I’m also a writer and in November 2005 and 2006 I did National Novel Writing Month. The goal of this insane exercise is to write 50,000 words in a month. The first year I did this, I discovered that in the process of trying to get my word count in, I often resorted to just writing whatever, without worrying about the consequences to the story. (Can you see where I’m going with this?)

Every week stuff happens on LOST that doesn’t seem to fit what has gone before.

This week it was Danielle and Kurt getting hit and killed (?) by…something. And then the ending – LOST across the screen. What is going on?

It’s getting to be kind of a joke at our house. We laugh every time some new plot element shows up – Michael on the boat, Aaron gets off the island but Claire doesn’t, Hurley saw Jacob’s cabin, practically everything that happens on this crazy show!

The Girl even says, every week, “What smoke monster? What are you talking about?” We’re kinda sure that everyone has forgotten the smoke monster, and this is exactly the kind of thing that happens during NaNoWriMo.

You’re busy writing away, trying to get your 2,000 words in for the day, and you throw in a smoke monster to terrorize your plane crash survivors. You don’t necessarily know why it’s there or what it really is, but hey, it’s good for several thousand words and you can figure it out later.

Then you add more characters – the Others, the Tailies, these guys from “Not Penny’s Boat” – and you’ve forgotten the smoke monster because it never shows up again and you’ve never explained it, but sure shootin’ the story’s exciting because every week someone either dies, sees some odd thing (polar bear anyone), has a very interesting flashback (Hurley is in a mental institution, Claire was “sent” to the island), has a very interesting flash-forward (Kate’s raising Aaron, Jack wants to kill himself, Sayid’s working for Ben as a hired gun) or reveals some secret about him/herself (Michael’s on the boat to die??).

Now maybe J.J. Abrams and his crew will tie all these loose ends up (SMOKE MONSTER!!!) or maybe Sidney Bristow will find out her fiance’s name isn’t Michael Vaughn after all!!!