Back in August, I took a class about getting back into the writing habit, and during that time I self published my completed novel, No Sensible People, wrote promotional articles and character sketches, started blogging regularly, and revived my work on the prequel, Almighty Whispers in Our Souls that I had set aside ages ago.



All of this, especially trying to market No Sensible People has proven to be a bigger challenge that I expected, and my work on Almighty Whispers in Our Souls has started to slip away again.



Writing is a strange thing. Often writers find themselves making a million excuses not to do the very thing they profess that they really need to do. Write. On the surface, it makes little sense. They start to ask themselves if they are a "real" writer because that resistance makes them feel guilty somehow. Then ultimately they buck up, start making more excuses to start writing then they've been making to run away from it.



It was in this spirit that NANOWRIMO -- National Novel Writing Month-- was born. Every November thousands of writers declare the day as a good enough excuse to put their muse first and set out on a journey to complete a fifty thousand word novel in 30 days.



Last year I was going to do it. I hadn't written like I felt I should in a while, and I figured writing with that intensity over thirty days would make me give myself license to make mistakes and break through  a lot of the barriers I had set up in my mind. If I was going to write that much in a month I could forgive myself if it wasn't any good. But then my apartment caught on fire and I had to relocate. It was a busy month, and any novel would have to wait.



I had every intention of restarting this November, but I have come to the conclusion that the timing is not right to start something new, especially when I still have one novel to promote and it's prequel to finish. But it's still a good excuse to reaffirm my commitment to being a novelist, even if I'm not an official participant in NANOWRIMO. So here is my personal novel writing pledge for November: 500 words a day directly related to Almighty Whispers in Our Souls-- whether it is actually something that will directly go into the novel or just character exploration. The important thing is to keep pressing on, to keep going forward no matter what. I am a writer, after all, and no matter what month it is it's a good enough excuse.



Gretchen Lee Bourquin is the author of the novel No Sensible People, available in print from Lulu.com and Amazon.com. A preview of the 2nd edition is available as a free download for a limited time via her website.