I’m afraid it’s a serious disorder—I only realized how serious yesterday. As you can imagine, I was so dismayed that I packed up my stuff and skulked off to the day job in defeat. Brilliant reaction.

Your comments were right, though. I can’t give up. What is it, NaNoWriMo Day 8?

But what to do when the manuscript talks in different voices, from the mouth of the same character? If she turns her head and she’s one person and turns back and is—snap—someone else? If sometimes I’m writing for one audience and sometimes for another? Teenage slang, literary allusions, tangents to give you nightmares—all in a single monster paragraph? And I must mention the plot. What I have is a setup. And then an outcome. And the events that come in between are covered in fog, sort of sticky, the kind you get upstate on a summer night full of invisible mosquitoes. What? That makes no sense. See what I’m talking about?

As I write this post, I have an hour before I have to get on the subway for work. And all I’ve done for the day is 28 words.

Let’s take a pause and see what happens.

La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la (and in this way an hour passes)…

999 total words for the day—a tangent inspired by breakfast cereal; don’t ask—BUT, and the but is enormous, I’m not sure if this is fixable. Should I just write to the “end” or the closest I can get to it and reconvene later?

This is why people use what is called an outline.