NaNoWriMo has begun!

It's here, it's here, it's finally here! NaNoWriMo returns!

Have I talked about my plan for this year yet? I don't think I have, but if I have and just don't remember, tough. I'm going to talk about it again anyway.

Some of you may remember that, two years ago, I wrote a novel based on ancient Egypt. Oh, and there was some time travel and a riot and murder and plague and all sorts of interesting stuff. It was my NaNo project for 2010, and it is probably my favourite novel I've written to date. There are parts of this novel that absolutely shine. There are parts that are so good that I don't remember writing them. (I think those were when I was half asleep, and my inner editor couldn't possibly compete with the haze of caffeine withdrawal.)

However, it had a lot of first draft issues. Mostly the gaping plot holes. And clearly missing research. And inconsistencies. Oh, and amazing characters who were criminally underused. All of these were pointed out to me by one of my very best friends, and the only friend who ever gets to see my first drafts. (You know who you are, and you are awesome. Fact.)

What this boils down to is that the novel needed a desperate rewrite. There was too much damage to the draft to simply edit the bad out of it. I had every intention of doing that complete overhaul relatively quickly, so I could write the second book (!) for another NaNo.

Um, oops?

Two years later, I still haven't done the rewrite. So guess what I'm doing for NaNo 2012? Uh huh. Rewrite time! This is the part where I'm going to write down the stuff that was good about the first draft, and try to remember to keep it in (and make it better) this time around. I'm also going to try to fill in those plot holes, use those awesome characters, and fix all the other major problems that hurt the first draft so badly. It should be an interesting month, to say the least.

Total word count for day 1: 3573