November means National Novel Writing Month, so I'm starting to gear up for that effort — 50,000 words in 30 days (with a holiday thrown in toward the end just to keep things interesting), or 1,667 words a day.

I think that this year I'm going to go the NaNoEdMo route again and do more edit work on the novel I'm most complete on and have been working on in a writing group, Gunsmoke & Jasmine. The pitch:

If a pair of supernatural detectives in 1952 San Francisco can't find the murderer of minor deity in a seedy bar, it might mean the end of their marriage — and the end of the world! It's up to hedge magician Roger Donne and his dragon-raised Chinese wife, Chrys, to unravel a plot that may lead to the Red Chinese getting the Mandate of Heaven, and triggering World War 3!

Sort of The Thin Man meets Catch a Deadly Spell, with a soupcon of Big Trouble in Little China.

If I finish that needed pass of editing the second half of the novel, then I'll dive into writing what I realize now will be the second book in the series (having already written the second book during an earlir pair of NaNos that will become the third book).

As in past NaNoEdMo, I convert my usual writing speed into time — I can do 1667 words in 90 minutes (based on past NaNo experience), so that's my daily target. It's a bit of a cheat, but the goal of the month is to focus on the writing experience, and this is something I need to focus on.

This will be the eleventh year I've done this exercise. It never gets easier, but it's always a creative blast.

Anyone else out there doing the NaNo thing this year?

#NaNoWriMo

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