I am frantically NaNoWrimo-ing. It’s filling my days, hours and seconds and anyone or anything that comes between my Nano time and me, is given short shrift- including the cat. I am trying (and mostly failing) to keep away from Facebook and twitter and even my Nano buddies are bestowed with one-sentence answers to their comments. I am writing pages of ‘stuff.’ Who knows whether it’s good or rubbish but I will write my novel every day of November until I can’t face the thought of my happy hero and heroine anymore and shut the laptop in their faces, only to have to open it again the next day to suffer their smug happiness and their little legs dancing their ‘I’m in love’ jig. (They don’t know what’s waiting for them around the corner!)
I don’t think there can be many writers who haven’t heard of NaNoWrimo, but if you’ve been hiding in a cave with your hands over your eyes in case of Sabre tiger attack, I’ll give a summarised explanation of it. Just read it quickly, okay. I’m NaNo –ing; I don’t have all day.
Basically NaNoWrimo is an Internet based incentive to kick-start a novel by writing 50,000 words in the month of November. www.nanowrimo.org 
The last time I did NaNo was three years ago and at 36,000 words, I stopped- just like that. I just couldn’t face one single sentence more. I hit a wall and whimpered at the thought of putting even one finger on the keyboard. And I didn’t dare to look at the crap I’d written for about a year. That novel is now complete and polished and is patiently waiting in line with an American publisher, for an ‘in house editor’ to contact me (I’m not sure what that means, but it got me all excited at the time.)
I’m now writing a series of three airline based books and have all three in various states of readiness. One, (shortlisted for the Mills and Boon Flirty Fiction First Chapter) is pretty much finished but just needs sexing up a bit (I don’t mean that literally.) One is 40,000 words incomplete and based on the very first book I wrote six years ago, about an air stewardess and a wannabe rock star, and the third one is so unready that it’s no more than a twinkle in my eye- that’s the one I’m writing for Nano.
It’s set in Botswana (I’ve never been there) Moscow (nope- never been there, either, but I know someone who has!) and the UK (phew!) and I’m already half in love with the hero who is an undercover CIA agent. Yes, of course he falls in love with the air stewardess- she’s beautiful and kind, even though on first impressions she looks like a po-faced snob and is a little TSTL (too stupid to live, to the uninitiated) ‘cos she inadvertently gets involved with gun running, but her heart’s in the right place- bless her.
Can’t chat any longer as I have a deadline of fifty thousand words to write and I’m typing faster than the speed of my fictional airline’s G5. Now that’s an aircraft worth writing about!
Jackie x
thewriteromantics 