I’ve tried it before — twice before, as a matter of fact — but I’ve always run out of steam sometime before the middle of the month. Maybe this year will be different.

I’ve always thought of myself as a potential novelist with the Great American Novel lurking somewhere within the bowels of my mind.

Wait, bowels if my mind? Eww.

I digress. It’s November, and that means it’s NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and November 30th. That’s only 1,667 word per day, on average. Certainly doable, right?

My genre would be suspense, mystery. Perhaps a riveting whodunnit with an iconic detective or private eye who solves the impossible murder mystery. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

The problem I have, though, is that, while I can conjure up colorful characters and create great dialogue, I don’t know what to do with the players. I come up empty when it comes to important characteristic for a novel. Like plot, character arcs, conflicts.

I have an idea for this year’s NaNoWriMo effort, but unless I come up with a plot outline for my story, I’m afraid I’ll once again run out of steam and end up with a cast of characters who are aimlessly waiting for something interesting to happen to them.

Oh well, as Scarlett O’Hara said, “Oh, I can’t think about this now! I’ll go crazy if I do! I’ll think about it tomorrow. But I must think about it. What is there to do? What is there that matters? NaNoWriMo. And I’ll think of some way to develop a plot. After all…tomorrow is another day!”

Wait, tomorrow is November 2nd. If I don’t think about it today, it will be too late!

Well, frankly NaNoWriMo, I don’t give a damn.

Written for today’s one-word prompt, “mystery.”