How many of you out there are participating in NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month? It starts in just a few days. I’ve participated a few times but never won, always petering out at around the 8000-10000 word mark. I get busy and think I can make up for lost time in one grand day of writing. And that grand day never comes so I get discouraged and, well, you get the idea.Past novel starts have included sheep ranching meets the mafia, furniture restorers turn polar bear saviors, and ghost bicycles meet time travel. Yeah.

Undaunted, I’m going to try for 50,000 words again this year. Not that I have any compelling ideas. You can watch me flame out around Nov. 11 or keep on going this year through the word-count doohickey on the sidebar when I finally put it up there. Exciting, I’m sure.

To get myself amped, I always like to re-read my favorite writers-on-writing books. These are: Stephen King’s On Writing; Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird, and Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. For times when I get stuck there are Pen on Fire by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves, and Escaping Into the Open by Elizabeth Berg. I tried Chris Baty’s (creator of NaNoWriMo) No Plot? No Problem! but it’s not one that helps me find inspiration even though I got a kick out of my read-through and it’s definitely a fun one to try.

Good luck to the NaNo-ers out there. What are you going to write about?