Last night of goofing around - tomorrow night I can make a start.

Title has changed, having set it as 'With arms wide open', the replacement title 'Open wounds' came to me this morning.

I had a thought that I might do something which had some backstory to 9/11 - and then tonight, over a 5 minute sudden brainstorm whilst not thinking about the novel too much, it all came together in my head almost fully formed.

I have a beginning, the basis (I think) of a reasonable story which will combine all the areas I wanted to cover - mystery, crime, a touch of the supernatural and loss - and an ending, I've even seen the final scene in my head already.

Believe it or not, I've even had a thought about a possible cover for it too! - So might get the paintbrushes out when the writing starts to dry up!

So, maybe the sheer panic of not having a clue of what to write this year was enough to scare something in my grey matter into coming up with a pretty much fully packaged novel idea for me - cheers, brain.

So, although I don't ever like to plot things in a big way before starting out, at least I have some kind of mental roadmap which will, hopefully, get me from A all the way to Z during the 30 days of NaNo this year.

Have just signed my daughter up for the junior NaNo, with a setting of 1000 words target - makes 50,000 seem a much bigger number again....!

NaNo - the calcs.

50,000 words in 31 days - no, dammit, there's only 30 days in November, so that's time lost before I've even begun!

Okay, so 50,000 words divided straight into 30 days equals 1666.66 words each day.

Most novelists seem to be happy if they can hit 1000 words a day, and that includes many for whom that is their full time job, and some of whom live alone, without children, pets, or other day-to-day interruptions.

For us lesser mortals, that's 1666.66 words a day to fit around the full time job, the spending time with the kids, keeping the other half sweet by doing the dishes and taking out the rubbish on bin night, sleeping, taking a bath (scrub that - showers are quicker), and all the other stuff our days and weeks are filled with.

So, late nights on weekends are, I'm sure, the only saving grace to my challenge. They will provide the only opportunity to play catch up for the days where my eyes feel like they are close to bleeding from staring at a screen all day long in the day job.

Ten minutes ago this seemed like such a great idea......

But then, glancing up at the printed out copy of last year's book, I stop and think, I actually finished that thing - I wrote a book, and that's the thing that keeps me thinking I might just be able to do that again.

NaNoWrimo 2009

Okay, I've gone and signed up for my second year of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for November.

That's a 50,000 word challenge to write a novel between 1st-31st November.

Just made it through last year by writing 'Neverville' - a children's fantasy tale, aided by the fact that it starred my own two children and I got to read it to them nightly to build interest and momentum.

This year, might go for the bigger challenge of just writing for me.

Likely to go with either a straight crime tale or something of a crime/horror crossover.

The fact that I'm seeing James Ellroy at the Royal Festival Hall on the second night of this year's challenge has got to influence what I write, so may turn out to be a tale set in LA even if I didn't start off planning it there!

Here goes nuthin'........