the first two hours

This is harder than I thought. I mean, I know I had trouble filling five pages when I had to write thoughtful analyses with a nice conclusion, so what did I expect, right? Writing a solid five pages of fiction a day isn't easy, even if I do get to make it all up from scratch. I've now been at this for about two hours, and I've barely got a thousand words (still about 700 short of my daily quota, if I'm to finish in 30 days). Why did they choose to do National Novel Writing Month on one of the short months, anyway? Why couldn't they pick one of the longer months? I guess it makes the division slightly easier (or at least the multiplication). I thought I would have a lot to write this first day, too--I had a bunch of ideas all planned out, and I even knew which scene I was going to start writing first.

Driving to and from class today, I developed my plot (by myself, and on the phone with Jo). The hour before midnight, I wrote out the scenes for my plot on index cards (per Holly Lisle's Plotting Under Pressure technique). We're supposed to be able to do our daily quota in about two hours, but I've only done a little more than half (and I'm really shooting to go over so I can slow down later, when I have fewer plot ideas). I've already written about three of my scenes. Each scene itself can be about 2000 words, according to Lisle, and I knew I would be short, but I didn't realize how short. I only made up about 30 cards, so I hope more material presents itself once I get to know the characters better. I think it'll help to take a break and pick up later. Also, note to self: Don't get bogged down doing flashbacks.

There's a cheesy excerpt at the bottom of my nanowrimo profile.