I’m going to do National Novel Writing Month again this year. Finding the time to produce 50,000 words in 30 days was a total pain in the ass last year, especially through Thanksgiving, but doing NaNo completely changed what I’d been doing up until that point. Since we’d moved back to Silicon Valley I’d basically not written at all, spending an insane amount of my free time doing things like World of Warcraft for free, while it was beta. Well, I did NaNo, and WoW went commercial. I haven’t played WoW since, and quite frankly, I haven’t missed it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t finished the rewrite of last year’s NaNo novel, which I’d been aiming for. Finish the 2004 novel, get started on the 2005. I think there’s still a lot of good stuff in the 2004, but I’ve allowed it to become a nine-headed Hydra. A small, annoying voice inside of me is wants to find an outside voice to tell me how to handle the problems I’ve run into, but one of the things I’m insisting on to myself is that I stop doing that. You know, be your own expert. I’ve tended to be one of those people who’s going to learn any moment now how to write a novel/write a screenplay/etc., but what I’ve learned (over and over and over again) is that while you can learn some aspects, the best teacher is just sitting down and doing it. In my case, a couple of times.

Anyhow, I’ve prepared for NaNo by putting my little progress bar in the right-hand column there. It’ll be at 0 until November 1.