the madness that is NaNoWriMo

So, this is my first year trying out a little thing called NaNoWriMo. (read: the craziest month of your life up to date.) Basically. this entails beginning and finishing a 50,000 word novel within the space of November 1-30. Yeah, pure craziness.

It's only the second day and already my life has become a slave to NaNo. I don't normally think of myself of a competitive person, but right now, I can't bear the thought of losing this thing. Of hanging my head down and saying on Nov 30, "Yeah, I only got 30,000 words in." And seeing the word counts of my NaNo buddies (yeesh, one of the insane ones already hit 10k!) is making me step up my writing game, too.

Can I even begin to explain the change brought upon me by NaNo? Who needs Physics lectures when you can think about racing home and churning out 1k of your latest chapter? Who needs to eat when you can subsist on your words forming on the screen in front of you? Who needs anything in November but the insanity of NaNo? (uhh, okay, I definitely need Thanksgiving. But everything else? Socializing? Free Time? Sooooo overrated.)

Unfortunately, the thing I've noticed about myself as a writer is that if I'm writing one type of thing, I have little to no urge to write any other type of thing. It kind of goes like this:

1) do a lot of blogging, but not a lot of creative writing
2) do a lot of creative writing, but not a lot of blogging
a. Write a lot of poetry, but no prose
b. Write a lot of short stories, but no novel.
c. Write nothing but a novel.

Right now I'm right smack-dab at 2c. I think I'm going to pull out the big guns for blogging though; I have an idea for a series of posts that I'm excited about, so we'll see how that goes.

For the moment, though, I'm practically sweating out words. Pulling a plot out of thin air. Punching in words every chance I get.

It's a bit like being caught up in a tornado. A word tornado.

So, any of you participating in NaNo? Or can you, as a past participant, sympathize?
AND HEY, it's only Nov 2nd so you can still JOIN USSSS and not be too far behind!