Going dark for NaNo and stuff

Halloween kind of came - and went - with so little hoopla, I barely even got my skeletons out of the closet, let alone scatter them throughout the house in some kind of spooktacular fashion.

It's not like me. I'm the girl who dresses up, even when the rest of the office doesn't. I'm the pumpkin carver, the Halloween cookie decorator, the scare-the-crap-out-of-the-kids neighbor. Yeah, that girl.

But this year, I couldn't quite muster that Halloween feeling - which is actually kind of nerve-wracking since I write thriller and paranormal suspense.

Instead of dwelling on it, I'm moving on...right into November.

This will be the third time I have signed up for National Novel Writing Month. I'm not a NaNo success story. In fact, generally, announcing that I will be taking part in NaNo almost guarantees I will have a record low word count for the month.

But let's be honest. My word count these past few weeks - since I completed Heartless - has been lack lustre at best. I can really only go up.

I've registered for NaNo as "the other me" since I'll primarily be working on NEED, one of my young adult endeavors, along with Killer's Instinct, Heartless revisions, two elementary school graphic novels for the Alberta Canola Producers' Commission and a few other odds and ends projects including revisions to a feature film script, the first few chapters of an exciting new thriller, and book two in the Jagger Valentine series.

Clearly, it's not all getting done. Realistically, I won't even complete one actual book, though I'm going to try really hard. But I will write 50,000 words - which is the magic number to complete the quest. And who knows, maybe it will become a habit.

I know my limitations, my distractions, my barriers to success. I'm eliminating some of them after tonight. I'm going to set the PVR to record all of my favorite shows and reward myself once a week with a catch-up TV binge. (Thank goodness I'll be all caught up on Revenge after tonight!)

I'm also shutting down the blogs. Throughout November, I won't be regularly posting here or at www.jaggervalentine.com - not even a Monday Muse Avatar. *Gulp* However, I may do very short weekly posts on the Dawn Dalton blog with a NaNo update.

And of course, I won't be on Facebook or Twitter - much. Hey, some habits are hard to break.

Despite this crack at discipline, I've still got the day job, my family and friends, a few contract jobs, critiquing for a couple of writers and Vine Leaves Literary Journal to keep me busy when I've completed my daily NaNo word count.

1666 words a day.

No sweat, right? *deep breath*

And so, here we go. To my fellow NaNo writers, good luck! Looking forward to seeing everyone on the other side.

- Dawn