I’ve been looking for some sort of creative project for the past week or two, and I think I’m going to see if there’s anything I can do with my unfinished 2009 National Novel Writing Month novel.

I gave up on the novel near the end of November that year; a late-month illness put me far behind schedule for the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words in 30 days, and I had family members in town for Thanksgiving and wanted to spend time with them instead of engaging in a heroic, come-from-behind blitz. But I liked the way the novel had been progressing and always meant to go back and do something with it.

Now, of course, I have to remind myself of what I wrote a year and a half ago. I don’t want to sit and read 180 pages on the computer. I also didn’t want to print out 180 pages on my home printer. What I’ve done instead is to reformat a copy of the document so that it fits on about 50 pages. I won’t have much space to mark up the printout, but that’s not really the point. The point is to bring me back up to speed and remind me where I was when I gave up.

I’m not sure what’s driving this. I’m having a lot of career frustrations, and a self-help book I thought might give me some guidance turned out to be different from what I was expecting, and not much help in the essential question of what I want to do next.

I don’t necessarily think this novel will go anywhere professionally; maybe I’ll just self-publish it like the last one. But maybe it will give me a sense of accomplishment at a time in my life when I am becoming more and more frustrated and desparate, and when I seem to be not very successfully treading water.

I was too sick to concentrate on the novel on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, and by the time I started to feel better Friday night, I realized my chances of making the 50,000-word target by midnight Monday were waning fast, especially since if I recovered, I would want to spend Saturday with my brother and sister-in-law (which is what happened).

Some people who were as far behind pace as I have been able to catch up. And I had much of the day today and all day tomorrow (another of my burn-off vacation days) if I had chosen to make such an attempt.

But I didn’t.

I think part of the reason is that I was already closer than I intended to be to the end of my story. So writing 6,000 words today and 6,000 words tomorrow would have truly been filler for filler’s sake, with little chance of anything revelatory. If I do decide to go back and rework what I wrote this month (and I have no idea whether I will or not) I will have to flesh it out by adding things to the beginning or middle of the story, and by rewriting some of my shallower scenes, not by tacking stuff on to the end.

Anyway, I offer my hearty congratulations to those who have already reached their 50,000 or will reach it in the coming hours. NaNoWriMo is a great experience, and I hope to join you in it in 2010.

I am like a maple tree. It’s not that I am tall, or beautiful, or sturdy; apparently, looking at the novel, I’m full of sap.

Amazingly, the month ends one week from tonight.

It was an unusually busy Sunday, and I wasn’t in much mood to write when I first got home. But the point of NaNoWriMo is discipline, and I was able to get things moving as the evening went on.

Actually, doing the math just now I am still ahead of pace overall but fell a few words short of my 1,667. Maybe I’ll go back and add another sentence or two, just for bragging rights.

Yesterday, I fell behind my overall pace for the first time during NaNoWriMo. I was in a foul mood — and still am, to a lesser extent. But I caught up to pace today, and while I think I’m done for the night, it’s still early and I may decide to write a little more this evening.

I’m less happy with my content. It’s too sappy and the obstacles faced by the characters are being resolved too easily. But that’s something to worry about next month, if I worry about it at all. I may just chalk this novel up to experience and not try to do anything with it.

Well, I got home early from work and managed to get some work done before covering school board meeting tonight, and that left me just a little more to do when I got home.

My plot has moved too quickly. There are a couple of things that have willed themselves to happen that I was planning on saving for the end of the novel. So I have to find new goals for my characters to reach, or ways to put their recent achievements back into peril.

Well, I didn’t do too well tonight. I’m still ahead of pace overall, but I fell far short of my daily quota.

I’m not sure what happened tonight — a cross between things I was watching on TV, being stuck at a plot point, grocery shopping, laundry, and just general laziness. But those are excuses.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Turner Classic Movies was airing a documentary about the lyricist Johnny Mercer. I meant to watch it but didn’t. Today, a Facebook friend of mine mentioned that today is the 100th anniversary of Mercer’s birth and noted that her mother, who was once a quite successful entertainment writer with access to a number of well-known celebrities, liked and admired Mercer. I wondered if TCM might be re-running the documentary today, and it turned out they were. I left a comment alerting my Facebook friend of this fact, but then I also ended up watching the documentary myself. It was excellent. I was only vaguely familiar with Mercer and was stunned to realize just how many classic songs he wrote and that he was the co-founder of Capitol Records.

Then, after last night’s disappointing finale to the “Prisoner” remake, I felt like re-watching the finale of the original series, which I have on DVD.

I resolve to do better tomorrow, even though I’ll have an evening school board meeting to contend with.

Between county meetings and the finale of “The Prisoner,” I worried I might not be able to make quota today. But inspiration struck, as has happened on several occasions this month, and I glided on past quota. The next thing I knew, I was 20 words shy of 30,000 — and why would I stop so close to that milestone when I could easily knock out a few more words?

I love this week’s NaNoWriMo pep talk: