so it begins

it was a dark and stormy night...erm, or, rather, a rather cool and pleasant night. It's September 30 at 10:58 pm. I am an hour and two minutes from beginning my novel. I just wrote an e-mail to almost everyone i know telling them about the project. that was incredibly uncomfortable. i hate asking for anything, even moral support for a project like this. but i wrote the e-mail to kind of force myself to tell everyone about it so that now i'm not only expecting it of myself, but other people are expecting it, too. it was hard, though. i didn't want to do it. at all. the kit i got suggested that you tell your worst enemies about your plans so that they can humiliate you if you fail. i wasn't quite brave enough for that.

so, i'm an hour out and i'm nervous. a little scared. i know i'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to do this and do it well. which isn't really the point. the point is to write 1,613 words per day, whether it's good or not, and to just get it out on paper so you can fix it up and make it pretty later. but i'm a perfectionist, so...it's going to be really hard to let go and just write without judging what is coming out on the computer screen.

as far as the novel goes, i've got my beginning scene, and a rough plot outline. from the beginning scene, i'm going to flash back to the beginning of the story, carry through to the point in time that the beginning scene happens, work from there to the climax, and hopefully wrap things up nicely. i've got a main character and a couple of minor characters, but i don't have anyone fleshed out too much. i'm hoping to go with my gut on a lot of it. besides, overthinking everything was driving me crazy. so. i'm going to try to write on the blog every day, at least a little. i will put up my word counts (daily and total) and let you all know how i'm coming along, how i'm feeling, how the writing is going, etc. i may give you a little taste of the novel, but i haven't decided yet if i want to do that. i may not. letting everyone know i was doing this was scary enough, even though everyone i've told has been incredibly supportive, which i'm really thankful for.

alright, i gotta go get my notes together.

i am going to kick this novel's ass.