New beginnings

New beginnings can be so wonderful or stressful or encouraging or stressful or...well, you get the idea! So I'm about 8,000 words into my NaNo (I know, I'm behind and it's only been a week!) and I realize that one of the problems is that I dislike...no...loath...no...HATE the beginning. You would think a book that starts with "I shouldn't be alive" would spark all sorts of energy. Instead, it's BLAH...

So I took a step back and allowed a little inner editor to emerge (totally against the NaNo ideals and principles, but, hey, better a step back than to sink in the quagmire that had developed!) and I realized my problem was not in the story, not in the characters, but in that I had jumped into the middle of an ocean and there was no visible/possible way for me to have gotten there! So I decided to restart the story, keeping my 8000 words in reserve, and incorporate those fabulous words (or, in the MC's vernacular: faboculous) into later chapters as the story truly unfolds.

Once I made that decision, I realized I didn't want to just third person the story as I had been doing, but I didn't want a normal first person story. Now the story is being told in a journal style through the MC's computerized vid tablet (it IS a futuristic novel) with holographic outputs. I'm 1000 words into the new beginning, and I'm figuring it will be another few thousand before the original material gets sucked back into the plot.

Maybe I'll get caught up this week...

Or at least not much farther behind.