Countdown--four days!

My fingers are stuttering in excitement. If they keep stuttering after November 1st I'll have to give them a stern talking-to.

My brain's working over the same story I came up with a few weeks ago, and I really think it will be my NaNoNovel. It's dystopian, virtual world stuff. Although my brain seems to think that superheroes would be fun as well. Last year I knew exactly what I wanted to write and it changed on November 1st. I LOVE the story that actually came out, but it wasn't what I had planned.

In the last few NaNo years I've written The Monster at the Heart of the Castle (2012), Sig (2011, currently unfinished), It Takes A Village (2010), DemonBorn (2009), Beauty Syndrome (2008) and No one Argued with the Mountain (2007). I played with NaNoWriMo prior to 2007, but that was the first year I actually finished the novel during the contest.

Sig was the only NaNoNovel I actually wrote from an outline, and it fizzled on December first. I did character outlines and a basic story outline before NaNo started, and I was completely bored writing it. Why should I care, when the story was already written in my head?

The way my brain works, if I know where the story is going there's no reason to write it. I know this about myself. It's like reading the end of a book before I start the first page. I've tried various types of "outlining" and it always has the same result. Those stories sit in my file and I ignore them. On one I successfully ditched the outline, and that one turned out OK, but that's a mental twist I can't always manage.

The funny thing to me is the number of "outliners" who try to convince me that if I just tried it their way it would be different. I smile and ignore them.

According to some people, outlining is the only "right" way. We'll have to agree to disagree on that one.