My NaNo novel is going better, so far, than any of the previous attempts. I’m over 12,000 words, and I know, sorta, where it’s going. I previously never made it much past 5000, and I never had an outline before, not that the one I have is much of one. But any outline seems to be better than none for trying to mash out 50,000 words in a month.

Of course, at 12,000 words, I’m not on target anymore. I’ve essentially only averaged about 1,000 a day, which is far short of what I need to win NaNo. I’ve got to hit 2111 words a day, now, to win, and I don’t know if I can manage it. It was hard just getting 2000 yesterday. I just have too many projects going, and suffering through a cold for the last week hasn’t helped at all. I’ll have to see if I can pop some extra words out this weekend, but we’ve got projects to get completed around the house, too, so I don’t know how much uninterrupted time I can squeeze out.

I’m satisfied, though, with my progress. Even if I don’t win NaNo, I’ll finish the draft of this novel, as it will still count toward my goal for the next year (yes, I worked out my 2010 goals early) of getting three novels drafted.

“Huh, what?” you say.

I’ve come to the obvious conclusion that, if I want to get better at writing, I need to write. And I think I need to write a great deal, so I’ve set a goal of drafting three novels by the end of 2010. They’re going to be written as practice, with no intention of trying to get them published through a traditional publisher. I may even make them available here, in some fashion, if they aren’t total trash. A friend of mine, back in 2006, did a project he called A Short Story A Day, and this will sort of be my novel version of that project. I’m not about to post as I go along like he did. I’m not that comfortable with my fiction yet, but I may post them as I edit them. We’ll see.