NaNoWriMo 2011. It's gonna happen.

November snuck up on me. I was minding my own business when all of a sudden it leapt up and screamed, NOVEMBER 1st! on my calendar. I shouldn't be surprised, really. My dear husband's birthday is on that very day of NaNoWriMo beginnings. And that is perhaps why it didn't so much as sneak up on me as trailed me around for the latter half of October saying, "I'm coming! You can't stop it. November 1st is one day closer!"

I had a big surprise day planned for my husband's birthday this year, so it was with eager trepidation that I awaited the changing of the month: Super-stoked for the big surprise I had for him (flight museum, among other fun activities), yet lacking the time I needed to blast ahead with my word count just out of the gate.

Come November 2nd I already felt exhausted and behind. I guess NaNoWriMo is kicking me in the pants early this year. Does this mean it will be easier at the end? Is this a reverse year? Ha! I think I have to accept the fact that this isn't meant to be a walk in the park. Well, maybe Central Park.

Last year, I received inspiration from the Writerly Muses weeks before. Okay, it was probably only two weeks prior, but an entire story outline came screaming out of nowhere and smacked me in the forehead. It was pretty cool. Not gonna lie. That story left an imprint in my brain. I had plot. I had a main character. I had some conflict ready to battle it out on the paper. I had a story. And with a fervent desire to finish my goal, I had a finished first-draft of a novel by the end of November.

This year it's a bit different. Maybe it's because I'd recently found the time to start revising last year's story and would rather focus on that than a new, un-plotted, un-mapped, un-outlined story. Maybe I'm just feeling overwhelmed in general (car accident, husband working on his master's, the struggle to keep the joy in my musical playing). That's just life though, I suppose.

So I don't have an outline this year. So I really only started with some characters in some very poignant scenes that have been poking me for years to get out on paper. So I am a few hundred words off the target daily goal. This year it's just a new and different approach to NaNoWriMo. Perhaps simply because I don't have an outline I will be able to write more freely? In the past few days, I've already been astonished at things my characters have said and done. One of them chose an occupation I had never anticipated. It's amazing what comes out of nothing, isn't it?

I suppose each day of this month I will approach with some semblance of eager trepidation. If every NaNoWriMo were exactly the same, I'd be bored. This is to get me writing, no matter how I end up doing it.

The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of the November. The means is entirely up to me.