NaNoWriMaybe?

Okay I will admit it. I am a big fat chicken. Nah, we'll leave out the "fat" part. One cannot claim fatness when one must remember to pull up one's trousers when walking. The chicken (mmm, chicken) part, however, stays.

I have never done NaNoWriMo. Not once. Not ever. Does that make it NoNoWriMo for me? Possibly. I'm thinking of doing it this year, but I'm conflicted. Also chicken. 50k in one month? That would be a word count of dreams, let me tell you. One of my goals for the upcoming year is to increase my body of sellable work (aka write more, aka put out two books a year) and I am just slightly over one hundred pages from the end of the current ms. So what's stopping me?

Fear. Abject, mind-numbing fear. I am a world class ditherer, and have seen writing friends put out two or three books in the time it takes me to write one. I have seen entire careers come and go, and in some cases come back, before I made novel sale one. I know comparing oneself to others is alway a bad, bad thing to do, and yet it's still one of my worst writing habits. Procrastination being another. If I don't finish, I can't fail, and that's a safe place to be.

Thing is I don't like safe, at least not that way. Looking at the files I need to transfer from Frankenstein to Petunia, I have a lot, no make that a LOT of books to write, with new ideas crowding in nearly every day. So the only logical thing is to let off some pressure and get some of them out of my noggin. Which is why the procrastination doesn't make sense.

Also why NaNoWriMo makes sense (and thanks, E, for the encouragement) -- I'm seriously thinking of doing it this year. But do I shoot for the end of this current ms or start one of the new ones? Talk about conflict. I'm blabbery today, there is plenty of Diet Coke, and I am snuggled under my brand new snowflake blankey (thanks to E again) which may be rivalling the duck blankey as best blanket on earth. So things are bound to fall into place.