NaNoWriMo Day 4 - Crises Encountered (hopefully averted)

I have often wondered, truly wondered, if I ever struck anyone as sheerly crazy. 

I know I tend to be capricious - often detrimentally so - but I generally am a very cautious person when it comes to absolutely life-changing decisions.

Well, sort of.

I was solidly set today on my Nano word count. I finished day four on a solid 7284 - slated to finish on November 27th and all that good stuff. 

Until I finished my allotted words for the day and realized that I was absolutely sick and tired of Nano already and really, really dreading the entry tomorrow. 

All my planning and careful character design and every bit of work I put into my novel before November 1st came around was tying me up, tangling me in and throwing me off. I was so sick of these characters and the plot and all the mess that I wasn't enjoying.

At all.

The plot I had wasn't conducive to writing a novel in a month. It was character-driven and the characters needed more time to open up their emotions and their lives than I could give in a word-count rush. 

I felt like I was wasting a perfectly good idea. I felt like I was butchering the lives of people who were - before this began - very, very dear to me. I felt as if I would reach the end of the month, fully ahead in everything, not even winded, and realized that I didn't care to keep 40,000 of the 50,000 words I had written. 

And since I hate editing and knew that I would only rewrite the story again at some point, basically ditching a month's worth of work, I decided that the effort was a senseless waste of time. 

To whit, I needed to either give up NaNo entirely or approach it in a different fashion.

I've currently decided that I'm going to start over armed only with a vague idea that I thought up in the car on the way to the mall. Basically a hazy and uninformed sentence about a perfectly ordinary girl stepping into a forest. 

At this point, I'm not sure if I'll succeed. I'm not a writer who plunges in madly without a clear idea of where I'm headed. And yet, here I go. I must write at least 1900 words a day to safely meet my goal and I intend to make full use of my curse for maundering and just write what I like and not care what happens tomorrow. 

Free at last - just glad this occurred on day 4 and not day 24.  

I may need that chocolate and caffeine now.

And maybe some key covers...

I hope to be able to see the letters on them when I'm finished with this venture. 

Until next time - if I survive this craziness,