Un-Cheeterz Anonymous

I've come to, less than pleasantly, realise, that because of my excessive wordcount in my plot outline for Following the Gay Umbrella, some people are, eh, "worried" that I'm cheating. With cheating, in the context of the NaNoWriMo rules, that would mean that I was already writing the novel itself, which, as the most important rule, is not allowed before the first of November.

While I know that detailed plot outlines may look like they might be breaking the rules, I, myself, know that I'm not. I'm not very good at explaining how I feel about certain things, but I'll try.

See, what I'm doing is that I'm writing a detailed description of each scene, including the gist of what each character will be saying (except for the fact that they never actually say it, and I write it in a way that says "commenting upon blah blah in accordance to their feelings which stem on blah blah"), where they will be standing and the general twist and turn of the scene. However, I am not writing said scene. I am describing the scene in order to have the scene clearly on paper, so that during November, I will not have to pause to think about it and arrange something in my head, quickly, but can just keep on writing and concentrate on style and how the text sounds, not what it actually is.

Oh, and I still don't know what I'm going to do with most of the scenes. I only know how the scene will begin, middle and end, but the thing is that I don't really know all my characters yet, since I haven't exactly been writing them yet, and even with a detailed plot outline, you can't see everything happening, especially since I'm a very character-centered writer. My characters very often dictate the direction I'm going to take, and this will change during the writing.

I'm not cheating. I'm not writing the novel itself, but I am creating a tool which, I hope, will make it easier for me to finally come to the end of a novel.

... that is, if I manage to finish said tool before November.

28 days. Ohmigawd.