We’re over halfway through October. You know what that means: it’s time for my annual resolution to actually participate in this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! I mean, it’s not like I don’t have enough on my plate, what with college, radio work, design work, Italian lessons and my most thankless of jobs as house-husband. Why not try and write a novel too?

Part of what used to squash my plans in previous years is the fact that I had nothing else to do. And this is dangerous. There’s that old saying about “ask a busy man a favour.” The theory being that once you get the ball rolling, getting things done just becomes second nature. If you’d asked me to do you a favour before, I would have said “sure, no problem”, gone back to playing Xbox, and given you a half-hearted apology two months later when you ask me why I didn’t do what I said I would. I say “half-hearted” because, inside, I’d be thinking it was partly your own fault for asking me to do something in the first place.

Not this year.

The other thing that used to always catch me out was the lack of an initial idea. As romantic as it might be to go into this thing completely blind, just putting fingers to keyboard and seeing what happens across 50,000 words - automatic writing on a massive scale - I just don’t think this is the way I work best.

Again, not this year.

This year, I know exactly what story I want to tell. I’ve got an idea that I think I can stretch across an entire novel. It’s just a matter of getting it out. Quickly.

The only thing standing in my way (apart from college, radio work, design work, Italian lessons and my duties as house-husband) is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which comes out right in the middle of November. I’ve written before about how addicted I am to the first one (250+ hours) and I’m genuinely quite scared at what might happen when this new one comes out. Would Whitney Houston be appearing on X-Factor now if she knew that crack PLUS was going to be released in a few days? Hell no. She’d be off getting ready for her year-long crack vacation.

Who knows, maybe it’ll work and I’ll be able to pull it all off. I’ll just have to prioritise, hard. Ask a busy man a favour? Sure, right after I finish this game.