I'm feeling really weird about my Nano this year. So far, it's more boring than a sock in the corner. All those things that I read on the forums and in the promotional stuff about "just write and see what happens" - when other people do that, it seems like exciting and unexpected things happen. When I do that, nothing interesting at all happens. People walk and look at the sky and remark to themselves on the nuances of sunlight at that particular point of the day.
I'm having a hard time "just writing" this year. It's not like my inner editor is telling me to -- *totally distracted by Norma Desmond being melodramatic in her iTunes* -- telling me to go back and change things. My inner editor is much more forward-thinking than that. S/he is telling me that events need to progress intelligently, that I need to set up stuff for later incidents, and that before I write that scene where they go fishing, I have to know how the hell people fished commercially before they invented motorboats or how anybody fishes at all when they're not doing it with lobster traps or a fishing pole and bait. S/he is telling me that I can't skip around, and that if my characters are boring, I have to develop something to make them interesting instead of, say, dropping a giant meteor or a vengeful flock of killer albatrosses on their heads and seeing how they react.
I also have the annoying impression, one I don't necessarily believe but can't get rid of now that I thought about it, that this is going to be one of my "bad" Nanos, like the one I didn't finish in my first year of grad school. It was bad because I didn't have any feeling for any of my characters except for one who was already dead when the story started. I've only introduced two characters so far, and they're okay, but I don't like them all that much yet. I can't remember how I felt about the Nano characters I really like after the first three days, so I don't know if I felt the same way... but for some reason I feel like - this being my fifth year doing Nano, I should come up with something significant and well-written and brilliant (or at least with bits of brilliance, not just loads of mud) on the first try, not just... padding to get my word count.
I'm just going to hurry to parts I think I'll find fun to write. If other characters come in later who I like more, I'll make them the main characters. *shrugs* It's happened before. I feel sort of bad, because it tends to happen like that when I start out with female protagonists and then throw in some males ones who I'm much more interested in. But now is not the time for self-analysis!
Now is the time for eggplant cutlets and spaghetti. *goes to help
caitirin with dinner*
[edit: Eggplant had! Mmm. Also read part of our No Plot, No Problem noveling kit, and I feel less whiny and sorry for myself.]