NaNoWriMo Day 1: midnight madness

There's something special about sitting in front of the computer at 11:59 pm on the last day of October, waiting for that final minute to be over so that NaNoWriMo can begin. Even though I'm a NaNoRebel this year, I still went for the midnight start and ended up writing 2,317 words before going to bed.


Okay, the fact that I was battling epic hayfever and couldn't sleep may have had something to do with my even-worse-than-usual bout of insomnia.

A couple of posts ago I talked about The Frozen Tear, the story I'm trying to finish the second draft of by the end of 2012. At that point I was going to write the first 40k in October, then 75k in November and 35k in December. I should know better than to make plans like that, because between that post and now I had the story completely fall apart and have to be rebuilt... or possibly I had the story admit that nothing held it together in the first place and was obliged to build it from the ground up.

Fun times. Illogical though it may seem, I imagined a second draft with the equivalent of an entire novel's worth of planning behind it would be able to hold up to me actually writing it. It seems the answer is 'no'. Still, at least I have something resembling a plot now, working from the point of view of my favourite character from the first draft rather than the annoying kid I tried to turn into a hero. The result should be a much better story.

Enthusiasm level is maybe 6/10. It would be higher, but November and epic hayfever seem to go together. NaNoWriMo wordcount is 2,608 / 50,000. Draft wordcount is 11,111 / 150,000. Since it's still not quite 6pm on day 1, those numbers may be subject to change.