Welp, its that time again.

The end of October always feels as if I’m standing on a precipise and moments away from falling over. Not because of the impending holidays or all the baking i’m going to have to do. Nope. Its the 30 day sprint to get something accomplished for National Novel Writing Month in November. I’m not sure why I feel so much pressure for this. It’s voluntary. I don’t have to do it.

I succumb to pressure this most years when i’m not already bogged down in either editing or finishing a pre-existing book. It’s a good jump start but most of the time, I end up feeling a bit like a failure. I never meet the goal of 55,000 words – okay, once. I’ve done it once. Mostly because this is at the worst possible time of year. Who the fuck picked November anyway. April! April would be a great month for this shit.

Also, they categorize 55,000 words as novel length. . .which is technically true. However, my books run anywhere from 90,000 to 110,000, so that arbitrary number feels wrong but should feel doable. However, since I can’t actually seem to hit that number, it feels doubly wrong with a splash of failure mixed in there. So, that’s nice for me.

So, here we are again. On the cusp of November and I just turned in Infinite Azure for editing and stuff. I won’t hear back from Debby @ Soul Mate Publishing for another month at least. I’m technically free for November. . . I guess. Once again, I have bent under the weight of NANOWRIMO pressure and have set up my project to mock me as I log my pitiful word counts each day.

Here’s my plan. I’m going back into one of my old projects, mostly because I’m sitting on 26,000 words and it’s driving me insane that it’s not done. This project has been the topic of previous Nanowrimo years but I’m going in with a plan this time. I think the reason, this project went nowhere fast the previous go arounds, is because I didn’t have the plot flushed out enough. I’m working on the plot this week so that it won’t be so daunting when I go back in to put words on the page. I don’t think I’ll average 1667 words per day but maybe I can get close. Even if it gets this project back on track, I’ll count that as a win.