Finally Started....

Yesterday afternoon just before dinner I finished reading my NaNoWriMo novel from last year and was finally able to start writing. But it felt like I was spinning my wheels, unable to truly go forward. I finished the evening with a measley word count of 731 words.

This morning I spent time adding a scene that opened up some possibilities and then took aside my notebook and jotted down a pile of ideas -- simple brainstorming -- in order to add conflict to my story. I have a list of ideas to work from now that I hope will start me moving forward, re-entering the mindset of this character so that I can continue right where I left off. The place I stopped at when I reached 50,000 words last November 28 was such a great stopping place that it's been quite difficult to get the story moving again, starting to build momentum and rebuild characters ... and plot. Especially plot.

I'm still working on grading the MLA essays from my Brave Writer class; I told the class that I'd get their papers back within two weeks which will be up next Monday. I finally got the insertion of notes thing going so I can "grade" papers completely electronically for my students and then e-mail the graded papers back to the students. I need to grade one per day this week, but I also need to be writing 2000 words per day for NaNoWriMo; I'm almost up to 1700 words so far with a VERY long way to go. Part of me is discouraged, but I remember the high of writing for NaNoWriMo last year, how things seemed to magically come together and although it was a ton of work, it was incredible. Really incredible. And I want that again. I really need that again.

Here is my NaNoWriMo author page if you're interested. I'm going to go write some more this very minute. Perhaps I'll post an excerpt soon ... perhaps.