Already? Well, not quite.

The older I get, the faster time seems to move.  When I was a child only dreaming of finally graduating from high school so that I could be out on my own, I couldn’t conceive of any period of time longer than a school year.  Holy crap those years went on forever!

These days, it seems like I could have a full-body yawn that lasts longer than a school year.

I logged on to check my e-mail this morning and had my latest e-mail from National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) warning me that November is coming up soon so it is time to start exercising those fingers for the frantic write.

Holy crap.  It seems only a few weeks have passed since I finished NaNo last year and here we go again.

I’m excited though.  I went in last year with high aspirations that NaNo was going to spear-head my desire to start pursuing my writing again.  It didn’t… rather, I didn’t let it.  I didn’t stick with the head of steam that NaNo produced and I soon fell back into my routine of, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

On the other hand, maybe it did.  I did more writing this past year (and by “writing,” I don’t mean working on this blog or any other guest articles I’ve written) than I have done in a long time.  I have also begun the process of converting a section of my office to a dedicated writing space.  I reconnected with an artist I used to work with and we have a few ideas in the works.  He, unlike me, has remained vigilant in his quest to be in the comic book industry and has produced and released a few things alongside some fairly established names in the industry.

Since completing NaNo last year, I have kept a journal of story ideas.  As I mull them over and flush them out, I have tossed them into several categories: potential novel-length story, possible idea for future NaNo but not enough meat for a full-length book, won’t really work in book format but might be able to work it into a graphic novel concept, absolute and complete crap.

The crap pile is pretty high, but there are a few other ideas that I definately want to work on.

For NaNo last year, I pondered the various story ideas and finally settled on one that I really wanted to write but that I knew I could totally abandon once NaNo was complete.  I knew that, as my first writing attempt for some while, it would suck.  I didn’t want to have it hanging over my head that I really needed to polish it up and give it an honest chance at life once I was finished.  I wanted to tell the story and be done.

In the end, I was satisfied.  I told the story that I wanted to tell and I was able to put it away without another thought.  I still have it, but I haven’t so much as glanced at it since submitting it for the final word count last November.

What’s in store for this year?

I’m not sure yet.  I still have time to mull it over.  A part of me wants to do something similar to last year… write a story that I can finish and forget.  Another part of me wants to be a bit more ambitious and use NaNo as a springboard to launch into something that I will continue well after the contest wraps this year.

I guess I won’t actually know what I’m going to do until the first word makes it onto the page.  Until then, I’ll just continue to guess.