As many of you know, I’m in the middle of National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) and, as of this writing, I have more than 10,000 words written.

I thought writing a novel wouldn’t be a big deal. I do, after all have a published book (cough, Marketing in the Round, cough) and I write here every, single day. I even spent three months outlining the book (which is allowed as long as you don’t write any words) and I told myself I’d just get up an hour earlier every day and write.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done.

I’ve even been keeping pace with my friends who are also participating via Facebook and Twitter. It’s been fun. But it hasn’t been easy.

I got six chapters in when, on Saturday, I decided it was all wrong and had to start over.

The image you see on this blog post is the notebook full of my notes, the outline, the characters (or xters as my college creative writing professor used to call them), and even a timeline of the past 45 years so everything makes sense chronologically. (more…)