Novels, NaNo, and No Organization

I have been mentally lax for such a long time now I can't seem to get my mental muscles back in shape.  I'm participating--in a fashion--in the #novelengage Twitter chat Lani Diane Rich of StoryWonk started.  It's a great idea, this engaging daily with your novel even if it's for a short time.  Before I went to Chicago I was doing pretty well.  Since I've been back, I just can't seem to get back in the swing of things.

It's okay, though.  I have a plan.  Sunday I started reading Larry Brooks'(of Storyfix.com) book Story Structure--Demystified.  I really like the way he breaks everything down.  Most if not all of it is stuff I've picked up in various places or just through my own observations about storytelling, but Mr. Brooks does a great job of clarifying the stages of storytelling.  I also like the breakdown of how much of your novel should be part 1, part 2, etc.  He even gives some info on approximately how many scenes should be in each section.  That's really useful stuff for a newbie who's never finished a novel length work and has never actually outlined one, either.

So I'm going to finish reading the book, writing down the story ideas it's stirring up for me, and then I'm going to actually write down my outline ideas.  I'm going to push myself to not panic because I don't have all of my key scene ideas yet--I'm just going to do the parts I know and then worry about filling in the rest.  I'm going to keep writing my morning/daily pages to help me control the anxiety that keeps stopping me.  This week, I am going to stop freezing up because of things that might happen and just do something, anything to move myself along.