Despite a good amount of writer’s block, interruptions from children who like breathe and stuff, and you know life… I managed to keep up with my word goals all week, even throughout the weekend – finding inspiration where I could and getting creative or just pounding out words when all else failed. It was amazing.

This morning I had 8 million things I’ve been neglecting that I decided to quickly attend to before writing. I emptied and loaded the dishwasher, fed my daughter breakfast, checked my email, made a shopping list for the Thanksgiving dishes I’ve agreed to cook this year, looked into some gift ideas that I’ve been considering before I forget them again, acknowledged my social life, read my RSS feeds and okay fine – I’ve been avoiding my novel today.

After hours of just being plain avoidant and contrary, I sat down to write and only a couple hundred words spilled out. I felt absolutely no interest in the scene I was writing but even worse, had nothing else better I wanted to write either. Part of the problem is that the book and I are at a bit of an impasse as I realize that I need to tighten down my plot a little bit so that I have something resembling a coherent story and not just a long string of tangents. What I’ve got so far works but I had no real intentions to develop many of the plot points that I’ve established. Do I rework the ideas in my mind so that they all actually connect or just march on into vaguesville? I cannot decide and truthfully I have no idea what happens next or what I want to write anyway. I am empty today.

In the past I have been a very fickle writer – the girl with a million ideas but no patience to execute them. It’s a crippling problem that when my plots start to bore me, I tend to just move onto greener pastures and so for me Nanowrimo is like the ultimate exercise in patience, restraint and will power. It’s a scheduled time frame in which I try to recommit myself to this writing thing that I love but have a hard time making time for because at the end of the day it’s really only about me and I don’t like devoting time to things that are only about me.

I know it’s Week Two and that I’ve entered the dreaded two week slump and that the best course of action is to just keep writing but today I just flat out don’t want to and with both kids home now and an afternoon of errands, karate classes and figuring out dinner ahead, I’m thinking I need to throw in the towel for the day and try again tomorrow.

The good news is that last week I was feeling at least this pessimistic and the next day I recommitted, got back on track and managed to push that momentum into the rest of the week so there is a chance that the same thing will happen tomorrow if not sooner. And at least the dishes are mostly caught up with and the majority of my distracting obligations and desires have been tended to already so that hopefully I can just get straight to work tomorrow and have few excuses to deviate from my writing plans.

Wish me luck! And if you are writing a novel this month, good luck to you as well!