When the Going Gets Tough ...

Image courtesy of Dundee Photographics/ Freedigitalphotos.net

As most of you know by now, November is NaNoWriMo-month. Not a big deal to anyone except the authors who bargained on finishing that one more novel they needed before the end of the year. Hmm ... I'm one of them—except I wanted to finish TWO 30 000 novella's in November.

Yeah, right.

I might have been a tad ambitious when I made that decision seeing that I haven't done any planning for the books and at the moment have only a vague (very vague) idea what I want to write about. And to top it all, it's already the 6th of November and I haven't written one single word.

But what the hell, when the going gets tough, the tough go ... blogging!

With hardly any reads on the blog, only a few people will know that I'd spent my writing time planting vegetables (we live in South Africa so it's high summer here), reading some of my favorite Harlequin author's books (Joss Wood) and tried not to expire from the heatwave blanketing the country. Now, I'm faced with a word-count that is staggering in order to finish (2500 words a day, if I don't miss any days), no outline for even one of the novels and panic that's grabbing me by the throat.

What the hell am I going to write about?

Easy? Did you say EASY? Just because I write erotic romances and erotica it doesn't make writing them any easier. (Ahem, there's just so many ways you can describe humping a guy's brains out, you know?) Nope, there has to be a story about how the two (or three) actually got the point of engaging in some funky business.

And therein lies my problem at the moment.

Totally Bound has a call for submissions for 15-20 000 words novellas featuring handsome pirates and feisty ladies due on 1 January 2014. Maybe I should consider writing one or two of those. But then again, I know nothing, nada, zip, about what pirates should or could do. I don't think watching Pirates of the Caribbean only once, qualifies me as an expert on the subject—especially as the story took a backseat to me gawking at Johnny Depp.

Maybe I could try my hand at writing an erotic horror? Hmm, don't know how I could keep it sexy and fun if all the heroine or hero wanted to do was hide under the bed. Would you want to drop your panties when the hounds of hell were snapping at your heels? I thought not. Sigh, no that's not going to work either.

What about an older woman with a younger man? Who wouldn't want to read about a woman finding love with a younger man despite the odds being stacked against them? This one I could do. But wait, I've already done that and Brent's Law is being published in March by Totally Bound. Could I really do another one? Wouldn't people think I have a secret fantasy if I wrote of them in a row? Nope, not going there.

That leaves me back at square one. Now I'm off to do some research and see what I can come up with. Hope all of you have a lovely, productive week.

What type of erotic romance/erotica would you like to read?