Word count today: 1,735

Total word count: 22,711

Today is the exact midpoint of National Novel Writing Month. In theory I should be a 25,000 words. Being 3,000 words behind isn't that bad; I have five straight days off next week, so I'm hoping I can make up some of that ground then. Of course my wife has other plans for me, which involve remodeling a bathroom.

I haven't written anything for the past couple of days. I work for a nonprofit radio network, and we're having our quarterly pledge drive this week. It's an extremely intense week for me, and this one is even more intense than most. It's just more supporting evidence for the overall insanity of my trying to attempt this novel-writing thing at all.

The past couple days have been very intense at work; I've been working long hours and pretty much brooding about work when I wasn't working. I wrote nothing yesterday or the day before. Today I got away and went to Barnes & Noble for a little while. I sat in their little cafe (soy chai latte...yum) and wrote for about an hour. It was actually the best writing experience I've had since I started this. I usually write at the end of the day right before bed...not the best time to be creative. Sitting there with my latte, it was a nice opportunity to really get creative. I think what I wrote was a little more character-driven as a result.

The weekly pep-talk email went out yesterday or today from the NaNoWriMo folks, and one suggestion was to just write the interesting bits instead of trying to tie everything together. That was really helpful. The plot is getting away from me a little bit (I think I can tie it all together, but I need to come up with a couple more plot elements to do it). Switching to what's more interesting--for me, that's looking at the relationships the three main characters have with one another--might be a nice way to move into a more creative stratum.