Do you feel it yet? The slight increase in your anxiety levels? That more and more you find yourself catching your bottom lip between your teeth? The slight distraction and gazing off into the distance and wondering? The feeling that time is running out? That October is draining away like water through your fingers?

What's causing it? One word: Nanowrimo.

It feels like it's sneaking up from behind, still lurking in the shadows. The hazy ideas for a 50,000 word book are creeping into the dreamscape, vaguely recalled on waking; characters are still blurred, near formless, but waiting; landscapes as dark and mysterious as the world before sunrise; plots call out in the darkness, then run away, giggling, to hide behind the dreaded writer's block.

Or... maybe that's just me.

November 1 looms, crawling ever closer, unstoppable. In less than 20 days, thousands of people will watch the clock tick over from October to November and begin a month-long outpouring of words. Some, most, will not finish. The bright and shiny ideas will fall victim to excuses as plots fail and characters get bored. People will shrug their shoulders and walk away as newer and shinier things distract them.

But some will finish, bask in the glow of the achievement and then go on to newer and shinier things.

To help peeps in their pursuit of writing that book, Jordan E. Rosenfeld has an article in Writers Digest: 10 Ways to Launch Strong Scenes; or try The devil is in the details an essay by Craig Clevenger on LitReactor.com about description.

I'll scare up more articles closer to the starting line. In the meantime, I need to go and flesh out the Post-Its (TM) I've written. One line per book is great, but, I don't know, I think it needs more than a one line summation. They need...

CONFLICT!!!