NaNo is Coming!

Yes, I know it's the middle of August, but trust me, the picture is appropriate.

A couple times a year, my RWA chapter does a Book In Six Weeks project. Think National Novel Writing Month, but without a set word/page count and it lasts two weeks longer. Normally, I start planning far in advance, and by the time the actual BISW starts, I have a fully loaded resource notebook with rough outline, character notes and any other guides I would need for flying into the mist. This time, I thought I could wing the whole thing. I was wrong. Oh so very wrong.

No mistakes here, the page counts I turned in for the official record are honest, but instead of coming out of this with a rough draft of a novella, which had been my plan, I worked on assortment of projects. All needed, all good, but what I wanted was to come out of this with a novella I could polish and send out before the end of the year, and that did not happen. Good stuff happened; I finally got out of that mire of polishing the same (expletive deleted) chapter in a finished ms and made significant headway into writing lesson plans for my level two Fanfiction To Fantastic Fiction course (privately called "Fred" until I think of a better name for it) and a rough idea for a possible future could-be-novel-could-be-novella. No novella draft, though, and that drives me nuts.

Which means that with November coming faster than one who is not intending to write fifty thousand words in thirty days might expect, it's idea time. At the moment, I got nothing. This makes me cranky. Currently polishing an ms that has been getting some nibbles, so that's where most of my attention goes, but I like the sprints like BISW and NaNo for getting a novella out. There's something special about getting from once upon a time to happily ever after in a short span of time. Because it's me, that's going to be a rocky, angsty road, but they get there, trust me.

So. It's now August, and I'll want/need time for character work and research before the NaNo starter's pistol sounds. Readers, what kinds of historical romances would you love to see but can't find on the shelves? Future characters, my door is open. You are invited. I'll leave a light on.