NaNoWriMo in two weeks

Once again, National Novel Writing Month hovers at the horizon like a plague of locusts. Having quit my job to write full time, I am looking forward to it with a sense of daring. The Inspector was written in 2004 during NaNoWriMo and a period of unemployment. With my growing abilities as a novelist (okay, by “skills” I mean discipline) I should be able to knock out something fun in a month. 50,000 words seems cozy and short to me now.

So what to write? I have many temptations. I can flesh out the zombie novel (har har, get it?) or cheat a bit and write the second half of last year’s NaNo, Ghost Month. Alternately, I could work on the “Mansions from Hell” project I have been mulling over.

However, the 900 pound Russian gorilla is the Commie Cowgirl book, which seems to demand attention every time I sit down to write. I actually annoy my friends with reports of the plot twists I conceive on the book. Oksana is just so deliciously unreflective in her behavior, she’s a walking condemnation of the crypto-puritanism we encounter in American fiction (e.g. the teenagers going into the woods to have sex become the obvious target of the serial killer; whereas I like having sex in the woods, as do many folks, so why demonize it? Oh, right… bears!).

But that book will require more than 30 days. I hate to let NaNo pass without a new work taking root.

Mull, mull, mull.