Ready? Set! You gotta be kidding me...

And November is just over the hill - a little under half an hour from now (here on the "Left Bank", that is). Thirty days of writing like crazy. Not really so much for those who have been writing constantly every day.

Sigh. I am not among them. Certainly not anything like writing 1,666.6666 recurring words a day. I had also planned that I'd have an outline ready on which to build this year's story. So Kevin, how'd that work out for you?

Well, I've still got about 30 minutes left, OK?

I have something. Not a full outline. Ideas, some scenes, some thoughts on characters, some background.

I used a package, Index Card, on the iPad to get some ideas together. It can export to RTF (no, not RTFM, that's something else entirely) so I'll pick it up in Scrivener on the Mac and create additional structure. It's been exported so I'll get to it. Just as soon as I finish this blog post, honest.

As the month goes by I'll expand on the structure, taking into account where the actual writing has taken the story.

I have the start, some ideas about how things progress and what backstory is needed, and a vague idea of how it ends (the good guys win - what else? Although...not all may survive.)

One thing I hope not to do this year is repeat last year's performance. Writing more than a third of the 50,000 words in the last weekend is not a good idea. This year I'll have to be more disciplined. Oh dear.

I'll be writing on paper with a fountain pen again this year. I have a stack of new pads and my Visconti Homo Sapiens pen. It has a fine nib that writes unlike any fine nib I've ever used. It's a joy to write with.

In other news...I received my revised Assignment 1 back from my novel-writing course instructor. Seems having two beginnings, middles and ends is not a problem. The idea and plot seem sound but work on depth and structure is required. Some of the questions my instructor asked have enabled me to see how I can build up my main character, and antagonist, to get a better-told story. I'm looking forward to how things develop.

One thing my instructor did say - this is the first time she's engaged with a student who had an entire first draft of the story already under his belt.

Let's see where this takes us.

To all who are engaging in the craziness that is National Novel Writing Month - Andiamo!