It's Almost Over

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for you non-writers; the whole dirty, unkempt lot of you! Just Kidding, really!) is almost at its end. I'm only at 14,000+/- words as of today. I had expected to get about halfway through, but I hit a snag about three days ago, and haven't been able to make that final push. The snag is in the direction the story veered off in. I didn't see it coming. If you're not a writer and you're reading this, you probably wondering how a person can write a book and not know where its going. But novels are a funny beast--they take on a life and a consciousness of their own. The book rarely winds up where you planned for it to. I had my mini-plot for it written out (first time I'd ever plotted a novel before I even wrote the first word) as a road trip with a writer and a man who just got off parole for manslaughter. The killing was really more murder, but lack of evidence, yadda-yadda. Anyway, the writer is stuck in a rut, and thinks a week or so on the road with a man who's lived on the other side of the law will help him get his edge back and write a great crime thriller. In my plan the killer terrorizes the writer, forcing him to commit crimes, threatening his loved ones. Somehow it has become a fight against a malevolent alien being that starts out like a parasite. Both the ex-con and the writer are in it together, fighting for their lives, and the lives of every man woman and child on the planet.

It's more exciting a story now, but my pace has slowed as I try to keep the flow going. And a great short story is making me its slave. I'm not divulging the details of that yet, it's getting to the 2/3 point, and I don't want to jinx it.

Ain't writing fun?