What most people call November I call NaNovember. I like it. It’s my reminder that for one special month, I give myself permission to spend all my free time (and much of my work time, shh!) frantically writing a novel that I may or may not want to publish some day. I spent a few years working on my Cassandra story, and while that’s still a work in progress, I think I will shift gears this year.

In 2007 I wrote the novel Quest for Serentasia. It still needs work to become publishable, but I had some vague ideas for a sequel back then and I have yet to write more than about 3500 words — that was last year, when I had Lyme disease and had zero energy for at least the first half of the month. By the time I was feeling better, I had no enthusiasm because I felt I didn’t have time to get to 50k.

My current plan of action: Reread what I wrote last year. Edit that if I see fit, but do not add any new words. Start planning the rest of the novel. November 1st, whatever is already written is off-limits. Take the new word count and add 50k to get my 2012 total word count goal. I did this in 2010, adding 50k to the preexisting word count and continuing a failed NaNo attempt from the year before. So that’s what I’m going to do again.