My disastrous Camp NaNoWriMo attempt is a few weeks in the past. Now my thoughts are turning toward NaNoWriMo.

In the August heat November still feels a lifetime away, but it will actually be here in just about two months. That’s both plenty of time and nowhere near enough time to prepare for an extreme writing marathon.

Around this time of year I usually settle on a project. Even just having an inkling of an idea is enough in August. This time I find myself torn between the known and the unknown.

My options are to continue working on a long and well known project or do something new, unknown, and unplanned. On the surface, continuing to work on The Dreams is the obvious answer. I have the story. The drive and passion is there. It also needs to get written. However, I feel like doing something new either with a plan in place or with nothing more than an idea and a lot of motivation to write is more in the spirit of NaNoWriMo.

It’s been a while since I worked on something shiny and new for NaNoWriMo. I miss it. Always working on stuff I’ve already started has made me feel left out of the rush of excitement on the first day of the month as well as the thrill of discovering new things about the plot and characters as the month goes on. I find those things to help me progress through the month when following a plan starts to feel like a chore. While there are still things to learn and improve on in The Dreams, those revelations don’t come anywhere near as frequently as they would with something new.

If I did work on something new, I’d need to give up more than a month’s time I could put toward this draft of The Dreams. Since I don’t even have an idea picked up for a new project, I would need to take some time and come up with something. I don’t have a problem writing by the seat of my pants for NaNoWriMo when the situation requires it, but I usually have a handful of a characters and some sort of conflict in mind. Coming up with that stuff can happen in an instant, but it is spontaneous. I can’t force it to happen quickly. To ensure I have something to work with, I’d need to take at least part of October off from The Dreams as well, I’m not sure a month and a half break from that project would do me any good right now. As much as I yearn to get back to the traditional style of NaNoWriMo, I find myself leaning away from doing it this year.

Weighing my options will probably have me wobbling between the two for a little while longer. Then I’ll start running out of time and we’ll see how I prepare for NaNoWriMo while under a time crunch.

Are you planning to do NaNoWriMo this year? Have you settled on a project? I’d love to hear about it!