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I’ve hit what you might call “a wall.” By Sunday midnight I need to have 10,000 words written to be anywhere near on track. Looking back at last year, though, I’m actually a bit ahead of my progress, so that’s something.

After a bit of creative rearranging, the first and sixth words of my novel are now “murder,” and Detective Delano “PT” Planine-Troiani is on the case. This has the unfortunate side effect of creating three sets of characters, much like last year’s novel, a situation I was trying to avoid. To make it seem less like a total ripoff of last year, I will not be pairing the detective up with anyone. He’s a loose cannon who doesn’t play by the rules in the corrupt precinct of a city gone mad. Or not. Besides good ol’ PT, we have:

• Richard Hunter: aspiring writer, Dan Brown fan
• Holly von Grall: free-lance reporter trying to get her big break
• Stanley Sykes: obnoxious creative writing coach, bad author

As well as your usual collection of minor characters like Sal, the grizzled crime scene investigator and Bramlet Abercrombie, the uh… Australian zeppelin pilot with a heart of gold? I just want to use that name for someone, at least. Anyway, I’ve uploaded the first chapter to my NaNo profile page for perusal, if you’re so inclined.

For some reason, this seems harder than last year. I’m bored with my characters and the story is going nowhere fast. You might say that I’m expecting too much; I’m not that far into the novel yet. But last year by this word count two planets had already been taken over! Thus far in The Dan Brown Code we’ve discovered that our main character uses his laptop on a folding chair because he doesn’t have a desk. Now which one grabs you and makes you want to read more, hm? Don’t say the chair one. Because that’s wrong.

Also, my style seems to be suffering. I really like how I wrote Megalomania! barring a few awkward parts that a little editing could fix. Now my narration just seems clunky and unwieldy. I read a bit of The Da Vinci Code to see if I could lift Brown’s style for comedic effect, but all that did was make me realize he has no style. Aside from chapter breaks every three pages, which really doesn’t count.

I’m going to try writing on my laptop for a bit. Maybe the increasingly uncomfortable heat it generates in my lap will spur me on to writing greatness.

Well, I’m not too happy with what I’ve written so far, but that’s okay, because I know that fun things will start happening once the character introductions and exposition are over with. If you were expecting an excerpt, you’ll just have to wait. Also, I won’t be making any sort of word count thing, because the fine folks at NaNoWriMo did it for me. They’re still working out a few of the bugs, so that link may be intermittent. Now I must sleep so I can go to work at 7 am tomorrow. Not a good start to a noveling month.

It starts. One year ago I set out on a fantastic voyage of wordification, and triumphed at the end of the allotted thirty days. Will this year be a repeat performance? Will I suffer at the hands of procrastination and writer’s block? Will I buckle and buy Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories? The answer to all three: a resounding yes. Sit tight, my friends, for today we embark on another legendary journey of wordulation, in search of the elusive 50,000th word.

The “back-of-the-book” exercise helped me so much last NaNoWriMo that I think I’ll do it again! My novel inspiration this time around comes a little bit from the The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, where King actually wrote himself into the story in a very Adaptation-esque sort of way, only with more gunslingers and doorways to other dimensions. There probably won’t be any dimension hopping in my novel, but I’m not going to rule out the slinging of guns.

After attending a rather uneventful writing workshop, an aspiring writer named Richard Hunter stumbles across the manuscript for Dan Brown’s new novel. He quickly reads the entire thing, but much to his chagrin the ending is missing and Brown is nowhere to be found. Now Richard must track down the elusive author to return the book and learn the ending, before he goes completely mad! Well, maybe not so much mad as very annoyed. Still, his task is made more difficult by a series of strange clues that seem to indicate that Dan Brown has been kidnapped by an angry religious sect- the very group featured in the new novel! Richard, along with free-lance reporter Holly von Graal, will take to the land, seas, and skies in an attempt to find Brown before its too late. They may even get an autograph, if they’re lucky.

That’s not quite as detailed as last time, but the story’s not nearly as complicated. You know, I fully intend this story to be silly, but I fully expect it to get serious and adventurey like Megalomania! did. Even this short synopsis was headed that direction. Ah, well.

50,000!

Mark this moment well. As of 4:07 pm on Sunday, November 28, the word count meter is officially yellow! This means that I am within 10% of my target word count. I haven’t been this close since the first week! I am currently on the final leg of my second writing block for the day. I will be sadly forgoing the movies tonight to squeeze in at least another block of three structured writing sessions, with random writing throughout. My goal is to be at 45,000 by tonight, and beyond if possible. The action in my novel is exploding (literally) at just the right time. I should be able to hit the climax and tie up all of the loose ends at 50,000! NOVELTASTIC!