On Wednesdays, I'll cross-post my blog from Routines for Writers here…

I've decided!! Woo-hooo!! I'm so excited – and relieved – that I finally know what I'm going to do starting next Tuesday!

For maybe a year or more, my writing friend Betsy and I have been having these great Monday meetings to decide on our goals for the week. At the last several, we've talked about – among other things – whether we were going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year and, if so, what we would work on.

I think this week, with great trepidation, we've decided! Betsy is going to work on a project she's been excited about and thinking about for a few years. She's nervous because it's going to take a fair amount of research, but it may be the easiest of her choices to keep up the 1667 words needed every day.

I don't like writing every day, particularly because the weekends are when John and I spend the bulk of our time together. So I divide the 50,000 words into 21 days – no weekends, and no Thanksgiving writing. That means I have to write an average of 2381 words per day.

I had three projects I was thinking of – the second draft of the next romantic comedy I'm going to self-publish, a short story that will be out in an anthology next year, and an ebook on the business of writing. None of them need 50,000 words written. Then Betsy suggested I do more than one project.

I remembered Shonna did this last year or the year before. She finished her children's book by the middle of the month, and decided to write another one. (Shonna, isn't that the year you “won” NaNo?) I'd thought then what a great idea it was when Shonna did it, and now I'm excited to try it myself.

So then Betsy helped me decide what order to do everything. The short story can be 5000-20,000 words and has an absolute deadline, so I'm going to work on that one first. (And I finally figured out part of the plot! That's been worrying me for weeks!)

Then I'm going to break my how-to books into two separate ebooks – one on the business of writing, one on the specifics of self-publishing. I'll keep working on them until either NaNo ends, or I get to 50,000 words or – if my fingers are flying and I'm not packing to move – I'll start working on the second draft of that romantic comedy.

Whew! That took a lot of wrestling to figure out! It's not usually that hard for me because I never used to work on more than one project at a time. But the 18 months of grad school made juggling projects a necessity, and now I can use that new skill in my career.

I'm happy because the planner has a plan! Woo-hooo! I think I'm going to get that cute word counter going again this year – if I can just remember to keep updating it.

What about you? Have you decided if you're going to participate this year, and what you'll work on? Or are you going to wait until the last minute? Either way, let's have fun!