What gave me the idea I could write a novel? What was I thinking?! I’m a hack. The story sucks. I have no plot. My characters are flat. My prose is purple. I have managed to create 19,000+ words of sheer, unadulterated crap. Crap, I tell you! Why would anyone want to read crap? I should quit. I’m going to quit. I’m quitting. That’s it.

::phew::

Thanks. I got it out of my system.

Back to writing.

With NaNoWriMo in its second week, I’ve put enough time in front of my computer that I can’t begin to think of quitting now. I want to finish this, as I believed I’d made clear by the signs posted on my office door.

Genius at work, says one. Quiet, Novel In Progress says another.

The rest of my family aren’t big on reading, I guess, judging by the number of times they’ve walked up and hollered at me through the door. Just moments ago, in fact, my husband walked right in. I shot him a glance that would’ve rendered another man impotent. (He knows, however, I would not dare harm that particular part of his anatomy.)

“Oh, sorry,” he said.

“Damn straight.” I turned back to the computer and tried recalling the phrase I’d just been about to type, the one I’d spent three minutes digging through my mind to uncover, the one I desperately needed to transition from one scene to the next.

“Say, while I’m here,” he continued, “I thought I’d see if you’d be up for having friends over later.”

“Friends?”

“Yeah, you know, just a couple of people,” he said. “Maybe play some cards, throw some darts?”

“Later, though, right?”

“Yeah. Probably around 9 o’clock or so, once the boy’s in bed. I haven’t called anyone yet, but I thought maybe you could use the break.”

“If it’s that much later,” I said, “and if you haven’t called anyone, why are you interrupting me now?”

“Oh, well, that’s ’cause I didn’t want to forget.”

Gonna get me a new sign:

Warning: Do not interrupt for ANY reason or I’ll name a character after you and kill it off in a slow, painful and most embarassing way.

UPDATE: That goes for the cat, too.

I love this little cartoon script from Writertopia. Right now, it says it all.

Got up at 8:30 this morning and couldn’t wait to get to the computer. I’m caught up on my word count now, but still struggling with my Inner Editor and Inner Critic. I had to start this morning’s writing session in a brand new document just to resist the temptation of going back and fixing the sloppy writing that raced across my mental teleprompter while I tried to fall asleep last night.

Meanwhile, my main character continues to throw me for a loop. Despite a rather detailed outline, the book is taking on its own direction. She has let me know in no uncertain terms that SHE is in charge and that my job is simply to type whatever she chooses to reveal, regardless of all my well-considered plans.

On my way back to the computer just now, I wound up having a conversation with my daughter that perhaps only another writer can understand:

Me: “Do we have any bourbon and oranges?”

Princess: “Why? I thought you weren’t going to drink for a month.”

Me: “Yeah, but I need to remember what an old-fashioned smells like.”

Princess: “Uh, why’s that, exactly?”

Me: “Because Corinne likes them, and I’ve forgotten how they smell.”

Princess: “Who’s Corinne?”

Me: “Oh, she’s the main character in my book. Weird, I’d had her pegged as a white wine-kinda gal but apparently she likes old-fashioneds.”

Princess: “Mom? You do know she’s just somebody you made up, right?”

UPDATE: Jeff Harrell gets me.

Let me begin this by saying that it is never a good idea to start removing bloatware from a new laptop on which one has stored the first, say, 4,000 or so pages of one’s novel. And, just in case one does something stupid like that, it’s never a good idea to pick up that new laptop and throw it against a wall in anger.

I did one of those things. I’ll let you figure out which.

Yesterday around 3 p.m. I found myself way behind on my daily word count… WAY behind… like 4,000 or so pages words short. By midnight last night, I’d managed to recoup about half of my losses, though, and by waking up extra early this morning I managed to make up a bit more.

Now my progress (and mood) look a bit more like this. (For those of you who like keeping track of such things, I’ve included that link in my sidebar under the NaNoWriMo image.)

UPDATE: This cartoon made me spit coffee.