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Well, last month was a disaster as far as writing. There were a lot of things going in my life as far as my work situation that prevented me from really putting in the time to write. I was hoping that November would be better, but it’s off to a rocky start.

However, even with the less than optimal start, I’m not gonna give up and keep going forward with it. So far I have about 2000 words done and I can only go up from there.

Well, it’s October 1st and today is the first day of my personal NanoWriMo. I had some missteps in September due to events out of my direct control, but I’m now back on track and ready to go. I’ll be posting my progress here as I delve deeper into my writing frenzy.

I had planned in September to try and blast through the first of three months of NanoWriMo-style draft creating goodness, however, within the first couple of days I was blindsided by a couple of events in my personal life.

It’s amazing how a couple of things can throw you off entirely. For a good chunk of the month, I felt as if most of my creative energy had been siphoned off to deal with the problems assaulting me. At the end of most days, my mind was too frazzled and exhausted to even think of my novels.

But, instead of beating myself up over it, I’ve decided to get up off the ground, dust off my clothes and keep going forward, beginning with the next month. I don’t view it as a postponement, but as a re-affirmation of the goal I had set. I will get my three months of writing done one way or another.

All right! I made my writing goal for the first day and things are looking good.

Now I just need to repeat this for the next 30 days for the next three months…. Good, lord, what have I gotten myself into?

Seriously though, I’m looking forward to the end result of this orgy of productivity. Even if it may end up killing me, I’ll have a lot more to re-write, edit and get out there.

It’s both exciting and scary.

To keep track of everything, I’m using the NanoWriMo Report Card spreadsheet to track my progress and other stats. It’s a definitive must if you’re going to be pumping out words on a schedule like I’ve given myself. It’ll tell you nifty info how much you can produce in a given time period and just how much as a percentage you have left of your novel. You can find it here, and if you want to undertake NanoWriMo or decide to do your own personal NanoWriMo, then I recommend you get it.

As of now, the second day isn’t off to as good a start since I’m off to a career fair in the morning in order to secure some extra income to keep the lights on and the Internet flowing. But just like yesterday, I know I can make it up later in the day.

As I sit here in front of my keyboard looking at my novel’s template within Scrivener, I’m gripped with the that fear I haven’t planned the story enough.

I’m using a template someone created in Scrivener based on a program called Power Structure. The template has quite a bit of fields you can fill in with all sorts of information and while I’ve filled in quite a bit, I can’t help but feel there’s too many of these fields left empty. It makes me feel like I haven’t planned out my novel and if I continue forward with it I’ll be doomed to failure.

The rational part of my mind tells me this is just my perfectionism asserting itself and arresting my ability to continue forward. On the other hand my irrational fears are screaming that if I don’t fill the template completely, I’ll be writing myself into a corner I can’t escape. After which I’ll need to perform extensive re-writing and perhaps an outright scrapping of what I’d written so far.

So what’s the solution? As always, the truth lays somewhere in the middle. Some planning is needed to ensure the project is successful, but over-planning can stop it before it starts, miring yourself in too many details. In my case, I’ve decided to fill in only the parts of the template I feel are absolutely necessary and leave rest to either fill in at a later date or to forever stay vacant.

Like someone had once told me, planning is writing, but if planning keeps you from writing then it’s just wasting your time.