The word counting has started for another National Novel Writing Month and I’ve started writing. Well, it’s been a slow start. So far, I’ve gotten 261 words down on paper or, actually, saved on disk. It’s been a painful fight with my inner editor who is constantly shouting in my ear that those are the worst words that any author has strung together to form a series of sentences.

Even though I’ve only managed 261 words, I have hope because last year at this time, I didn’t have much more. In fact, I only had 10,000 words at the halfway mark last year and I was still able to finally tie up my inner editor and stuff him into a closet for the last two week so that I could eek by with just over 50,000 words.

Well, I still have 1406 words to find for this first day of November and the shouting has begun anew. I better get back to word processing. Anybody have any rope?

I know, I know. When you have a blog, you should write. You need to write. You must write. Even with all of the things that need to get done in my everyday life, it’s not hard to find time to write. The difficulty lies in finding the focus to spend that time writing. The good news is that even though I’m not writing on this blog or on paper, I am writing in my head. The hazy story cloud is starting to form a more solid substance.

But I do have a deadline for this story terra-forming. The National Novel Writing Month will soon be here. Every November, thousands of accomplished and aspiring novelists gather together in spirit at nanowrimo.org to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Not everyone finishes but it is a fantastic exercise in focus. And that’s what I need more than anything else.

If you are an aspiring novelist, go over to nanowrimo.org and join in the fray. Either way, come on back to see what dark and mysterious things are about to happen in a grand old mansion filled with oddities and evil.

There is an vacant old mansion high on a bluff overlooking the Red River of the North. The original owner filled it with strange and bizarre objects from the dark corners of the world. When his only son disappeared mysteriously, the house was closed up and he hid himself away from all but two of his closest friends. When he died, the house remained closed up and a search for his lost son and heir began. For more than a hundred years, the search to find an heir has failed. It seemed that life would never return to the old mansion. Until now…