And a happy Halloween to you.

NaNoWriMo officially starts tomorrow–or tonight, if you’re a night owl, I suppose. I’m entering panic mode, looking at my Scrivener outline and thinking, “There’s just not enough story here for a full novel, I’ll never get 50,000 words, why am I doing this, what’s the matter with me, I’M GOING TO GET EATEN BY A PLOT SHARK AND MY SOUL WILL BE DEVOURED BY STORY DEMONS!!”

That’s an exaggeration, but only a slight one. Most of those thoughts come from the Inner Editor, and it’s about time to gag her and stuff her into the never-opened water heater closet in the bathroom. On a rational level, I know I have a good, long outline worth at least 60,000 words, and that outline will more than likely expand as I go. It always does. I also know that 1,667 words a day (even if that’s a minimum), is not that many words.

So here is my cool, collected list of attainable goals for NaNoWriMo:

• Write 1,667 words every day, at minimum.
• Learn to tell the Inner Editor to shut the hell up.
• Learn to let a first draft be a first draft. No more agonizing for an hour over “extracted” versus “untangled.”
• Finish my current novel, Shaken (This one might be a lofty goal, but no one ever accidentally shot a friend by aiming high.)
• Spend at least one hour every week refueling, as per Emmie Mears’s challenge.