Words, Time Limits and School - Oh my!

That has been the refrain running in my head lately... along with "You are so stupid! This really is not a good idea! You won't finish it!  You had better keep your priorities straight and do your homework - especially when finals week comes!"  In other words, I, a freshman in college with finals week right at the end of November and play rehearsals and performances the first full week of November as well as a paper to work on for the end of November - have decided to do NaNoWriMo.

I wasn't going to do it this year, I had thought about it, decided what I was going to do and even got excited about it - and then my enthusiasm fizzled out and I realized that I didn't want to do it this year.  I felt bad about my decision though, slightly.  There was some lingering regret, but I just didn't want to write.  I haven't done any creative writing since PePoWriMo last year, actually about January when I turned a skit I did into a short story and for about a month expanded it into a larger story.  Okay, I expanded into the first half of the first chapter of a larger story.  And then I stopped because I didn't want to write and I haven't really had the urge to do writing other than my articles for Ink and Fairydust since then.

So I was all prepared to watch another November go by and cheer on those brave people who had time to do it and was telling myself that I'd probably made a good decision when all of sudden, for reasons I'm unaware of, I remembered this idea I'd had for a story once and then I wanted to do NaNoWriMo again.  I am very impatient for the first of November and I want to start NOW, this weekend while I don't have a ton of homework and the rehearsals for Phantom haven't started yet.  I created an account on the NaNo website so I can find writing buddies while I'm waiting and over the last  two days I've jotted down an outline for my story (within the guidelines of the helpful Three Act Structure) and been able to come up with a plausable reason for why my hero is where he is and doing what he will be doing.  (This is assuming he told me the truth about his past.)

I am very excited for my story.  I'm doing a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" (the movie version) and it is set in the late 1800's in a little village in the Catskil Mountains.  I absolutely love this fairy tale and I've had lots of fun manipulating it and coming up with fun parallels.  Plus, retelling a fairy tale is handy in that I don't have to come up with a plot line, I already have the basic structure there for me.  I am expanding off of it a bit, but yes, re-telling a fairy tale was a good idea for someone who'll need all their available time to just write it.