NaNoWriMo 2023 officially began at 12:00 am November 1. And I *almost* started in a deficit.

To backtrack a bit, I had intended to do Preptober. I had a spark. I wrote a post about it. I attended a handful of Leslye Penelope’s Preptober sessions early in the month (she recorded all of them, which you can check out on her YouTube channel). I was trying to be more of a planster (not quite a planner but more than a pantser).

And then I went on vacation.

The vacation, which I will post about later, was much needed and did me a world of good. I had an amazing time. However, it also completely derailed my Preptober intentions. I got back late Friday night, spent the weekend doing all the post-vacation stuff (laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, mentally preparing to go back to work). And then it was Monday and back-to-work, trying to get back into the groove after 10 days off. I nearly forgot that November 1 was just two days away!

Then November 1 landed. And it arrived on a Wednesday. Wednesdays are mandatory in-office days for me (along with Tuesdays). So I had to commute to my day job (which takes about 45-60 minutes one-way depending on how the metro trains are running) and work all day.

Then my calendar notice beeped reminding me of an event that I had signed up for over two months ago. An event that I had completely forgotten about.

The event was a 2-hour program on Nietzsche hosted by the Smithsonian Associates. For those not familiar, the Smithsonian Associates is the largest museum-based education program that produces educational and cultural programming across the Smithsonian’s world of knowledge. They have programs on everything. It’s amazing and awesome.

But it also sucks when you’ve forgotten that you signed up for one in the middle of the week on a work night.

The Nietzsche program was scheduled from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm, and I decided I didn’t want to miss it. I had just enough time to race home, drop off my work bag, grab a bite to eat, change into warmer clothes because late fall weather has arrived in D.C., and head back downtown to the Ripley Center. With commuting (again via metro) and 2-hour program, I didn’t get home until a bit after 9.

I seriously thought about skipping NaNo Day 1.

I also had some doubts about the spark I had had. But despite the hour, I decided to sit down at my computer and at least write a couple hundred words. My thought was if I could bang out at least 200 or 300 words, I would still be in a deficit, but I would have at least written something and set a good precedence.

(I know myself. Once I give myself an excuse to not do something once, it will turn into two times, then three, and before I know it, November would be over and I would have written nothing or nearly nothing. Because ya know, that’s never happened in one of the previous years.)

So I opened Scrivener, the writing program I use, and started writing. What came out on the page was not at all related to the spark I had had. The spark I had, tentatively titled Dream Walking, was a fantasy, maybe magical realism. What I was writing was clearly a contemporary women’s fiction or contemporary romance that had nothing to do with dreaming.

Yet I wrote, and wrote, and wrote some more. Before I knew it, it was after 11:00 pm and I had a bit over 1700 words. Even though I could have kept going, I was in a decent place to stop because I still had to wake up and do day job work.

I woke up with some ideas swirling in my head. Mostly character bios. But again, that work thing intruded and I didn’t start writing until this evening.

And I have written another 1800 words this evening, putting me at over 3300 words for 2 days and giving me a nice 200+ word cushion. I’ll probably still write a bit more after I post this and before shutting down for the night. (I still have to work in the morning. Stupid day job always gets in the way of my fun.) The story is pouring out of me pretty well. I don’t know where it’s going, I don’t know if I’ll make 50,000 words, but I do know that the setting was clearly inspired by my vacation.

We’ll see how it goes the rest of the month. So stay tuned for more updates.

If you have a NaNoWriMo account, feel free to buddy me. Or you so wish, you can keep up with my word count progress on my NaNoWriMo page.

Happy November and Happy Writing!