Two more weeks and National Novel Writing Month starts!

Okay. Maybe I’m dreading hammering away at a project for a month,  worrying every day about making my word count and possibly exhausting all interest in a story that may or may not be a good one.

Still, I need something to push me back into the habit of writing. The last time I won was in 2020 when quarantine left me with plenty of time on my hands.

This year, my new job affords me adequate time. Motivation, though, is something I’ll have to figure out.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve bounced back and forth between two different story ideas to work on this year.

The first one started as a serial on WattPad that ran for about 9 posts before I ran out of steam. It’s a western romance (not a Cowboy romance) that was under-developed at the time but has been fleshed out more over the last couple years.

The second idea is a story I want to publish through Kindle Vella at some point. It’s a contemporary mystery based in a fictional county in North Dakota. It started as a story about a killer dog pack in Southeast Texas and has grown into a commentary about aspects of small towns we often don’t think about or want to know.

Both stories have the same potential, one as a novel and one as a serial, which is why I struggle which one to focus on for the next month and a half as I should work on outlining for the next couple of weeks and fill in some gaps which keep tripping me up.

I really don’t feel like starting from scratch on a new story as I haven’t gotten a new idea in two years. Thanks, night shift!

Besides, I have a good bit written on both that another 50k should complete the stories and give me room for editing.

Basically, it comes down to which world do I want to spend that time in? Old West or summer in the Turtle Mountains? Sometimes I wish they did this event in October which lends itself more readily to writing mysteries than November does with all the happy Thanksgiving and Christmas decor, but it is what it is, and it doesn’t change the fact that I need to quit dwelling on real life so much.

Thanks to Ann Charles’ Deadwood Mysteries and watching crime dramas lately, my mindset is already geared toward the mystery story, but do I really want to work on that one a third time?

The last time I tackled a novel for a third time, I finally finished the story with enough content worth editing, and it became my second book. That’s another reason to work on the mystery, I guess.

So maybe I should just suck it up and go with the mystery. Seems the most logical in an otherwise dead-heat. I’ll let you know how it goes. At least I hope to start releasing on Vella in about a year if all goes well.

If anyone else is interested in checking out or trying your own NaNoWriMo, you can find more information at Nanowrimo.com or any of the NaNoWriMo groups, including the official one, on Facebook. It’s a worldwide event and is open to all kinds of writing projects including poetry anthologies.

So check it out and send me a friend request if you do. It’s always more fun to share the experience with someone.