NaNoWriMo signups are almost here!

Wow! September is almost over and I haven't blogged anything! I had started to blog something about a post I ran across on Exploded Fiction which caught my eye, but I got distracted and didn't finish.

I hope that's not a bad omen. I have to admit I'm feeling a little nervous about NaNoWriMo starting up soon. While I can't wait to sign up, I remember how difficult it was to write a novel at my own pace and I know doing 50k in 1 month, what with holidays and family and regular life on top of everything isn't going to be easy. If I were back in school and didn't have a wife and kids, things might be different.

It doesn't help that I tend to edit as I go. It's hard for me to just spew words down on page--especially since I've been writing this epic story in my head for years now. (I fully expect the final product to be at least 100k.) I need to make some serious progress on it, but I've also totally failed to finish my outline. I have a beginning that may or may not be the right beginning and I have an ending. I've got a number of scenes that I want to stick in, but I'm not sure exactly where. My problem, in large part, (besides second guessing myself) is that I don't have the protagonist's story arc fully figured out, which leads me to question whether or not I should change the focus to another character.

I guess I'll just have to step back and look at this as a massive brainstorming session. Write everyone's story and then go back and cut and prune. I'm sure once I start things will go better. It's just the waiting that's driving me crazy.