Writing goals (and why I'm not writing a novel in November)

I've wanted to do NaNoWriMo for ages, but instead I've always ended up writing things like my dissertation (or, like last year, defending it). And this year---

I'm still not writing a novel.

But I will be working on this book that's been rolling around in my head since May (since the ICMS conference in Kalamazoo, more specifically). I keep poking at it and thinking, "Meh, maybe later. I've got to write Other Little Thing right now and a book seems big and scary." But the things I'm wanting to write about for this book keep popping up in blog posts and poems, and I guess I should actually face this beast.

The advantage of hitching my project to something like NaNoWriMo is that it requires me to actually write every day, even if I don't feel inspired, and it precludes me from spending B's valuable naptime revising instead of generating material. Because I can sit and fiddle with the wording of a single sentence for hours, just to avoid facing a case of writer's block.

For now I'm calling it Kitchen Mystic, because reasons. And having a name for it makes it seem more like a real thing, even though it will almost certainly evolve away from that name as it grows. But I'm letting you all know about it now, because it will make it harder for me to bail on this project in a week if it turns out to be hard ;-)

Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo in some form?