Yes, I know that writing doesn't really have a season - but if it did, now would be it. NaNo approacheth, and all that.

NaNo is this vague, shapeless and kind of scary thing for me this year - I'll be in college, it's my sixth year, I have no workable novel-length plots, I'm incredibly busy, etc., etc.

So I've decided I'm going to write short stories. Mainly steampunk-verse shorts, but it'll be all over the place, setting-wise. It'll be healthy exercise for me, too, because I rarely write short stories, and rarely have ideas that aren't expanded to something novel-length. But this year I'm going to do it - I get to play around with characters, get a feel for them and play with the setting before I commit myself to anything longer.

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Half an hour till NaNo begins for me, and I've done everything I have to do. I've got a blank text-document open, I've got iTunes running and I'm spending my time staring at a widget counting down the minutes.

Come ooooooonnnnnn, November!

Counting down to NaNo in three.... two.... one....

Curiously, I'm not so panicked this year. Usually, I start getting antsy the week before, unable to concentrate on anything for very long and screaming quietly on the inside about the fact that I haven't got enough plot/characters to get me through the month.

Perhaps it's because I have such a lot of outline to go around, and so many characters to handle, and such a solid idea..... Yeah, this year is a serious NaNo. No vampire hamsters, no wordpadding, no meandering chapters where characters do nothing but sit at the same beer-stained table in the same tavern for several thousand words; I'll have my hands full with politics! Drama! Kidnappings! War! And other one-word sentences that end with exclamation-marks!

The forums are back, and they're working! Yay!

... Of course, this just means I've got yet another place to waste hours and hours of my time, which could be better spent doing something useful. Like drawing my webcomic. Or worldbuilding/outlining my NaNo project. Or inventing more characters to fill out the echoing blank spots in the background of my NaNo.

Speaking of worldbuilding.... http://pbwiki.com/ is an awesome place. When it comes to organising my plot, my worldbuilding and my characters in one place, there's no better place than that. *pets the pretty* Heartily recommended to anyone who's into worldbuilding. Or, indeed, any other large, sprawling project.

I was... hit by inspiration, the other day. While my mind is usually a birthplace of too many characters and plot-threads to write in an entire lifetime, it seems it's stepped up the process lately. I have - as of last count - one idea for a possible comic/animated movie (complete with character-designs and some critters and most of the plot), one idea for another comic which involves a lot of court-intrigue and romance (and I don't write romance. At least not very well), and at least seven assorted, fully-formed characters with no project to fit into. It's becoming crowded in my head, to say the least.

And at the same time, NaNo approacheth. I do know what I'm going to write - in general terms - and I've got a handful of characters, but I really need to sit down and draw maps and do character-development and plot down the details and take a deep breath and quietly panic on October 31st, when I realise there's no way this can be done!.

And then I take a step back, realise I've done this four times before and have completed it each time, and proceed to nervously bite my nails until midnight.

.... Isn't it strange what we look forward to?