Ten days to NaNo.

Only ten days left and I am not ready. Not in the least bit ready. I've had a bad week that has added on to a bad year... and it's been hard enough just to keep up on work, let alone do anything more. My sweet Pip cat died a week ago. It was completely unexpected and I've had a hard time dealing with the loss. This was a cat who was never more than a few feet away from me. It was like a final blow in a time that was already not going well.

I am trying to focus on NaNo as something I've always enjoyed. I have one outline done and part of another one. I need to get that second one finished, and see if I can even do some more. But I have newsletters, Vision, site updates... lots of things to get done in the next ten days, and getting focused on any of it has been difficult. I did remember another outline that I have... somewhere on my hard drive(s). I'm going to hunt it down because it's complete and that might be real help. I will probably need to add a little to it, but still.... And it's the sequel to another book, so if I can read it and then go straight into the outline update that would help. I liked the story. I could use something fun to work on.

I would like to get fired up about NaNo and enjoy it. I would like to just 'turn off' reality for a while and leap into a story and write without worry.

Actually, I am doing that somewhat with Summer Storm. That was one of my earlier NaNo novels. 2006? 2005? I can't remember the year, but it came in too short for a full novel (so many of them do, even if they reach 'NaNo' length). I don't know why I had pulled it up a few weeks ago. I think Russ might have mentioned it. Oh, yeah -- when we were in Omaha about a month ago, I took some more pictures of the area where the story mostly takes place so that I could write some of it in.

Summer Storm has already grown by about 7k, and that's the easy part. I'm going for another 10 to 15k.

And I had sort of a glimmering of an idea for a sequel to it, too. That might be fun. There's nothing really coming together, though. (Why is my mouse pointed moving? Ah, Edmond. Of course.)

I keep hoping for something to leap out and inspire me to rush forward with all the work at hand just so I can get to it. I don't think that's going to happen until I can get past this horrible week. I don't know how long that's going to take. Maybe mid November.

If I'm lucky.