My completely unsolicited advice: All that research that caused you to hit a brick wall on THE GLOBAL WARNING? You ought not have worried about it. For NaNoWriMo, better to slam through that first draft and worry about all the fine details when you sit down for the second. Getting hung up on that sort of thing is a surefire way to grind yourself to a halt each and every time, as you now know.

Think about it, did you really need to know the exact procedures for a State of the Union address in order for your book to move forward? Was it so big an issue that you couldn't fudge it and return to it later, refining your completed first draft and making it more accurate? Unless the entire plot hinges on the exact specifications of a State of the Union address or what NORAD stands for, the answer is no.

Forget all that nonsense! Just write. Write until your story is done, stick it in a drawer for a few weeks, then go back to it and give it a work over. Your first draft is always likely to be riddled with holes, errors, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies.

And that's fine. It's part of the process. The important thing is getting it done.

Think about it, did you really the exact procedures for a in order for your book to move forward? Was it so big an issue that you couldn't fudge it and return to it later, refining your completed first draft and making it more accurate? Unless the entire plot hinges on the exact specifications of a State of the Union address or what NORAD stands for, the answer is no.

Well, dang, now I feel even worse!

You can write a short story out of love or passion. To write something this long takes commitment, the ability to write when you don't want to.

That's the hardest part. Dragging yourself to the keyboard when you damn sure don't feel like sitting there but you know you have to do it. Some days I just meet my daily quota and move on, other days a rush of inspiration propels me to triple the quota I've set for myself. Either way, I write. The important thing I've learned over the years is that waiting for inspiration is what you do when you're not actually serious about writing.

Like you, of course, I had a job that helped train me in this. Having to write on a daily deadline, putting out a story or two a day, every day, helped give me the ability to get words on paper even when I'm not feeling it. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad, but the important thing is that I've given myself something to work with.