Back in 2012 I was a novice writer and had discovered a great bunch of other aspiring writers who shared my passion for the written word. Though not all of them were horror fans, in fact I found myself in the minority. It didn’t stop me or them from connecting and introducing me to the wonderful world of shared writing.

Nanowrimo is when the writers around the world get together online and try to create a brand new novel within the month of November. 31 days and 50K words. I signed up November 2012 and surprised myself in that I was successful in creating a 50K novel. Just over in fact, the only problem was it was just mince.

It was a horror story of course, plenty death and destruction- a soul reaper who was being framed by his bosses, didn’t know who he could trust and basically went of the rails into madness. Or at least that was what I intended. Unfortunately about halfway through I kinda lost the plot, it went in an odd direction, characters name changed but I plodded on through till the bitter end. It was hell.

The next year I had more writing experience and thought i’d give it another go. Big, no huge  mistake. This time was even worse, didn’t get close to finishing, in fact gave up with 1 week to go. Again it was a horror story- I took a character I liked from the previous attempt and tried to build a story around the same world I had created. My husband helped me plan, something I’m not good at, and to be fair we nearly ended up killing each other.

Not to be put off I tried again the following year as I must be a glutton for punishment. Surprise surprise another failure. Completely new theme, still in the horror world of course but this time demons. Tried to complete this new novel last year and didn’t even get past the first week.

So why am I doing it again I hear you ask. The reason is simple. I now know what my problem is. I just can’t sustain an idea past 17K or there abouts. I seem to get bored with the characters, the story I’m telling, its just gets all too much. I took a while but I’m not upset that I don’t have a great novel like Dracula, Frankenstein, in me.

I can write short horror stories, and I’m good at it. They shock, the sometimes disgust and they creep people out. And that makes me happy. So this year my Nanowrimo attempt is to write as many creepy short stories, enough to reach the mystical 50K and with any luck some of them will be good enough to put in a horror anthology.