“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” — Jack London

I surprised myself yesterday and managed almost 3,000 words while hacking up a lung. I’m not working on what I’d planned as my NaNo project, though. Instead, I happened on the file for a NaNo book from several years ago and figured out what had gone wrong. I’d written that by the seat of my pants (as I do most of my writing) and somewhere along the way, I started asking, “Why are they doing this?” NaNo finished and since I wasn’t able to find the answer, the book went back onto my hard drive and I went on to something else.

I looked at the file on Sunday and I knew why things were happening. Some of the book can be saved, bits of dialogue and scenes, but the further I get into the book, the more it’s going to diverge. And it’s not just that I know what’s going to happen — I have note cards. Yes, last night, I sat down, opened up my copy of Scrivener and filled into a set of cards that gives me a road map. I then rewrote most of the first chapter. Yes, it’s words I’ve written before that I’m now rewriting, but I was feeling awful and the words were still flowing. Perhaps in the light of day (and without the influence of cold medicine) I’ll look at this and wonder what I was thinking. But did you ever have one of those days where the writing just feels right?

Fingers crossed, I’m going to go look at what I typed yesterday. Wish me luck!