What I really need to start worrying about is my stupid novel. I have five more days to complete my novel and I'm only on Chapter 7. I had 12 chapters planned. DAMN!!!

I can't believe I was silly enough to think I was going to be finished with the novel early, and that I needed to stretch the time out. Now I'm behind, way behind.

I think I can at least get to Chapter 9 by November 30, and then I guess I'll just have to keep writing until I've finished the last three chapters.

I was so sure I would be able to complete a whole novel in 50K words and 30 days this year, but again I need more time and more words. At least I'll be almost finished and not 30% finished like the last two years.

A 50K novel would the equivalent of "Catcher in the Rye", which I think today would be considered a novella.

One writer I've been reading says that her ideas for stories are so big, her novels end up being very large.

I don't know if my ideas are so big or I've been writing a lot of crap that doesn't belong in the novel, and which I'm going to have to take out later.

I even wrote a brief outline for the novel this time, but I'm thinking I should have spent more time outlining exactly what would happen in each chapter and scene. I know there were times in my writing when I didn't know where my chapter was really going, and I didn't really like that feeling.

I like that I was able to be so flexible with my outline, but I was getting the feeling I was repeating information and writing contradictory things about my characters. I've done it in a ten-page short story, so I'm sure I'm doing it in the novel big time.

But this is all good. This experience is confirming something for me what I've been thinking is my biggest obstacle to completing a story. I need a good outline. I was only able to finish my screenplay because I spent a ton of time working on the outline. I wrote 20 drafts of the outline before I even started writing. The outline made the writing fly, and I was able to concentrate on writing a good scene instead of having to think what the heck the character is doing.

I heard a quote by some famous female writer, where she says if she doesn't outline her stories her characters go out of control. My stupid characters are like that. Sometimes they'll talk about everything else, give me every frickin' detail of some other aspect of their life that has nothing to do with the story I'm writing. It's like they're so happy to come alive in my writing, that they'll do anything to make sure I spend more time with them so they can stay alive and keep blabbing.

It's spooky to think that my fictional human characters have the same real human instinct for survival, and they will do anything to survive. And the only way a fictional human character survives is in a story, a long story.

And some of those fictional freaks haunt me too. If I get an idea for their story and I don't make an effort to write it down, they bug me until I can't take it anymore and I have to sit down and write their story.

I know it all sounds trippy, but this is the way the writing process works for me. Fictional freaks bugging me till I write their story down, and then when I do they are talkative and so out of control.