Progress so far

I've been outlining my novel like a fiend. I once had a class in college that was spending the 10-week term writing a 100 page paper or so. My professor told us to do such a heavy outine that all you have to do is add the adverbs and you have your paper.

In a way, I'm taking that approach. I want to write the 50k so badly, but I worry that with work, school, a husband, freelancing and the obstacles life spews at us on a daily basis will hurt my progress. So if I outline and add some adverbs, I'll have several thousand words I can pump out quickly.
I'm also feeling torn about how they count words. Part of me is happy that they will strictly go off word count like the Microsoft Word word count feature. Because once I reach 50k, that will probably be more like 60 or 70k in publisher's word count. Once I do the proper spacing, marging, font, etc. then multiply the number of pages by 250. So by the end of this I may just actually have a full novel.

I saw a posting on a message board about some cool software called yWriter2. It's novel writing software that lets you write by chapter or scene. I kind of like that. It's less intimidating than a ginormous Word document. This way I can pull up chapter 3, write a bit then close it and pull up chapter 7 or whatever. It also lets you do outlines, timing, etc.

Right now I'm anxiously awaiting November 1 so I can get started. My husband just got a new job that has him working horrendous hours, I'll definitely miss him, but that will give me time to work on my novel without him feeling like I'm ignoring him.

I also just wrote the first short story I've done in years. I wanted to practice writing fast and furiously without self-editing. It's crap, but I feel good about it. Very dialogue heavy which is weird for me, I'm definitely a narrative writer.

Ok, I'm done rambling. And by the way, I'm still not used to this live journal thing. It's weird not knowing who or how many people are reading this. And it's weird to write about things and have it float away in cyberspace. Sort of creeps me out but I got to keep up with the times. Time to go to kickboxing class and cry over how much I hate the instructor... ;-)