Right on. Write on.

I have said it before. It is just as true now.
I work better under pressure.
I like a looming deadline, some sense of urgency bearing down on me.

While pondering life gloomily this weekend, I more than once thought of how rapidly time passes. Before long summer will be over, and with summer fading, fall is just around the corner. And with fall comes.... drum roll please... the NANOWRIMO writing challenge.

As I was enthusiastically singing the praises of this novel writing exercise last week, recruiting my friend Brian to participate (see Bri, now it is on the internet for the whole world to see – grin) it dawned on me that I cannot give myself over to the NaNo madness unless my work on Lillian’s story is complete and I have handed it over, as finished as a solid first draft can be, to someone else for review and editing. So, I am somewhat freakishly relieved to note that the clock is ticking now. My work has taken on a more feverish pace as I have just realized the following:

According to my latest storyboard and outline, I have about 30,000 words of work to rewrite.

I have another 20,000 plus words of work that needs some significant editing. (There’s a certain symmetry in being back to the 50,000 mark again.)

If I am going to do NaNo this year (and I most certainly am doing it!!), I need to put my current book to bed by Thanksgiving. That is Canadian Thanksgiving for those non-Canucks, which falls around the second week in October. This will give me about two and a half weeks to plot and plan out my 2010 NaNo story so I can begin writing at midnight (or whenever I wake up in the morning) on November 1st.

This works out to a mere 78 days to finish.

If I factor in vacationing in September, family birthday celebrations, a weekend which I am required to work, a visiting friend from Ireland and my trip to Montreal this coming weekend, I estimate I would realistically be left with about 65 days to write.

Figuring the rewrites will take me about two thirds of this time, it boils down to finishing the writing by September 10th, writing about 750 words per day. Child’s play when you figure I had to do 1,650 a day during November last year for the NaNoWriMo project.

I really do love these characters in Lillian's story. I have been living with them for over a year now. Consumed by what they think, how they would behave, what makes sense for them. They first came to me last spring and then fully took up residence with me last fall. I will by no means be finished with Lillian, Alejandro and Nicki by Thanksgiving, but if I work real hard, they should be ready to visit with some trusted friends for a while. God, does this sound weird to anyone other than me???

I have a few story ideas crawling around in the corners of my mind for this November. I have always wanted to write a story about sisters. I like the idea of the complex competing emotional tug of sibling relationships – love, competition, obligation, entitlement. It’s good stuff. I would also like to try writing a style totally other than my normal stuff – maybe a murder mystery.

Whatever I come up with for November, these coming months will be good for me creatively. It’s no secret I am not the most disciplined writer around. I need accountability and a mechanism to set my pace. I have posted a tickertape tracker so I can plot my progress til Thanksgiving. 750 words per day. That is just over two pages a day. No problem, right? Write!