Every year I mean to do NaNo and don't. This year I have a friend whose whole family is doing it and she's poking me with sticks to get me to keep her company. I can find time to write at least an hour a day most days. It's getting my butt in the chair and putting words on the page that's hard.

Still haven't settled on a concept. I may just start writing with no idea what will come out of me, and see what happens.

I may just start writing with no idea what will come out of me, and see what happens.

That can be fun, and also sometimes enlightening.

So far I have three paragraphs. But it's a start, right?

I have written a sentence.

A post by Maggie Stiefvater (she wrote the Shiver books -- werewolves -- and The Scorpio Races, and the Raven Boys books) on NaNoWriMo: [link]

I don't know my ending. I do know why I'm writing what I'm writing, more or less. I think.

I'm realizing, though, that I have characters, setting, and themes, but not an actual plot.

I wrote about 1,200 words today. The nanowrimo site said I should have 1,600, but whatever.

Go, Calli!

If you do 1,600 per day, you get 50,000, yeah.

I'm going to try to start tonight. I'm going with a loose interpretation of "50,000 words total of novel and world-building/characterization notes," because I didn't have time to do anything like as much pre-writing as I'd planned.

I didn't have time to do anything like as much pre-writing as I'd planned.

I didn't do any. I'm going with an idea I had a few months ago, but I only have half a page of very basic notes. The setting and some of the characters are pretty well formed in my head, but I don't have anything like the foundation I usually do when I start writing.

So ... I'm counting my paragraphs as having started today, and I'm going to brainstorm some plot stuff tonight.

This is an idea that I've had in its most basic form--a baseball story with a time traveler--for ages and ages, but it only took on a definite shape, with characters and stakes, in the last couple of months. Part of that taking shape was realizing having my time traveler really needed to come from the 1920's rather than the 1860's as I'd originally planned, and since what I know about the 20's going in is that they were Roaring and led up to the Great Depression...yeah, I'm winging it.