I have now decided that the expression, “Oh my God!” is absolutely not taking the Lord’s name in vain. No, it is definitely a prayer. 100% prayer – as in, Oh my God, help me, this child is driving me up the wall!

1.) First, right before Christmas, you have what is either a family financial crisis, or the best thing that ever happened to your hubby. Try to wait around patiently until you find out which of those it is. But don’t worry too much – not just yet anyway – because there are thousands upon thousands of families just like yours in Michigan this Christmas, and you are actually not as bad off as some.

2.) Write a short story that shatters your whole novel (for the second time). Shatter it completely, then rebuild a new plot structure around that short story, because it actually fits quite well with that chapter you vowed you would write the whole book around. It really seems to make for a much stronger book – but you don’t wholly believe yourself, because you’ve claimed this before. This isn’t starting over, just restructuring, you tell yourself – you have to tell yourself this because otherwise you would have to admit that you are, in fact, a failed novelist after all.

3.) Spend a little bit too much time playing your Sims, because at least Sims aren’t supposed to make sense.

4.) Try to have a normal Christmas for the boy, because little boys need normal Christmases, and you just figure God or fate or the universe has it all worked out and happening for a reason – like how you never did get around to picking up a second car payment, or never bought a house in this deteriorating state of Michigan, or how you somehow managed to already buy all of the boy’s Christmas presents before #1 happened, when you normally leave Christmas shopping until the last minute every other year. Fate intervenes, people, believe it.

Earlier in the week, I had one of those lightning-bolt-of-inspiration nights, the kind where I have to get up out of bed at 4:00 in the morning (hubby says – with a laugh, by the way – “I hate it when you do that.” He married a writer, what does he expect?) and vomit four pages of a short story into my computer.

I don’t even know what this is exactly, this story, an off-shoot alternate-dimension Danny and Lexi story. Is that allowed? Writing about my characters in a different reality that can’t exist within the confines of my novel? I thought about trying to work it into the novel somehow, but it’s completely contradictory to everything the novel is doing – it would have to be its own, different novel, and I have no intentions of doing that again, lol. The novel I’m working on is a good one, and I’m going to finish it. And this short story is good on its own. I’m leaving them nameless in the story anyway, because I want it to stand on its own.

(Please, somebody tell me to finish my novel! Please, beg me not to start it over again!)

It’s kind of like The Butterfly Effect – did anyone else love that movie? That was a very underrated movie, in my opinion. I found it fascinating, which is maybe my problem in writing – that when I get bored with the dimension my characters are living in, a new dimension looks so tempting, where fresh and interesting things are happening. (The grass is always greener on the other side?) I could totally see myself writing a whole book of these, all the characters of my novel and all the lives they might have lived in other dimensions. Maybe I’ll do that, a book of alternate dimension stories, AFTER I finish the novel, lol.

Anyway, this story, Danny and Lexi in dimension 453, is maybe the saddest short story I’ve ever written. It made me cry when I wrote it. (An abortion that she wants, and he doesn’t believe in, but he doesn’t get to make the choice.) How do you sum up a short story in a sentence? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get it all polished up and try to publish it somewhere, and then you can read it. God, when was the last time I tried to actually publish something? Maybe it’s time to try again?

Even my Sim stories are unusually tragic this week, and my Sim stories are very rarely ever sad.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

NaNoWriMo Ending Stats
37733 words, out of 50000

Total Novel Stats, as of 12/1/08:
49633 words
150 pages
four sections mostly done (of six), the fifth section is well plotted out, and there are ideas for the sixth (ending) – and the sections will have clever and poignant titles rather than just numbers
24 chapters done (of maybe 40?)
working title, still (but maybe won’t stick): The World Could Explode
POVs: 2 (Danny and Lexi – narrating voices at about age 23, from where the novel ends)
years spanning: 1997-2002
characters knocked off: 1
characters knocked up: 2
car crashes: 2?
theoretical ways the world could end: ~4
number of times Danny keeps a secret for Lexi: 3
number of times Lexi keeps a secret for Danny: 2
average number of major changes per student: 2.33
average number of religion changes per character: 1.75
# of smoking hot sex scenes: 1
# of cute/dorky sex scenes: 2
# of sex scenes that are simultaneously smoking hot and dorky: 1
# of sex references: too many!
percentage of characters who are inherently good, but flawed: 92%
# of evil unredeemable bastards: 1
anticipated mood of ending: bittersweet?
(I’m just being snarky by now – five hours of sleep last night, I’m tired)…

So, I won’t call NaNoWriMo a failure, even though I didn’t make the 50,000 words. Almost 40,000 words in a month is anything but a failure! I’m glad I did it. I wanted some bulk to work with, after having scrapped the whole first version of my novel and started over from scratch. That was about six months of work lost, and was a little discouraging, so I’m glad to have some of it finished again.