Notice that all of your writing friends have signed up for NaNoWriMo and being the kind of person who doesn’t like to feel left out of things agree to do it as well.

Tell everyone on Facebook you will be gone for a month because you are writing a novel.

Keep refreshing your page to see if anyone “likes” your status.

Move lap top to back porch to be inspired by scenery.

Knock over coffee cup with laptop.

Clean up spilled coffee.

Go get more coffee.

Check in on Facebook to see if anyone else is writing yet.

Find out your friends have over 5,000 words already.

Feel like a hopeless failure and go searching for chocolate.

Sit down and make yourself write garbage for an hour.

Delete garbage.

Go look for Bird by Bird book.

Read Bird By Bird

Find out that garbage is a good start.

Try to undelete file.

Check in on Facebook and talk to friends who aren’t supposed to be there either.

Solve family crisis.

Brood and lament about being the oldest child.

Argue about election with strangers.

Get into a cat fight.

Wish you still lived in Detroit.

Think about first amendment.

Write about first amendment.

Search Youtube for inspirational back ground music.

Write 19,854 words over 11 days

Decide your protagonist is an idiot.

Drink a glass of merlot hoping she’ll smarten up.

Remember that you have a banjo lesson in three days and you haven’t played in a week.

Practice for two hours in hopes of fooling teach.

Accept that you can’t learn a song in two hours and that teach is smarter than that.

Drink another glass of merlot and walk around the cove hoping for inspiration.

Get smacked in the gut with a new word for 2013.

Lament to writing coach.

Discover that you and your protagonist are one and the same.

Retract idiot statement.

Practice banjo some more.

Celebrate that you have 19,854 more words than you did 15 days ago.

Lay on floor listening to music and try to learn how to count beats.

Fall asleep counting beats.

Agree to write again in the morning.