Happy Halloween!

First of all, I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween! It’s a cold and gloomy day here, which is perfect for Halloween when you think about it. I went to a very fun Halloween party on Saturday night. I was so happy to see a very dear friend for the first time in 4 1/2 years. I didn’t know anyone else there, but everyone was super nice. They were also absolutely hilarious! I don’t remember the last time I laughed so much–it felt great. I wish I had said more, though. I’m getting better about talking to people I don’t know, but it’s still not an easy thing for me to do. I had hoped to make a new friend or two the other night. Hopefully said friend will have another party sometime and invite me so I can try it again. 😉

NaNoWriMo starts TOMORROW! I’m not ready! It’s a good thing I still have about 12 hours to do last minute planning. I’ve decided to develop the characters as I go. It’s not like I’m creating new characters since I’m basing my novel on a ballad, so I at least have something to go on there. I can plan the story as I go, too, so all hope isn’t lost if I don’t finish planning by midnight. I just hope I can hit 50,000 words. If I finish the story before I get that many words, I can always go back and find things that I can elaborate on. I’m going to try and aim for 2,000 words per day, which is doable. I had to write 4,000 (or more) each day when I was freelancing last year, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t. I’m also an experienced writer (just not where fiction is concerned), so I know some days I’ll have an easier time of it and go over the word count goal, and other days I’ll be struggling to get 2,000 words, if I do at all. It’s just part of the game.

Planning the story has been interesting. It feels like I’m just making random things up off the top of my head. That’s exactly what I’m doing, actually, but my point is that it seems like that should be more difficult. I know there will be holes that I’ll have to go back and fill in, etc., but one of the things that has kept me from writing is that it just seemed like the story planning should be a long, painstaking process. In just the few planning sessions I’ve done, I gotten a prologue and four chapters mapped out, and I’ve got a good start on the fifth chapter. All together, I’ve probably put about 2 hours into actual planning. That seems like a lot for such a short amount of time, and I know it can’t really be that easy. Nothing is ever that easy. Maybe it’s because I’ve been kicking this idea around for at least a year and a half?

By the way, when I say “planning,” I think it must be what most refer to as “outlining.” Basically, I’m just making notes about what I want to happen in each chapter, but it’s not in formal outline form. I gave that up as a bad habit when I got out of school. I actually got points taken off of an outline once in high school because it was “too detailed.” Isn’t developing your ideas before you put them on paper a good thing? I can’t work from just a few fragmented thoughts scribbled down on paper! I need details! Even my notes for my novel are written in mostly complete sentences.

More planning to do! It’s getting down to the wire now, but I think this will be an interesting experience.