Nanowrimo: Day 5

I am having an interesting time with my Nanowrimo novel this year.  For those of you who don't know, Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month and is a fun, fly by the seat of your pants challenge to write a (bad first draft) 50,000 word novel in the month of November along with approximately 200,000 other people worldwide. 

So far this year, I am pretty on track with my word count, but my plan was to be way ahead by now.  I thought because my kids are in school all day that I would have 5 uninterrupted hours to work on my novel and would basically be able to take weekends off.  Wrong.  Somehow, this hasn't been the case.  I've had meetings and obligations and things that come up.  Oh yeah, and the novel writing club that I am helping with at my kids' school... 


But, as of yesterday I was on track.  As of today, I plan to be behind.  Yup.  I'm planning on it.  This is allowing me great freedom in my mind so that I don't feel guilty for not writing or not writing much today.  As it turns out, I am doing an amazing creative muse workshop where we are altering a book to make it into a vision board.  We started last night and the process (and the company) is absolutely magical!!!

As far as my actual writing is going this week, well, let's just say that I've written better stuff, probably even when I was asleep.  This is terrible writing, but it is getting me somewhere.  I can feel the ideas coming.  Now, if I can just get my characters from the crazy situation they are in to the more interesting places they need to go...  But, that is part of Nanowrimo, at least for me.  The journey.  I love seeing the journey for myself and for my book.  And, thinking back, the first week is always like this - tough, getting to know my characters, solidifying the plot, things like that.  Today, when I don't write very much, I will still be percolating.  I have the characters in my head and they are rummaging around in there working out what to do next.

One of the women in the vision board group is also doing Nano.  She asked what I do when I'm stuck.  I said I describe things - what does everything look, smell, feel, taste, sound like.  And, as an insightful young elementary school girl told me yesterday, when you describe things, don't just use your five senses, use your emotions as well (amazing advice!!).  The other thing I do is have my characters talk.  They talk and talk and talk to each other until there is nothing left to say and they have to go out and do something, anything.

So, there is my rambley Nano update for now.  Is anyone else out there writing?  How is it going?  I would love a link up to your blog or a comment below.  Enjoy your weekend and happy writing!!!