NaNoWriMo

I'd been floundering around for the first few days of this year's NaNoWriMo. I had the general idea for the plot, based on a slightly fantasy version of the Vicksburg Campaign, and I had some idea of the characters, and I had my Scene Planner cards all ready, but it just wasn't coming together. A thousand words one day, 500 words the next, and one section that wandered off into a different universe entirely. Last night I was quite discouraged, thinking "This Is Not For Me". This morning I said "You know, this story could be Star Wars: 1862 Edition", and from that I was able to write a 2500 word plot outline in which pretty much everything fell into place. Still a few plot questions to answer, here and there--"What does Ming Duo do during the climactic battle", for example--but I have enough that I can get started actually putting together a narrative. Huzzah!

Yes, there will be a fair amount of Find & Replace on the names before all is done. "We can fix that in Post."