’s notes. It even–ironically, for the second or third time this week–made me wish I hadn’t dropped out of school. It’s the kind of book that should be required reading for all people working in the mental health field.

None of which is about writing. Ooops. Um, yeah, back to the point of the blog: today will include some outside of the house events. The indie writer’s meeting in the evening–I’ll see you there, Lynda, and Tom, I wish you could make it, but have fun at your writer’s conference! Yoga, also, and… drat. Something else. Oh, possibly a visit to the kitchen cupboard place so that I can get a final estimate on what my kitchen is going to cost to fix. More than I wanted it to, is the probable answer. That, combined with not enough sleep–well, today’s not going to be my 2K word day. If I manage to get some writing done, I’ll call it good enough.

(I did have a fun NaNo idea, which is to, at the end of the month, take all my blog posts, all my instant message chats, and any extended comments in other spaces and put them together with my actual WIP. I bet I can make 50K words that way. The book becomes a novel about an author who spends too much time writing the wrong things and not enough time writing what she should be writing. Sounds fun, right? And look, not even 7AM, and I already have 500 words for the day!)

I am so far behind that I should probably admit defeat. But I’m not going to.

Yesterday was 500 words. Precisely 500, because yes, I pushed those last 16 words to hit the even marker. I did end at the end of a sentence, though, so at least there’s that.

Yesterday was also dealing with my car repair place; making plans with a friend; yoga; assorted cooking including finishing up some homemade chicken broth which had been simmering overnight (easy to start, work to finish); CostCo, including making single-serving freezer packets of fish and meat; meeting a friend; and then going out for a quick dinner with other friends. Oh, and taking the dogs on two long walks. For me, it was a very busy day. The fact that I got 500 words during it is more something to celebrate than something to regret.

Admittedly, the rest of the month is going to have plenty of equally busy days. I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 11. It’s going to absorb a lot of my attention for a couple of days. (It already is, as I browse recipes for interesting AIP-friendly food that won’t seem AIP to my audience, ie arugula and roasted squash salad & grilled Brussels sprouts.) I’m also getting my kitchen cupboards replaced. Not sure that will happen in the month, but apparently it may involve some more negotiation with the insurance company. When the guy from the kitchen company came out this morning, I discovered that the wall has broken. Apparently the nails in the metal inside the wall, when they get wet, can rust and expand and break the wall. Sweet, huh? But it may mean that I’m back talking to the insurance company again. I’ll be visiting the kitchen guys again tomorrow, when he’s got an estimate ready. The point, though, of all this babble is that I can’t assume that the next twenty days are going to be any more productive than the last ten.

Despite that, I’m not ready to give up. I need to write 2K+ words per day and there were definitely days when I was writing A Lonely Magic that I hit that number. Other people can do it. I can, too. I just need to remember my three new NaNo rules. 1) No editing. 2) Have fun. 3) Write without doubt.

Hmm… not to doubt myself immediately, but it seems to me that the third rule covers both the others. If I manage to write without doubt, then I will have fun and I won’t edit. So, okay, new rule for NaNo: Write without doubt.

And it is so me that I’m immediately thinking about how I could edit that, how I could say it to make it stronger, whether Abandon is a better verb, what the implications of abandon are… but I’m going to stop myself. Time to move on to the story. Tomorrow maybe I’ll invent a new rule.

Breakfast is over, day 2 has begun and no words have been written. Except, actually, I wrote almost 500 in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep and realized that the plot bunnies were procreating. I had that “oh, you’ll remember in the morning” thought, followed by “no, you won’t, you never do” so I got up, turned the computer back on and typed notes as fast as my fingers could move.

I have not yet looked at those notes to see if they make any sense, however.

Today’s plan: to keep going. I’d like to get to the stage where I’m hitting 2K words, not just the bare minimum. (Yesterday I hit 1670 and quit, but then it was 10PM and I hadn’t had dinner yet, so…).

More important, though, is to remind myself to have fun with it and to stop, stop, stop editing myself. Last night, when I was deleting words as fast as I wrote them, I reminded myself that Russell Blake would say that I was carrying an anvil uphill. Put that damn anvil down. Nobody’s going to be asking me to … shoe a horse? hammer a sword? what the hell does one do with an anvil these days? But maybe that’s the point. It’s a useless anvil.

Hmm, I can see that I’m rapidly getting trapped in that metaphor and whether it’s suitable for the modern world. The other day I stumbled over a failed souffle in an article and when, out of curiosity, I began to research, I learned that most people know about failed souffles from Warner Brothers cartoons. I suspect anvils are much the same. It’s a visual metaphor, cliche because it has no meaning in our real lives and yet is easily understandable to most people.

Anyway, today I’m going to try to set the anvil down. 300 words written for this blog post and none of them count for NaNo. Off I go to see if I can pump out a couple thousand that will count!