National Novel Writing Month (nowadays also known as NaNoWriMo) begins in just over six hours from the time that I write this. In 2001, when I participated for the first time, I was completely on the sidelines and lived in my own little world while I worked on it (of course, there were no forums on the website back then, and it was in the days before weekly write-ins in different cities and so on). I was all set to write my epic science fiction post-apocalyptic western back then, but at about 5:00 p.m. on October 31, I suddenly decided to switch and write Unfallen instead. I saved The Road to Gilead for 2003, which was the second time I participated in NaNoWriMo; and then I went to the kick-off party and to the Thank God It’s Over (TGIO) party at the end of November as well. The Road to Gilead was, if I do say so myself, a great story. It’s not fit for general consumption at the moment, and needs a lot of work, but I think it’s got great potential.

This year, I’m writing The Outer Darkness, and I am nervous. When I wrote Unfallen in 2001, I based it off of a role-playing game that I had run a couple of years before, so the plot was still strong in my mind. In 2003, when I wrote The Road to Gilead, the entire plot came to me in one sitting a couple of months before I’d even begun writing.

This time, though, I’m having problems with the plot. The novel is based off of a role-playing game that I planned and plotted and set in a milieu that my friend K. and I created together, but that I never actually got to run (and probably never will at this point, unless I do so for DunDraCon 2006). The plot is simple, but I have no idea how to execute it. None at all.

Which makes me nervous.

It could just be that I’m worrying too much. I’ve been planning on The Outer Darkness for this year’s NaNoWriMo since ’round about July, when I developed my Long Term Writing Plan (which I wrote about here).

In an ideal world, I would stay up really late tonight and begin writing right at midnight. Unfortunately, I have to get up really early tomorrow to work out, and, sadly, I can no longer do the all-night writing binges that I used to do way back in the day. Perhaps I’ll get up at five and push out a few words and upload the document to my CVS server so that I can punch out some more during some downtime at work tomorrow.

In other news, today is Hallowe’en. This year, we’re sitting in front of the television, watching specials on HGTV about haunted houses and throwing candy at small children when they come to our door making vague promises of vandalism. Next year I want to have a Real Hallowe’en Party, with costumes and scary movies and ghost stories and all that; I even have the perfect costume in mind for next year. Hallowe’en is my favorite holiday, and it seems a shame to sit around and moulder in front of a television all night.