Okay. It’s November, and my first NaNoWriMo participation. Yesterday, we traveled in the van for most of  the day, day one of NaNo, meandering home from our vacation up north at a friend’s cabin on a lake. The only time I took out the laptop was a short bit on October 31, and then on November 1 — the morning we left. I felt I needed to get SOME words for my novel done so I wouldn’t fall too terribly behind on the suggusted word count.

By the time my hubby woke up a couple hours later (it was the last day of his vacation, mind you, and gave me some writing time), I told him I was ready to throw the laptop, jumpdrive, and every word I’d written right into the lake. I simply couldn’t get a good handle on the start. I hadn’t wanted to plan too much ahead. That’s not the NaNo way. I’m used to writing a novel over years, not days. And every day revising what I’d written the day before for two reasons: 1) my raw writing is really awful; and 2) it catches me up to exactly where I left off and gets me into the mood of the story.

Can’t waste time doing that during NaNo. MUST PUNCH KEYS. MUST PUNCH KEYS. Yet, today I raked some of the carpet of leaves from our yard (after I made myself write a couple pages). And now when I come back to writing, I think, “Oh. Maybe I should be blogging about this.” More procrastination.

Last night, the NaNo web site was sluggish, but after several attempts, I finally was able to get my count turned in. I am only 80 words or so behind of the steady daily count of 1,667 words. This morning I did about the same count. I could be doing MUCH HIGHER count, if only I’d quit procrastinating writing by all the other things I find to do.

I added two NaNo buddies today, answered some emails pertaining to NaNo, and sent son John, an email congratulations on his first day of NaNo with a word count very similar to my own. Yeah, John.

I confessed to him in my email that I cheated some on the word count. I included the “notes to the author” which I do all in bold so I can locate them quickly in the revision, notes like FIND OUT WHAT SUSPENDERS WERE MADE OUT OF DURING THIS TIME PERIOD. I also emailed my on-line critique group — four of the six of us are doing NaNo this year — telling them I cheated. That brought comments from two others who said they also cheated, counting words they’d written earlier in preparation for their NaNo novel. My guess is that my law-abiding son is not cheating like the rest of us long-term writers.

I need to quit procrasting by blogging or checking emails or adding buddies or raking our oak carpet from our wooded yard, and get back to the story. So… TTFN.