How did that happen?!

I am reliably informed that it's September now. Autumn is coming. Back to school. The end of season Mini concours finals. And only two months to November.

So September 2010 for me means NaNoPrepMo; the start of preparations for National Novel Writing Month. Two paths lay before me: use NaNo 10 to finally make some progress on the almost legendary Project Seven; or another weird and wacky eight-bit adventure like I had such fun with last year.

Setting out to write something fun and a little bit silly is, perhaps, the easy option - last year's NaNo was crammed full of NaNo in-jokes and self-referential nonsense, but it didn't matter because it was supposed to be a humourous story. So doing another comic novel means I won't be worried about it taking a turn for the utterly ludicrous.

Project Seven, on the other hand, is a serious project. It has a serious subject matter. It has been on my heart to write this for some time (as regular readers may recall), and until I hear otherwise, I believe God wants me to write this book. But it has been extremely difficult, hence not yet having made it beyond a few notes, ideas, and false starts. I have resisted using this as a NaNo in previous years because I wanted to do it justice; this deserves to be more than a hastily knocked up third-rate short story with lots and lots and lots (getting into the spirit already) of padding.

But... Rule One of NaNoWriMo is that none of that matters. Just write! And maybe that's what I need to do. Maybe the only way I can make any progress with Project Seven is to force myself, through the medium of NaNo, to write something, and hope that it finds it's intended shape during the course of the month. (This is, in fact, what happened with my two successful NaNo's.)

NaNo rules allow for planning and preparation before November, but no actual writing. So I have two months to sift through all my notes, ideas, and half-written chapters for Project Seven (I promise not to just use them!), get myself some kind of rough outline, and do any other preparation I can...

Sorry, I've rambled... but that's why I'm a writer, my mind processes things like this as I write them down. I think I've just talked myself into doing Project Seven for NaNo... NaNoWriMo updates will be starting soon!