Between some quiet time at work and some more writing back at home, I managed to beat the daily average (1,667 words) for my first day. More importantly, though, I've finally figured out some parts of a plot, which is something I didn't have even after I started writing yesterday.

What I have so far is the story of a journalist in a mid-sized fictional city. He's working on his weekly opinion column when the power goes out, trashing his work. At the same time, he gets an anonymous phone call promising a juicy lead if he meets the informant in a 'secure' location. I didn't really think about it until right now, but it very much resembles the scene from The Matrix where Neo gets in the car to go meet Morpheus (complete with the bridge and the rain).

At the appointed time, a homeless guy starts banging on the window. The main character (named Sam, for now), being a bit of an elitist with a dislike for the homeless, tries to tell the guy to get lost; the guy claims to be the source Sam was coming to meet, but it wasn't safe where they are. After some debate, they both get in the car, and a cop comes speeding by. Sam peels out, spurred on by the homeless guy, but stops when he realizes what he's done. As Sam waits for the cop to walk up to his car, the guy basically carjacks him.

That's as much as I got written, but after I finished writing I took some time to think about where I was going from there. My thoughts at the moment are to have the homeless guy be an ex-advisor/confidant for either the mayor or one of the city councilman (who all served in the same unit in the military). They received high commendations from the military, went into politics, and are well-respected members of their party, which wants them to eventually run for higher office to replace the used-car-salesman types currently in power (whom the people are increasingly distrustful of). However, they have some secret between them that they want to keep hidden (some atrocity committed during the war, most likely), and the military also wants to keep hidden (because it was quite common, but a well-kept secret).

I'm still not sure of the immediate next step, but at least I now have some idea of where the larger plot is to go, which will make it tremendously easier to keep writing. I'm hoping to pound out around 3,000 words today, because I'm not going to have the benefit of a full 30 days to write, and need a daily average of around 2,500 words to reach 50,000 by November 30.