With all the Thanksgiving prep, I’ve written zero words today. Which puts me exactly today’s required words behind on my word count. For me and my Nano track record, not too shabby. The main reason for my staying on track: high school.

High school how? Well, a year and a half ago when the market dipped, I, and many other coworkers, got the axe. Some of us were in the industry more than twenty years. But I had already started my MFA, had talked about making a career of writing. So we decided to give it a shot. But I still needed supplemental income. So now I’m a part time substitute teacher.

High school has been great because for the most part the kids sit on their computers and do their work and I can type away. Middle school… not so much. They’re more fun, but are more hands-on. So, Champlin High… thank you.

As far as content goes, this story has made me smile from inspiration more than anything else I’ve written. Part of that is due to the lack of planning. In general, I’m a planner. My novel I’m taking a break from before editing was meticulously mapped out with bullet points and sub points and color coded post it notes with corresponding sharpies. That was great for always knowing what to write, and I could argue a lot that the during-writing inspiration was instead planning inspiration. But the during-writing inspiration has a different feel to it. An in the moment “god damn I’m brilliant” feel.

For my Nano project, I went into it with four characters, only one of which had any amount of thought into their personality. I had a problem, an antagonist, a few settings, and a couple of moments I knew should happen. That was it.

The result so far is a crazy amount of Wayne Brady caliber setups and payoffs that my subconscious plans without me even knowing it. I’m making character choices that are great in the moment and give me solid foundations for growth and/or defeat. I’ve created a magic system that is both highly theoretical yet completely accessible. I don’t know that I could have done that with my normal planning method.

I’ve mentioned before that I have aphantasia, or a lack of a mind’s eye. This past summer I started playing around with MidJourney to create imagery to reference (examples shown throughout the post), since my brain’s not wired that way. I think I can attribute part of my current success to that as well.

Going into a scene, or thinking about a character, I know what I want to happen, what themes or motifs should exist. By inputting those into MidJourney, I’m provided with images that while they don’t always turn out how I expected, they often provide enough of my expectations that I can use it for repeated reference, but they also serve as spring boards for other tangential thoughts.

With a word count in the low thirty thousands, I’m just over halfway through the story. Of course there are areas that will need some work, but there have been surprisingly few writing sessions where I knew I needed to revisit down the road. I’ve come out of many feeling very good about the results and I’m just hoping that when I re-read it, that feeling won’t change.

That’s all for now. Need to allocate writing time appropriately. I wish my fellow writers good luck in their Nano/WIP, and happy reading to non-writers (I just started The Olympian Affair and am super excited). And of course Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you all can spend quality time with friends/family/loved ones.