Old Town Cemetery, Stirling, Scotland

I hope my readers don’t mind a bit of hyperbole, which is what the title of this post is. I do, however, feel a bit insane to take on NaNoWriMo again, like an addiction I can’t shake. Yet it’s an addiction that actually harms no one, so not to worry.

Today is the first day of a month-long commitment to completing a first draft of a novel. This year’s project is the sequel  to Kenning Magic, which itself was my 2010 NaNo project. Easy to see why I’m feeling good about this.

True confessions: I wrote a “first draft” of this sequel as my 2015 NaNo project, but then set it aside. That happens to projects more often than I like to admit, but I seem to need that period of dormancy or suspension to let ideas bubble away while my mind is elsewhere. Then, the project suddenly comes to life: it’s time. This past October, I located the old draft, sorted through pages and scraps of paper in my NOTES file, did a bit of planning, and now NaNo is here and I have a plan.

Of the 50K+ words in the earlier draft, about 10K are worth saving. Typical for first drafts. But already I’ve changed my protagonist’s name, researched some fascinating astronomical instruments to include, and ditched tons of back-story. Now, it’s forward march, with no looking back until December 1st.

All righty, then. Here we go.