So I got behind in my word count where I write 3,000 words a day. I wrote around 7.000 words today to make up for lost time and to reach 60,000. I have serious neck cramps from sitting at the computer most of the day. I did finally write the scene I had been planning for about five days. Yeah! It took fewer words than I expected. Darn! My poor characters are on a rollercoaster ride.

I have almost reached the 50,000 word mark. I have a lot more story to tell. One of the characters did a surprising thing. He finally woke up and returned to the living. My characters are in crisis mode yet again. I haven’t reached the biggest crisis that they have to face yet. I don’t know what that will be.

I have finally gotten to the point in my novel where my characters are surprising me. I did throw them into an impossible situation. They acted just like you might expect for a while. Not now. I’m not sure what hardship they should endure next. Death? Disease? Near Death? Surprise visitors? This time I have gotten attached to my characters. Death seems like too much.

I have this nifty shirt from the NaNoWriMo shop. Since you may not be able to see the words on the sign. It says, “An Idyllic Writers Retreat Smack-Dab in the Middle of Your Crazy Life”.

Does thinking about someone calling have them call? I wondered if this worked for anyone else. I had been thinking for a few days about how to get someone to be in contact, and then out of the blue I get a text message. Unfortunately after a small flurry of messages, I haven’t had a single one since. I wonder what had them stop.

Too bad I have no way of working this into my novel. It might be a fun little plot twist. In my novel world, there are no cell phones. There’s very little of anything. Think of camping the old way…no GPS, no matches, no air beds, no prepackaged food. It’s just you and nature. Maybe it is a bit like living in Africa away from cities. I don’t really know, since I have never been.

It’s about time. There’s my current word count to the right. I’m working on finishing this novel–that means writing the complete plot to “the end”–in the 30 days. I have written in spite of being sick. Wednesday was painful. It took 45 hours to write 3,000 words, and once I did, I ended there. Thursday was better. I wrote 3,000 words in about 2 hours. We will see what today holds. I’m still not better, but I’m not feeling worse.

First rule: Save often and make backups. When I say save often, I mean every few minutes. My word program crashed on day 2. Luckily, the last save had everything except the spelling changing. The recovered file was a joke. If I had gone with it, I would have lost a large portion of my story that I could not have rewritten the same. The word widget still isn’t working. There are technical difficulties over at NaNoWriMo land. I’m currently at 9,754.

The widget for word count isn’t working. That would be that little empty box on the right. I’m at 7,051 words with more to add tonight. I have so much going on tomorrow that I won’t have a chance to write, so I need about 2,000 more words. I’m shooting for writing a finished novel again this year. That means writing 90-100K words. There’s nothing like a writing goal of 6,000 words in one day. I’m at 4,000, and it has been fast and slow. The first 2K were slow today. The last 2K have gone by quickly. I like quickly. Tuesday is teaching day.

It’s that time again–time for NaNoWriMo. I’ve even got some idea of a plot already. I don’t know how I will get it done in November. I haven’t posted that I’m working. I will be teaching two course that have three sessions each. These courses teach good writing skills to scientists. I just finished the pilot program in October. We will have to see how much I want to write after teaching writing and correcting errors.

After spending hours (around 4) reformatting my manuscript, it is on it’s way to the editor for a formal critique. All of the indents for paragraphs had to be removed. There were a lot. I found a few errors along the way. Missing letters. Misspellings that spell check doesn’t catch. The whole thing needed to be double spaced. It wasn’t. That’s the easiest correction though. I think I need to check for a common format so I never have to do this again.

I’m getting very good and efficent at jumping through hoops. This is the last main hoop. After the formal critique comes back, I send it on to the agent. Then I wait while the agent does he or her work. Editing has yet to happen and will have to happen before publishing.

Is saying “I don’t know what to…(fill in the blank)” really an invitation for others to chime in? I actually called my mother for some advice/sympathy on this one. She’s an artist, so I thought she might have gotten unasked for advice on what to paint. I have heard her many times declare that she didn’t know what to do with a canvas. I can’t say that I have ever given any ideas. Like I have any.

So why is being a writer any different. It seems that everywhere I turn someone wants to provide “helpful” suggestions to my “I don’t know what to write next.” I don’t remember asking for help or advice or ideas. Why would I use someone else’s ideas? Even when I talk about what I’m writing and I get to that point where I’m not sure where the story is going, I get unsolicited help. Again, did I invite you into my story? Did I ask for collaboration? No. And, definitely no. Perhaps I should write about an author who is plagued by helpful friends whenever the author’s work comes up in conversation.

The only solution I have to this problem is to not talk about my work. In fact, I do try to avoid talking about my storyline with anyone while I’m writing. Everyone’s a critic.