All right, so I'll do NaNoWriMo again this year. I've made at least some sort of effort to do NaNoWriMo every odd-numbered year since 2007. Though I only met the fifty-thousand word goal that first year, I still enjoy taking a stab at the challenge. If you're unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, here's their About page.

This year, I'm doing it a little differently. I actually have a finished piece of work now, a book that I wrote and self-published and can hold in my hand and say, "Yep, I sure made this thing." So, of course, during the month of November this year, I'm going to work on the sequel. The thing is, the Zeck series are novellas, or at least the first several will be. Even if I finish the second installment this month (and I intend to), I will be several thousand words short of the NaNo goal. I could stretch the story out to fill 50k, but I want the Zeck stories to be of a certain length and move at a certain pace. That may change as the series goes on, but for now, they're going to be novellas.

This means I'm going to be working on more than one story for NaNo. In addition to volume two of Zeck, I'm writing a short horror fantasy story. I'm also very tempted to work on a maritime adventure novel I've been planning for a while. I'll probably stick with the first two projects, but if I need to up my total word count for NaNo, or if I just want to work on something different for a little while, I'll dip my toe into that sea voyage.

Honestly, if I finish the first draft of Zeck vs. Colonel Destroyer this month, but I don't meet the NaNoWriMo word count goal, I'll be happy anyway. One thing I found after completing NaNo in 2007 was that I ended up with a lot of filler. Filler can be easy to excise, but it can also get in the way of the story you're trying to tell. I'd rather tell a good short story than a terrible long one. I guess what I'm getting at is that if I find myself inserting a lot of filler just to meet a certain word count, I know I'm going to cut the filler in the next draft anyway, so I might as well leave it out in the first place.

Happy NaNo-ing to anybody who is participating this year.

Oh yeah. My word count as of today is 1,503. Not great for the fifth of the month, but I tend to catch up on weekends.