I suck at NaNoWriMo.

Yesterday, I had a nice dinner with my dad and stepmom, and a lovely long chat with my brother. I spent hours upon hours trying to figure out my taxes and finances and come up with a plan for my kitchen repairs. And that was it. I don’t even understand where the day escaped from me. Okay, the dinner I cooked was sort of serious: apple & cranberry stuffed pork sirloin tip roast, with cranberry sauce, cinnamon baked sweet potato rounds, and a salad of mixed greens, roasted brussels sprouts and pecans topped with a warm cider vinaigrette. It was probably a solid hour of prep time, plus another hour of oven checking and flipping sweet potatoes. But still, how did I lose a whole day and finish with no words at all?

I’ve got about 10,000 words of story written and ten days left of NaNo. I’m probably not even going to reach my revised 30K goal. But that’s okay. Today’s a new day and I’ll write today.

Yesterday’s total: 0 words.

At least I wrote a blog post.

I have excuses — stuff, things, phone calls, stupid bureaucracies, paperwork, cover distractions, life. And honestly, they’re pretty good excuses. But also, I fundamentally just didn’t feel like writing yesterday.

Today, I’m going to turn the internet off for at least part of the day and try to write in focused sprints. I again have “stuff” — a book file that I hope to update, a meeting with another kitchen guy, the possibility of yoga, the need to fill out appeals forms and get things in the mail — but grabbing an hour or two for writing ought to be completely possible, if I keep the internet off and avoid mindless games and blog reading.

Someday — even someday soon, I hope — I should hit the point where the book really starts to coalesce and writing gets easier. Maybe today will even be the day.

It’s 2PM and I haven’t written a word. I spent the morning struggling with the health care exchange, a subject about which I don’t even want to start because I am so, so, SO frustrated, and most of the afternoon trying to resolve my kitchen issues. I was just starting to open my file when I realized that I hadn’t even written a blog post and I need to leave the house in ninety minutes. My frustration level has not gone down as a result of those realizations.

I’m at a “I don’t know what I’m doing!” place in my story. They happen all the time and I’m sort of used to them, but they’re never much fun. I remind myself that if I just keep writing, stuff will happen, the plot will reveal itself, onward I’ll move. But it’s feeling like a rough week and it’s only Tuesday.

Goal for today: to write something. To be nice to myself. Possibly to fill out the ridiculous appeals paperwork to continue my ongoing struggle with the health care exchange. I… am not going to vent about that. But I had a period this summer where I thought I was incredibly stupid and it turns out that no, they LIED. LIED. And are still lying. Ugh, it pisses me off. But at least if I get it done today, I won’t have to waste another day this week being annoyed at them.

Onward!

I woke up allergic this morning: congested, itchy eyes, the over-tired feeling of an immune system overreaction. It annoys me mightily. I left a write-in early yesterday because I was hungry and knew that if I stuck around, a gluten-free chocolate brownie would become too tempting to resist. If I’d known that I was going to be allergic anyway, I would have eaten it and enjoyed every bite.

Today, my accomplishment is going to be yoga. When I feel like this, there’s a real temptation to just crawl under the covers, but I’m not going to. Some words will be written–probably bad ones, but they’ll be written anyway–and I will go to yoga. Everything else is going to be an optional Monday decision.

Day 17 and I’m not even close to my revised goal, but at least I’ve written a blog post every day.

The words trickled in yesterday. A sentence here, a sentence there. I wound up with less than 400 at the end of the day, without the justification of having gotten a lot done. I didn’t even make it to yoga. I did, however, resist eating an incredibly delicious-looking cream puff that filled my house with sweet scents through the afternoon. C was making them for a special occasion dinner and they looked–and smelled–so good. But I feel as if I’ve been paying for the foods I ate on Wednesday for three days of sluggishness, high anxiety, achy joints and general malaise, and I wasn’t willing to start that cycle over again.

Interestingly, today (day 4), I took the dog for a really long walk, had great book thoughts while I was doing so, made my bed, straightened the living room, put my shoes away and started writing a blog post instead of browsing the internet for an hour or two… alas, the joints still hurt, but supposedly a food reaction lasts three days and apparently it’s now over. I enjoyed the French fries, but they weren’t worth it. But at least I’m not starting over for the sake of a cream puff. (They did look impressively good, though.)

Today’s goal: to write words. Maybe to start the scene with the fun new character I was imagining on my walk. I hope they turn out as snappy as I imagined them.

I hope your Sunday goes well!

Yesterday I got a ton done. Not a ton of words, unfortunately. But I met with the kitchen people, I went to the grocery store, I made chicken soup using the broth from the other day, I had a long phone call, paid some bills, researched health insurance… it was a productive day.

Just not with words.

I have reasons–or at least suspicions of reasons–that mostly boil down to how much NaNo does not work with my writing style. I think, as a writer, that I’m like one of those painters who does lots of sketches first. All of the sketches matter. All of the time spent thinking matters. I tried to convince myself yesterday that even though the words I was writing were terrible, I should just keep writing and consider it a first draft. But the words were too bad for that. I needed to work out the sketch first, decide what was happening, how and when, and that involved time spent doodling, not drawing. Yesterday was a doodling day.

Today… I’ll see. Onward I go, writing every day, blogging every day, and eventually, past experience indicates that I will have a book. Eventually. Just probably not at the end of November or even at the end of December. But when I get there, I think it’ll be fun.

Days should not begin with a dog throwing up in your bed. It should be against the rules of life. The roll of the dice should prohibit it.

Um, it’s early. I’ve got laundry in the washing machine already, go me. Except it’s just the sheets from my bed with the quilt waiting patiently in the laundry basket, so as chores go, it’s… well, not a net negative, but a net neutral at best. That chore didn’t exist last night so doesn’t really count as something useful to have done, and I’m in the middle of it so it’s not finished. I guess that does make it a net negative.

Something big is rustling around in my backyard. I thought it had to be a dog and then I realized both dogs were still with me. That’s a good horror movie feeling. But I went outside to check it out and whatever it was got very still, so I’m voting opossum or armadillo. Not serial killer, because then, of course, I would be dead. I’d be a bad horror movie cliche, the unarmed woman going outside to check on a mysterious noise. But most backyard mysterious noises turn out to be rabbits, so I wasn’t actually worried except for that momentary thrill of fear.

Today… will include writing. And going to a kitchen cabinet store, and trying to deal with my health insurance online, and (*fingers crossed*) some progress on a cover for ALM, but mostly, I hope, writing. It’s not a good sign that I’m really wishing for caffeine, but I am.

When I am really into what I’m writing, I get totally spacey. I wander through my house as if it’s invisible, I trip over things and then kick them out of the way instead of moving them, I leave dishes piled in the sink and on my bedside table, I promise the dogs that I’ll take them for a walk and only remember when they wiggle their way into my lap…

My sink is empty, my floors are spotless with nothing to trip over, the dogs are well-walked.

Word count yesterday: probably negative. I edited instead of writing. And then got frustrated with what I was trying to revise and edited some more. And then cut some more. Next I hated myself, hated every word I write, decided I was a terrible writer, and played a lot of Shanghai. Finally I talked myself down from that and spent a long while trying to think myself into my story world, trying to capture bits and pieces of scenes and interactions. At 9, I went to bed. I woke up this morning, still not in story world, but still determined that I’m going to get there.

I like Grace, I like Cam, I believe that they’re going to have a good story together. At the moment, it doesn’t include much in the way of adventure, so I’m going to find them some adventure, but I’m also just going to write the scenes that come to me, as mellow as they are. And–a resolution, a promise, probably mostly a lie–I am going stop thinking about the eventual reader. If I can make this a story that *I* love, then I need to have faith that other people will love it too.

Today’s goal: to get myself into writing mode, story world, whatever I want to call it. To get to that place where the story is as real to me as reality. And if I don’t make it there, to not have that be because I didn’t put all my energy into trying.