Dear Fellow NaNoWriMo Participants, I’m still working on my NaNo novel, but I have passed the 50K mark. This year I started a brand new project for NaNoWriMo. I had an idea about a super exclusive internship full of teenagers with secrets who needed to steal money and data. As I’ve been writing, I’ve been reading (or re-reading) some fabulous YA heist novels. And I’ve been watching people steal stuff in movies and tv shows. It’s fun to be teaching and say to students, “What I’m obsessed with right now is stealing.” This is/will be my fifth full MS and I’m doing a few things differently. First, I talked with a freelance editor to kick around story ideas. Many writers get stuck at the “is this even a good idea?” phase. Second, I revisited my Scrivener and Beat Sheet template and thought about scene length and balancing the book’s three PoV’s. Heist novels need a lot of tension and tight pacing. When I’m writing, I’ve been listening to the instrumental soundtracks from thrillers like The Bourne Legacy to keep myself unsettled and on edge.