I'm taking part in NaNo again this year. For those of you who don't know what that is, NaNo is National Novel Writing Month, where a bunch of us writers all get together in spirit and write our asses off, with the goal of reaching 50,000 words. I have participated the last two years, and "won", i.e. I reached the target goal and then some.

For my last two NaNos, I worked on my fantasy novel series. This year I needed a break to refresh. Working on one thing for so long, even when I love the project, can be tedious. I needed to do something different, something to take myself out of that world, so that when I jumped back in to it, I would look at it with fresh eyes.

I have a vampire horror novel mostly outlined (a script I would like to rewrite as a novel), but... I wasn't feeling it. In one of my writing groups—a bunch of ladies that I absolutely adore, who give me the best writing advice and are collectively a hysterically funny bunch—were moaning and groaning about NaNo and projects, and making money on writing; you know, the usual things that writers groan about. Somehow, I challenged them to write erotica novels for our NaNo projects, because none of us are comfortable writing sex scenes (something else we all bellyache about). I think my words were something to this effect: we can only get better at it if we practice, so let's do it!

Unlike my hairbrained 3 Day Novel Writing Challenge idea, THIS challenge they jumped on. I am a terrible influence. But here's the kicker. This isn't just any ol' erotica. No! We are going to write... MONSTER EROTICA. And... now I'm finding myself writing a genre I know literally nothing about. Two genres, actually. Because I wasn't content just to write erotica. No! I had to have a plot! (And yes, some erotica books have plots, sort of—I did a bunch of *ahem* "research" prior to starting this project so that I would know what proper erotica looked like.) Speaking of research, I also read books on how to outline romance stories properly, because I didn't have a clue. So now I'm writing urban fantasy monster romance erotica. It's essentially a rom-com with smut.

We ladies have been having a blast, and if people could read the banter on our chat history, they would probably laugh their asses off. Because we're all learning, and we're all figuring out how to get the courage to write the words "cock", "pussy", and other words we never use in real life, and how to get over the squeamishness of writing about bodily fluids. Basically, I feel like I'm a prude who is learning how to let out her inner harlot. You know how some women wear sexy costumes on Halloween and let it all hang out? Yeah. That's me. My writing is wearing a sexy Halloween costume for the first time.

And holy hell. It has been a fucking helluva fun ride. Why have I never considered writing this stuff before? I've got six days to write 18000 words. I'm behind to meet the goal for the deadline. But since I wrote 20000 words in one weekend before (the 3 Day Novel Writing Challenge referenced above!), I'm pretty sure I've got this.