NaNoWriMo—Day 1

No time to review today.  It's the first day of NaNoWriMo! 

That first day sets the bar for the entire month.  With a monthly word count of 50,000 words, you're striving for your goal of 1,667 words a day, but it's tricky.  You don't want to start out too strong, overshooting the goal by an insane number, thus burning yourself out early.  On the other hand, you don't want to fall short, ensuring you'll be playing catch up for all 30 days, only to be a blithering mess on November 30th and completely useless for the holiday season, or that you'll fall so far behind you'll just give up and just say "eh, I'll finish next year."  (Not that I've done that...four years in a row...)

I've found myself in a precarious situation of working on an idea I've been playing around with for a long time.  I've recently re-tooled it and think I know what I'm doing and where I'm going with the story, but as I sat down this weekend to outline I realized I'm already behind because I can't really "see" the entire big picture and I don't know what the hell I'm doing anymore.  The characters I thought I knew so well now seem like strangers and every word I write leaves me more and more unsure I really know anything at all. 

And this is day one!

This process always makes me fairly in awe of anyone that can actually finish a book, let alone get it published.  That's the thing they don't tell you: writing is HARD.  (Actually they say that a lot, but I always think they're lying somehow and there's some kind of video game cheat for writing a book...the same can be said for my views on my career, love life, and losing weight.  I'm still waiting on those cheats as well)

But my motto this year is "you can always revise later."  Now just remind me of that on day 15.

How about you guys?  Anyone else having day one jitters?