He can explain the Three Act Model and the sequence of rise, climax and denouement, and how conflict is required to build this sequence of dramatic tension and release. Of course, like any parent, I wonder if he really understands it, or just recites what he's been told.

His new gifted class teacher is well-connected to other such teachers in our district, and some of them got together and had their students read the same book, Chasing Vermeer, a mystery. They then started an inter-school discussion of sorts on a blog set up for the purpose. The first blog post to which they were to respond asked, "What makes a great mystery?"

Many of the responses were the kind of thing you expect from the upper grade school levels: "One that I can't put down," "One with a great cover," "One that keeps me guessing." A few were moderately insightful, but few really grabbed hold of something that explains how to write a good mystery. But here's that proud parent moment, over which you may roll your eyes if you wish… my son's response:

I think what makes a good mystery is:

1. a key item or number
2. characters who normally don't like each other work together
3. no one except main characters know about crime/theif

Chasing Vermeer involved numerical clues, so he focused on "number" there, but #1 hit up on the essential MacGuffin. But #2 is the big one for me… right there, he defines part of a good mystery as creating conflict. Not just the primary conflict of solving the mystery, but secondary conflict between two main characters who don't get along. Sure, he was prompted by the content of the book, but he identified this aspect as being important. I haven't read the book, but I'm guessing that #3 is a source of tension and possibly direct conflict. The big difference between his response and most of the other responses is that his response addresses concrete elements of story and while the others are much more general.

So I have some confidence… he is actually understanding something of the theory he's been taught. Now, I'll grant you, he's been taught a lot more than the usual fourth grader. They did study rise and climax in class, but he and I have looked at some of his favorite movies and books to identify and understand the story elements at work.

On the other hand, he needs to work on that i-before-e thing.

My big problem was that I fell behind, and the further behind I got, the more intimidating and overwhelming the idea of striving to complete it by December became. So with nobody cheering me on, I didn't have much incentive to not slack off.

Doing this under a tight deadline just isn't for me. I need to find a way to establish a writing habit that isn't driven by anxiety or self-imposed pressure. (I've never been good with self-imposed deadlines, and I've certainly never been good at tricking myself into believing that something matters when it really doesn't.)

So I've still got this novel, and I think it has the makings of a reasonably good story. I plan to finish it, but I have to find a way to finish it on my own terms.

A couple times it was because I didn't know what I was going to write when I started. For instance, I finished a scene at the end of my first writing session, and starting the second was difficult because, while I knew what had to be accomplished in the next scene, I didn't know how to start it or have any clue what the characters would say. When I finally sat down to write, after much stalling, I skipped that scene, or at least the beginning of it and jumped into the middle of a later conversation.

But even when I left a scene unfinished, I had a lot of trouble sitting down to finish it. Partially, I think, because I didn't really know where the scene was going.

It's a weird feeling, though. Even when I know where things are going, even when I know that I enjoy the process of writing once I get rolling, I find I'm reluctant to start. What mental block am I dealing with, that's telling me that I don't want to write, when I actually like doing it and am satisfied with the quality of the work? Some secret, unconscious fear that it's really horrible. It can't be any more of a waste of time than roleplaying or watching TV… it's not a "I have better things to do". I'm really wondering if it's just habit. That I expect it to be uncomfortable, because it's been uncomfortable in the past.

Or maybe I'm just afraid of success. If it actually is any good, I'll feel obligated to pursue it further. That it will quit being fun and turn into real work, like I did with my programming hobby (now my career), like I did with roleplaying (I can't just play, I have to create, and creating leads to trying to publish, and trying to organize communities). Maybe I'm really afraid, having found this to be enjoyable, that I'll find a way to make it an obligation and suck all the joy out of it.

I don't know. I don't feel any of those ways consciously. I just know that I don't feel like writing until two minutes after I've started, but getting started is way harder than it ought to be.

And that's much of the point of NaNo for me… to encourage me to write when I don't know what to write. So I started somewhere mid-scene, and once I know a little better how the scene works, I can go back and fill in the opening part of the scene.

Unfortunately, it's already bedtime and I've developed a headache, so I'm calling it a day quite a bit short of my goal. But I'm actually rather pleased… I sat down and wrote, when I didn't want to write, and I feel good about what I produced. Right now, quantity isn't even so important as the process. If I can feel good about the writing and get over that early hurdle of not wanting to even get started, I can push for 3000-word days later in the month and it won't be a problem.

But I didn't get more than a half-hour… I was so wiped out yesterday that I never got back to writing. Don't know what it was, but I seem to be pretty much over that. Except this morning, I woke up with a pulled muscle under my right shoulder-blade. Hurt like [amazingly bad words I don't allow myself to write here]. (Apparently I used improper lifting posture while carrying 50-pounds bags of duck feed.) I couldn't find a position that didn't hurt, and typing was really out of the question.

I called in sick… I'm a computer programmer, and that requires typing all day long. That sucks, and then it sucks for NaNoWriMo… already "in the hole" for not hitting 1667 words on the first, and I didn't do any more writing after that. Missed my first write-in, too.

So, day three, and I begin by owing 4364 words for the day. This is exactly the kind of start I need to encourage me to call a misdeal and throw in the towel. But I can push through this… my daily word goal only jumps to 1763, an extra 100 words a day. I can do that.

It's the first day, the day I should really be rarin' to go. And, of course, I'm intimidated by the idea of just getting started. That intimidation is why I'm doing NaNoWriMo, though.

Knowing my usual inclination, if I follow my gut, I'll put off starting any writing until after Nathan goes to bed at 9:30, then I'll struggle to get started, write about 500 words, and wonder what insanity made me commit to this and tell other people about it.

So, I have to develop a strategy around that. Lunch, then just thirty minutes of writing. No word-count goal, just thirty minutes and then I'm free to do something else, like play Toon for a couple of hours. Then another thirty minutes of writing before dinner. I know a lot of people jump in with guns blazing, but I'm going to have to ease in a bit.

Despite not forcing myself to reach a specific word-count for the first couple tentative toe-dips in the noveling water, I do want to hit the 1667 words for the day. I really want to stay ahead of the word-count, because if I start to let that slip, saying I can make it up later, it's just going to make things harder down the line.

When I started looking for a plot idea that would lend itself to 150 pages and just 30 days for a rough draft, I wanted something simple, but every idea I looked at, I couldn't come up with an ending. Just recently I realized that I was looking for endings without knowing what the central conflict of the story was supposed to be. I was, quite literally, trying to solve the "problem" of the story before I'd determined what that problem was.

And I find myself wondering… has years of playing roleplaying games, both in the player's and gamemaster's seats, crippled my ability to tell a story on my own? As a player, I've learned to create "starters"… ideas for characters and starting situations, without any strong pre-conceived notion of how the story should progress, let alone end. As a gamemaster, I've learned to set up situations and antagonists, and often have some idea of how things might end, but I've learned to be vague and unattached to any particular story path or outcome.

In short, I've learned to quite deliberately not tell the story on my own. I've learned to create story elements, but then refrain from turning those elements into a story until I sit down to engage with four other people who will bring their own elements, and then together the flesh out the story through our roleplaying interaction.

That's a weird thought that, when I've read so many books on writing fiction and screenplays in an attempt to improve my roleplaying, my roleplaying experience would get in the way of trying to write fiction.

*WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS*, *YOUR PROTAGONIST* *PURSUES A GOAL*. But will he succeed when *ANTAGONIST PROVIDES OPPOSITION*?

Let's try this:

After running away from home and stowing away on an interstellar cargo ship run by smugglers, 9-year-old Nathaniel just wants to get back home. But will he succeed when the smuggler's ship is hijacked by aliens?

I keep trying to figure out how my stories end before I've figured out the central conflict. I think the story skeleton helped with that… it doesn't ask how things end (the climax), it insists on knowing who gets in the way of the main characters goal (the antagonist) and why he's an obstacle (the conflict). You can't have a story without conflict, and apparently I've been trying to come up with a resolution to a conflict without knowing its nature first.

There, my book has a plot. Looks like I'll do some outlining tomorrow.

But here I am, having decided to do this just a week ahead of time, and I don't have any of that preplanning done. In some ways, I think this is a good thing. I tend to over-plan, and I'm afraid that the planning process would actually discourage me from writing. As writing day approaches, I'd get worried that I'm not adequately prepared, and I'd end up quitting before I ever started the writing.

So in some ways, I'm blocking this out of my mind… I'm putting off all the heavy lifting until November 1, because the whole point of this (for me) is to dive into the hard part with guns blazing. The hard part is getting started, and a "soft start" of doing pre-planning when the schedule is squishy just gives me time to waffle and think too much. And thinking about it is the killer.

But it's Friday, writing starts on Sunday. That "9-year-old stowaway on an interstellar freighter" actually has some legs, now that I've had time to think about the plot.