Last year during National Novel Writing Month, I actually wrote a novel. No, you can’t read it. It sucks.

But don’t worry, the next one will be better. But it’s not going to happen this year.

As you might imagine it takes quite a lot of time, if not effort, to put 50,000 words on paper… or in my case, into my laptop. And this year I just don’t have the time.

I do have a really great idea for another novel, and this time I’ll aim for a more respectable word count of 90K-100K. But I’ve got to keep myself from ruining it by trying to jam it into a NaNoWriMo.

I’m just glad the idea for last year’s novel sucked, so it was really no great loss.

Don’t get me wrong. NaNoWriMo is a really great opportunity to force yourself to write that novel you’ve got kicking around inside your head, because if you don’t just do it, you never will. And maybe you’ll even love the process so much that you’ll want to do it for real some day. And once you’ve got one under your belt, I figure it can’t be that hard to pick up the pen and start the second one, right?

But not this year, not for me. If you see me discussing any kind of inkling or possibility that I might participate this year, please just slap my little nose with a rolled up newspaper and tell me, “NO!”