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A good night tonight, after a series of thousand-words-or-less sessions that nearly had me tearing my hair out. I overcame a minor bout of writer's block by simply not finishing the chapter that I was stuck on; there's a thirty-six word summary of what needs to have happened between where I left off and where the next chapter starts; I'll go back and fix it later on when I have some idea about how to write it (I didn't count the summary in the wordcount, just so you know).

The trouble is that I'm finding that one major plot thread is overwhelming the other major plot thread somewhat. I don't know if that means that I should concentrate on one over the other, but I'm going to continue writing both until they reach their conclusions. I'll weave them together properly and see what fits and what doesn't when I start editing. With a bit of luck and hard graft I'll have finished the first draft by Christmas.

I'd better get it done before then actually; I've got at least one Christmas story that I'm dying to write.

Well, that's the halfway point passed, at least. Well, sort of. Twenty-seven thousand and odd words, four thousand or so of them today. I feel pretty pleased with myself.

There again, though I might be more than 50% through NaNoWriMo (and ahead of time, too, which is nice), I'm only a quarter of the way through "Muse" as a whole. This is both good and bad. On one hand I can ignore, for the time being, my worries about pacing because, being only a quarter of the way through the story, I still have plenty of time to get the major thrust of the plot in (which should be happening within then next 50,000 words or so). On the other, I'm over a quarter of the way into the story and I already have some problems with the text so far at the back of my mind:

• I have only managed to touch on one of the dramatic threads of the story in one of the ten chapters that I've written so far. It's a matter of circumstance, at least in the way that I saw the story, that it's only reared it's head once; I need to make sure it comes to the front again, and soonish.
• Things seem to be moving slo-o-o-o-w-ly. But that may just be my perception of it.
• I have absolutely no idea where the story will end up, though this is not necessarily a bad thing.

And the odd thing is that though writing the thick end of 2,000 words every day has been hard work, and I've felt exhausted for a lot of the time (I've also not been to the gym in ages and have put a kilogram back on as a result, but we'll gloss swiftly over that), it feels good to have written so much - more than I've ever written on a single fiction project - in such a short space of time.

Now the question is: can I finish it? Not so much NaNo; so far there are no indications that I can't do that (unless I get blocked or trip over my plot), but the whole thing. Can I write 100,000 words? Even then, can I edit those 100,000 words into something publishable?

We'll see, I suppose.

Already I feel slightly silly for taking on NaNoWriMo. I don't know why. It's a peculiar habit of mine to feel embarrassed about the things that I write. It's as though I've induced upon myself some indignity of the slight but ultimately crippling variety, like attending a job interview with an open fly; I want the world to forget that I ever did what I did and leave me alone, never to be seen again.

And that's just after the first thousand words. Is there any hope, I wonder?

Matters were not helped by the lack of time to write this morning. The Lancaster and Morecambe traffic system was once again clogged with eager but impatient motorists trying to find their way to work, school or home without having any major accidents but at the same time without any particular care for the laws of the land. What should have been a ten minute drive took over half an hour and I found myself heading straight for the office instead of for the coffee shop. I shall attempt to get some work done during my lunch break instead, though I dread having to explain to my colleagues why I'm carrying my laptop around (again, why? I don't know).

On the upside though, this morning saw the arrival of an email from Chris Baty, god of all things NaNo, which cheered me up no end, particularly with the following passage:

Yes, November is our chance to play. To goof around in our imaginations. To fall asleep fulfilled and wake up a'buzz with revelations about backstories and front-stories and the electric, book-changing knowledge of what our Peruvian double agent has been hiding inside that taxidermized muskrat all this time.

I think I shall have to print that out and frame it above my desk as a reminder of why I'm here: Don't worry about getting it right, just get it written. You can fix everything in the re-drafts.

1,142 / 50,000 (2.3%)

Well, fifty minutes of writing (from the stroke of midnight, no less) and I'm already past the two percent mark for NaNo and the one percent mark for the project as a whole. Not too bad a start.

I got distracted though, and started to procrastinate, so I've stopped now and I think I'm going to get some sleep. Perhaps a visit to Caffè Nero before work tomorrow will help to add a few words to the count.

I'm ready. I'm not too tired, I've had a relaxing bath (softie), I've got my opening paragraph poised and ready to roll over the plains of NaNoWriMo.

And I've still got over an hour to wait.

It's like waiting for Christmas, only without as many fat-and-hairy or short-and-pointy people. Oh, and there's a distinct lack of jingly-harnessed, cloven-hooved beasts of burden on the roof.