Smelly Cheese

I guess blogging isn’t my strong point. Too much to say or too little? I’ll try to do better. Promise! It’s autumn, after all, and I have more time to myself, so it shouldn’t be a problem. (Though, I’m afraid I am so many months behind on book recommendations, that I may as well just start fresh rather than try to make up for all the ones I missed. Sorry, guys! I’ll just have to give you some super awesome ones to make up for it!)

For those who are keeping score, I did win NaNoWriMo last year. By the skin of my teeth. 51,739 words. Haven’t really looked at it since, but it was a little disheartening, trying to keep up with NaNo while living in the dark and cold with a propane heater (we really shouldn’t have had inside) smelling up the house and no running water. Sometimes I still have chilling flashbacks of that stink and the whooshing sound it made in the morning when we ran it to try and take the chill off, along with the staticy AM radio telling us how many people died over night of CO poisoning and how few people got power back in the last several hours. Oh, and then a few weeks after the lights came back on, a hanging branch let go and landed on my truck. Not big damage, and the insurance took care of it, but it still made me want to go find Winter Storm Alfred and destroy him with a (propane) blowtorch. Can you really blame me for wanting to put anything and everything that reminded me of it behind me?

I won’t try to catch you up on my whole life, because a lot has happened and little has changed, but I have a few little highlights I’d like to share before I get down to business.

First item of note: I still haven’t gotten my manuscript (The Heart Thief) sent out. Pretty pitiful, I know, but I didn’t feel like it was ready, and I needed to let it age a little while, then go back and re-edit. I’m pretty glad I did. I’ve made what I think are some good changes, and I have a few more to do. It’s really getting there, though. Maybe manuscripts are like fine wine or smelly cheese? Who knows? But I’m happier with it now than I was when I set it aside last fall.

Next (newer) bit of news: I’ve written and am working on the 3rd (I think? I’ve lost track slightly, and it’s 2:30am, so I don’t wish to count) edit of a novella. Okay, it’s a novelette, but I strongly dislike that word, and I’m hoping the scenes I’m expanding will boost the word count a bit so it can be a true novella. I decided that I wanted to try to submit my writing to a literary magazine. I’ll tell you which if they like my stuff and want to print it. Two things inspired me to do this: My desire to get my writing out there and the passing of Ray Bradbury. I feel like, if I get some short stories published (that I am proud of. I never liked shorts as a kid, but there’s something to be said for them, when they’re done right. I’ve read some good ones, as opposed to the horrid ones I had to get through in high school, and I really have learned to appreciate them much more), it will start the launch of my writing career, and it’ll give me something to put in the dreaded “About me” paragraph of future query letters. I also am (as you may know if you’ve read my blog in the past, or if you’re super-amazing and decided to read all of my past entries) a huge fan of Ray Bradbury. When he passed, I took it pretty hard. One of the top things on my list of things to do was to meet him some day. I just forgot that idols are mortal, no matter how awesome they are. I decided that I would write every day, as he did, after that. I’ve not quite done it, but I’ve written or edited or brainstormed almost every day. Then, I decided, well, what am I waiting for? If my he got his start by submitting to literary magazines, why can’t I? The novel is the dream, but maybe I need to learn to walk before I can fly?

And, my final bit of blogging for the evening (night? wee hours of the morning?): NaNo is coming up again! I have a plan for it: An old plot idea that I came up with years ago. I dropped it because I liked it, but I didn’t love it, yet I wasn’t willing to make the changes to make it great. So, it’s coming back, 3 main characters shorter, several degrees darker and a lot more magical (in the “Hollywood witches” sense…I’ll explain what I mean by that next time, though I’m sure you’ve already got it). Barring snow storms, week-long power outages, falling tree limbs and other complications, I’m expecting this NaNo to be a big improvement over last year. I need it to be, or I run the risk of giving up on National Novel Writing Month.

Nor’Easter WriMo

Talk about a crazy start to NaNoWriMo! Here in New England, we wrapped up the month of October with a lovely snowstorm. The trees came down and the power went out a little after 5pm on the 29th. I figured: No big deal. We’ll have electricity in plenty of time to start NaNoWriMo.

On November 1st, I decided I’d kick off NaNo by writing by hand (using my lovely fountain pen and its green ink, which I promptly became covered in). We’d have power on the 2nd, right?

I couldn’t post my word count until the 3rd of the month, because I don’t have a data plan on my phone. We didn’t have power then, of course. That was when B&N got power, and I was able to post from there using my NOOK Color. Until that point, I kept track of daily word count in a little memo pad:

Nov 1st: 3,409
Nov 2nd: 6,156
Nov 3rd: 7,420

We got power back on November 4th at about 8:15 pm.

6 days, 3 hours, 15 minutes without power, give or take. 9,226 words written by hand, give or take.

Now I’m typing my hand-written stuff in one file, and adding on to the novel in a second one, just for confusion’s sake, and because I got sick of counting, losing track, re-counting… Progress is slow, but I’m getting there. Less than 2k words a day (and, in a couple of instance, less than 1,667), but I’m at the goal for the day, or close to it. Should get there without a problem, since work is without power again, so I get a surprise day off.

As a side note, as of right now, 22,030 people are still without power (10 days after the storm)

Thank you, Alfred. At least now I have a name for my antagonist.

Count Down to NaNoWriMo 2011!

14 Days; 11 Hours; 35 Minutes; 15 Seconds

I am a glutton for punishment. What can I say? I enjoy the 50,000-words-in-30-days challenge. I can’t just not do it! Sure, my schedule is hectic. Yeah, I’m working crazy hours. But this is NaNoWriMo! I’ve participated for the last four years. I can’t quit on year five!

I know a lot of writers out there think NaNoWriMo is a joke. Some scoff at it because they’ve secretly tried and failed. Some just think it’s foolish. I’ve heard arguments saying that you end up with 50,000 useless words at the end of the month because you spend so much energy trying to get to the 50K that the quality of writing suffers. Sure, there are some who cheat. Some will add extra words, repeat a passage multiple times throughout the novel (a 100-word prophecy, perhaps, or a poem, or a song stuck in their character’s head), and end up with a mess at the end that needs too much editing to be bothered with on December 1st. I have to admit that, in some cases, NaNoWriMo does more harm than good. But that isn’t my NaNoWriMo style.

50,000 words is a good goal, but 50,000 GOOD words put together in an enjoyable novel worth editing and (maybe even) publishing is a far more worthy goal for a serious writer. I like to think of myself as a serious writer, so I write. I sacrifice word count if I don’t like a passage. I only repeat something (like a magic spell spoken by a protagonist) if it’s necessary to the story. I don’t add unnecessary words unless I think them necessary at the time. I end, not with 50,000 words, but with the beginnings of a potentially publishable novel.

Last year, I had amazing luck with my NaNo Novel. I tried something outside of my norm. I finished it. I edited it. I sent it off to readers. I haven’t gone any further with it, but I can, and I probably will. My goal for 2010 was 60K. I reached 57,073. Respectable, but I didn’t quite get there.

This year, I’m going to try once again to step out of my comfort zone. Last year it was a mystery-noir-fantasy. This year, I’m thinking supernatural horror (which may turn into a supernatural fantasy, but I’m still going to try). I have a basic plot (mostly, just a few stops along the road. Outlines don’t work for me. They’re too restricting. I like to let my characters pick their own path on their way to some major points that are pre-determined and sometimes never reached), I have a pair of main characters, a plethora of side characters who may or may not actually get face-time, and an antagonist (if you can count a small secret society as a single antagonist). I am ready!

My goal for this year: I’m going to try again for 2,000 words a day. 60,000 words. Am I crazy? Perhaps. Do I care? No. Am I way too excited about this? Probably.

Is it November yet?

14 Days; 11 Hours; 5 Minutes; 51 Seconds…

57,073 Words and Counting (A Final Note on NaNoWriMo 2010)

Well, I didn’t make that 60k. I came painfully close, but I just couldn’t write 10,000 words in two days. I knew that when I hit the 50K mark on the 28th, so I said to myself: “Well, you did 53k in 2008, 54k in 2009, so you’re going to make 55k in 2010.” I was surprised by the extra 2,000 words I managed to squeeze in at the end, bringing my official total up to 57,073 (It could have been 57,984, but I lost track of time, and scrambled to get to the word count validator before 11:59 changed to 12:00, but didn’t quite make it). I must say that, even though this year’s NaNoWriMo ended up being a battle until the very end (In the past, I have been finished much further in advance), and this story started out as a struggle, this is probably the most fulfilling NaNoWriMo I’ve taken part in.

First of all, I am only another few thousand words from the end. The end! That is extremely exciting for me, the person who always has such a hard time with the R-Z portion of the A-Z of writing a novel. I am actually expecting to be back here before next Wednesday to write a celebratory “It’s Finished!” blog for all to see.

Then there’s the fact that I have been working steadily on a story that is so different from my usual style. If it weren’t for NaNoWriMo, I would have set it aside by day 14 to move on to something else. Something I would have been more comfortable with. Something that wouldn’t have been such a challenge. Don’t get me wrong. I like a challenge! If I didn’t, I would have no business even attempting NaNoWriMo, but when writing gets hard, I get discouraged and feel the need to change to something different. Thanks to NaNoWriMo, I didn’t, and now I have a nearly completed novella to show for it.

The final boost NaNoWriMo 2010 has given me is the knowledge that I type very well under pressure. I was averaging 2k words for the first few days, then started to struggle to reach that minimum 1667, but on the 28th, I saw that I needed to pick up the pace and managed to write 3019 words. Wow! Then I repeated that exact same number on the 29th (no joke!) and kicked it up to 4182 (a little over 5k, if you count the extra 900 I didn’t manage to validate on time!)! Of course, let’s not talk about typos.

What to do, now that NaNoWriMo 2010 is over? Well, though my family and friends probably won’t understand it, I have to keep typing. Of course, I can get my after work shower at 11 instead of waiting until midnight, because I’m not writing to meet a deadline, and I can relax with the word count a bit (though I still keep checking), but I need to type, and I want to. I want to finish this novella, add in the portions I skipped over (this is the first time I’ve ever gotten stuck and skipped ahead instead of stagnating until I managed to get going again), then read the thing and start the editing process. I’m ready. Current word count: 59,442. Ready? Here we go…

My Final NaNoWriMo 2010 Stats

Ponderings of a WriMo

I must admit that I’m finding this year’s NaNoWriMo more of a challenge than it has been in the past. I’ve had a couple slumps, four days of writing less than the minimum 1667 words and a lot more procrastination attempts than usual. Maybe it’s because I started off the month with a cold that lasted over a week and left me with a cough that still sneaks up on me from time to time. Or maybe it’s because I decided to write something very different from my usual style. I’m talking different time period base for my world, different character relations and types, different villain goals, and even a slightly different genre. It’s still a fantasy, but it’s less fantasy and more…I don’t know. Maybe “noir” is the term I want? I’m using a lot of dark imagery and mood. There may even be a touch of horror, mystery, historical fiction? Well, maybe not the last. It’s set in a world based loosely off a specific time period in ours, but it’s not 100% true to the period. It’s just inspired by it. But the rest are certainly in there.

I am enjoying working on something different. I have to add that in. It may not have been a great choice for NaNoWriMo. I mean, the point in NaNo is to write as much as you can in a month, which isn’t easy if you’re trying to explore new territory at the same time. Still, I’m enjoying this piece, aside for the occasional slow-downs, and I believe I may not have continued working on it if I’d just started it to try for a regular writing exercise. So, using this for NaNoWriMo has forced me to keep it going, which is good, because I think it may be going somewhere.

That isn’t to say that I’ll finish it this month, but I think I’ll come close. At 30,000 words, I’m close to–or somewhere around–the middle, and I know how it’s going to end. More excitingly: I think I know what I have to do to get there. Generally, when I’m working on something, I know a few key scenes that will probably happen, and I usually know the next scene that will happen, but that’s about it. I do eventually reach the point when I know where the piece will end, but I’m not ever sure how it will get there. I’ll work toward it for a while, a few later scenes will present themselves, but the parts in between those scenes give me some trouble, slow me down, and I eventually find myself setting the whole thing aside to work on something else for a while. I always go back to them eventually, but my habits have prevented me from finishing a full-length novel to date. I have to say that I’m entertained by the thought that, maybe, this NaNoWriMo piece that is so completely different from my usual style will become my first finished draft. How strange would that be? The woman who generally prefers high fantasy finishes her first manuscript, but it’s..what? Fantasy Noir?…Instead of her usual style.

I’m certainly looking forward to having a completed draft in my hands, even if it isn’t in my usual style. To finish a novel–or novella, depending on how many words passed 50k this thing takes me–would be a great experience. Maybe an intimidating one? But I do enjoy editing. It’s the perfectionist in me, I think. I want to fix it. Make it better. Make it the way it’s meant to be. I’m looking forward to printing this piece out (double sided, of course. Let’s not waste paper!) and reading it with a red pen in my hand. Maybe I’ll read it without the red pen first, but, no. I can’t ignore a typo if I come across one. But, now I’m getting ahead of myself. I’d better get back to my writing. I’m not half way for the day, yet, and I don’t want a fifth low word count day.

My NaNoWriMo progress as of 2:30 pm on 17 November 2010 (I still have some time left! That last blue bar will increase before the day is out!)

Some Great Books for WriMos and Writers

Looking for a few books that might help you boost your NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) word counts? Or maybe you’re a writer looking for some books to help you in your craft. Let me take a few minutes out of my own NaNoWriMo typing (I’m at 5539 words at the moment!) and share a couple of my favorites and a title that just about every writer I encounter at my bookstore recommends.

1. The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus: When my old pocket Roget’s Thesaurus fell apart, I mourned its loss and searched the bookstore shelves for a worthy replacement. I picked up this tome, and though: “What do I need this for?” Then I flipped through it and fell instantly in love. My old thesaurus was great. I would look up the word I wanted to replace alphabetically, and was greeted with a list of choices. Sometimes I’d have to refer to my dictionary to be sure I was using the new word correctly, but it was a great way of shooting down redundancies and finding that word that was just on the tip of my tongue when I could only remember its less desirable synonym. This thesaurus, however, is simply amazing. Not only does it have better organized choices for each word, but it also uses words in sample sentences, and has lists of related words. I no longer need a dictionary to be sure that I’m using a word correctly, and I no longer look up the first word that comes to mind and and encounter: See XYZ. Any writer who uses a thesaurus should consider having this one at hand. Just bear in mind that commonly, elementary expressions are more advantageous than elaborate ones (In other words, don’t abuse your thesaurus!)
2. The Pocket Muse and The Pocket Muse 2 by Monica Wood: These little gems are great if you’re looking for inspiration in the form of writing prompts, photographs and tips. They’re small enough to keep in your purse, glove box or backpack, and they’re great for short prompts or jump-off points for longer works.
3. Room to Write: Daily Invitations to a Writer’s Life by Bonni Goldberg: This little book is full of tips to help a writer improve characters, plots and explore different techniques. I think it would be more suitable for non-fiction writers, but I have occasionally turned to it for prompts and exercises to stretch my mind.
4. The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White: Just about every writer I have encountered, and every student of writing who comes in with a syllabus from their lit professor has had this book on their lists. When NaNoWriMo winds down and it’s time to edit that 50,000-word monstrosity, this book is what you’ll be looking for. It is the go-to book for anyone who wants to master English grammar. (Think you don’t need this book because your narrative voice’s grammar is supposed to be less than perfect? Think again. No publisher will take you seriously if you have poor grammar in your query letter, and too much bad usage, even if your narrator is an uneducated teen living on the streets of Lmnop, will make your novel less readable and more rejectable).

That’s it for this month. Now, time to get back to those word counts! Happy Writing!!!

Two Days and Counting! (Finding a last-minute plot.)

It’s almost November 1st! The countdown to National Novel Writing Month is ticking away the seconds on the NaNoWriMo website. Type in a search for #NaNoWriMo on Twitter and you’ll find hundreds of writers and wrimos tweeting about their plots, outlines and word count goals. Everyone’s getting ready, but there are more than a few out there saying: “I want to do NaNoWriMo this year, but I can’t think of a plot!” If you’re in that boat, don’t be discouraged. I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo for four years, now, and I still don’t settle on  plot until the week before. Last year, all I had on November 1st was a vague idea inspired by my dogs barking at a reflection in a window that budded into a 54k word manuscript that’s still growing! Don’t let a lack of pre-made plot outline and character bios discourage you. If you really want to take the NaNoWriMo challenge, do it! Don’t think you can spin a 50k word masterpiece from a single word that you like the sound of or an inspiring hook that pops out of your head at midnight on November 1st? Here are some strategies that might help you get a bit of an idea before the big day:

Open a fresh document in your word processor of choice (I’m a big fan of Google Documents, because you can access it from anywhere, even the University library on the day you accidentally leave your laptop on the kitchen table), and make a list of options. This works great if you have a few different plots you’ve been rolling around in your head for a while. Put those plots down, include that awesome first sentence you wrote a few weeks ago then put aside for another day and that story idea that you had a year or so ago but discarded because, as cool as it sounded, you were caught up in something else at the time. See something there you can work with? If not, or if now you have too many ideas, read on.

Look at your options and list the pros and cons of each. Yeah, maybe it’s over thinking things a little, but then again, maybe not. Perhaps you’ll find there’s one item on your list you keep going back to and adding “pros” while the only “con” is: “I’ve never written anything like this before.” Great! That could be the jump-off point for you 50,000 NaNoWriMo words!

If you’re still having difficulties, try writing down a list of the things you don’t want to write about. I had to do just that this year. As a fantasy writer, there are a lot of clichés I don’t want to live up to. I listed some of those plus a few things that I habitually write about and a thing or two I don’t like to write about, and came up with the following list:

Say No To:

• Damsels in distress
• Antagonists of pure evil who want to take over the world and/or destroy it
• Magical swords, axes, etc
• People who are just learning about magic/discovering they have it
• World hopping
• Future setting
• Modern day
• Medieval or Renaissance
• Kings, Queens, Princes, Princesses
• Perfect Heroes and Heroines

From there, I made a list of what I had left (I won’t post the whole list, because that would ruin the surprise, but a few of those things include: A strong female character who doesn’t need anyone to save her; A world modeled after a time period I’m interested in but have never worked with before; A “good guy” who can also be seen as a “bad guy.”) and found that I had something to work with.

That’s where my own plotting problems came to an end this year. From there, I’ve developed the two main characters (leaving some wiggle room for changes, because I am not fan of outlines and plans set in stone) along with a few supporting characters and a basic plot idea. I’ve also settled on writing in third person (An important step that many new writers overlook: Pick a point of view and keep consistent from beginning to end. It doesn’t make sense if you start in one point of view, then she changes to another and then I changed my mind again! Same with past, present and future tense!) and thought over a hook to open the whole thing with. If you’re still stuck, however, here are a few more suggestions:

• Try a prompt. Sometimes that can get you rolling and grow into a longer work.
• Let your dreams inspire you. Literally. I always record my really awesome dreams, and have used them to write stories in the past.
• Pay attention to the world around you, and let your imagination feed off everything you see. Like I said earlier: Last year, my dogs went crazy barking at a reflection in a window and my imagination latched onto that and took over my NaNo plans.
• Develop a character. Sometimes all you need is a hero (or a villain).
• Just write. Take a bit of wisdom for the movie Finding Forrester: “No thinking – that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is… to write, not to think!” There are a lot of people who think what you have to think and plan and squeeze the plot until it bleeds before you can actually write it, but sometimes that kills it. If you don’t believe me, there are a lot of authors out there with bios that say that you have to let the story go where it will and sometimes trying to train it or force it will destroy it (Ray Bradbury and Stephen King are two of my favorite examples). So, just sit down in a comfortable place and a time you normally like to write (forget midnight unless you’re a nocturnal writer like me. There’s too much pressure, especially if you’re used to following a dot-to-dot outline from beginning to end) and type the first sentence that comes to your head, then keep on going until the words stop flowing.

I hope this helps and that you find yourself joining me and my thousands of fellow WriMos typing toward 50k on November 1st! Good luck and happy writing!

NaNoWhyMo?

NaNoWriMo (I pronounce it “NaNo-Rye-Mo” as opposed to the “NaNo-Ree-Mo” some WriMos prefer. After all, I’m a writer, not a wreeter…Though I am a reader…hmm…), aka National Novel Writing Month, starts on November 1st. Soon I will spending my days in writing bliss, tapping out my daily word-count and posting victory cries like: “I just hit 10k!” on my Twitter and Facebook status updates. This is my fourth year participating in NaNoWriMo, and I’m planning on it being my third year in a row beating that 50k word goal. In fact, I made it to almost 55k last year, so this year’s personal goal is 60,000. That’ll mean 2k words per day as opposed to the minimum of 1,667 to reach the 50k goal. A bit more of a challenge, sure, but I like the more even number better, anyway. Besides, it’s only 333 more words per day (333…is that bad luck?).

Every year, people ask me why. Why do I spend every November writing feverishly to reach 50,000 words in 30 days? It’s crazy, and you don’t actually win anything, so what’s the point? Writers and non writers alike think I’m crazy. I think I’m crazy. My MacBook James thinks I’m crazy. By the end of the month, I’m humming Queen’s “I’m Going Slightly Mad” and seeing word counts in my sleep. So: Why?

Why not?

I love to write, and I love a challenge. NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge. Two things I love in one package. Can it get any better? And the truth is, I do get something out of it. I don’t win a prize (aside from the little web badges that say “Winner!”), but I do get to say: “I can do it! I can set a goal to write a crazy number of words in a comparatively short number of days, then kick that goal to the moon!”

(Luckily, November is nicer to me than Lucy is to Charlie Brown)

I also participate in NaNoWriMo to kick off a winter writing habit. Over the summer, things get in the way and my goal to write every day gets lost in sunny weather. November gets me back into writing daily, and leaves me feeling lost when it’s over and I no longer HAVE to write, but I NEED to write. Generally, that drive to keep on typing lasts until the spring, and I even will continue to needlessly post my word-count into the middle of December. Crazy? Perhaps, but also productive.

Another reason to NaNo: You are supposed to start something new on November 1st and keep working on it until November 30th. (Actually, you’re supposed to have a completed rough draft by the 30th: A goal that has eluded me for the past three years.) This provides consistency for writers such as myself who sometimes have so many pieces going on at once that they want to write in them all and manuscript hop two or three times per month just to add a few pages to each. Then there’s the fact that all of my past NaNo pieces are the beginnings of potentially awesome novels. I’ve really gotten to know those characters through total immersion, the plot it almost complete in my head and half done on the page (well, screen), and I’m always happy to re-visit them when I’m manuscript-hopping later in the year, and sometimes can stick with them for a month or more at a time.

Of course, there are a few down sides to NaNoWriMo. An anti-wrimo will tell you that NaNoWriMo concentrates on quantity over quality because it discourages its participants from editing as they go (something I do anyway, after failing–pretty much quitting–my first attempt at NaNo because I couldn’t stand leaving the little bits I didn’t like behind despite the fact that I knew how I wanted to fix them). They might also point out that there are no judges, so how can anyone win? The word-count bot can’t read, and people can scramble their manuscripts, so what’s to stop them from typing “I’m going to win,” over and over until they hit 50k? To those questions I say this: There may be a few cheaters out there who get halfway through the month and decide to just copy and paste over and over to get to the 50k words, but the point in participating in NaNoWriMo is to challenge yourself, so it only hurts the individual. I think that the fact that anyone can win–even if they aren’t amazing writers–is a positive NaNoWriMo trait because it encourages people to try. As far as quantity over quality is concerned: That, my dear skeptics, is what editing is for.

The only thing about NaNo that I see as a major down-side is the fact that you really have to type your manuscript in order to fully participate. Hand-writing is an option, but it isn’t easy, because you have to count your words by hand, have someone else check them, and then type “I am going to win” (or something of that nature) over and over until it matches your word count so you can verify it at the end of the month and be declared a winner. As someone who generally prefers to hand write, but wants to know her exact word count every 15 minutes to an hour, this is a major slow-down in the process, so I end up chained to my laptop and unable to bring my writing with me to work. Of course, that means the manuscript is already entered into the computer and ready for printing and red-penning, but I prefer my rough drafts to be hand-written.

Those minor flaws aside (and I only see the last one as a flaw, anyway), NaNoWriMo is an excellent challenge for any writer. I love doing it, and every year I try to get my writing friends to join me so we can compete against one another with our daily word counts and writing sprints. If you think you’re interested, check out the NaNoWriMo website at http://www.nanowrimo.org or take a look at my NaNo profile here. On the first, you will see my NaNoWriMo word count tracker appear in the upper right corner of my blog, and I will be posting my victory word-counts and other NaNo insanities in blogs categorized as “NaNoWriMo” all November long (Though I do hope to post a few more regular blogs during the month, as well, if time allows). Feel free to cheer me on or heckle me!

Happy writing!