NaNoFinito!

50,160 words, that's what I ended up with for this year's November novel. You can read the whole giant mess of it here. Further comments on it all may come later, when I feel like typing more. In the meantime, I'm going to go do something other than write, and you may commence dispensing the praise, admiration and accolades.

Leaping Pumpkin Jumble Surprise

This was really just the best Thanksgiving dessert ever. Not only did I like it way better than regular pumpkin pie, but it jumped out of the refrigerator to attack Shaleece, and then it turned out to be even yummier when it was all messed up like a pudding or something. Sounds weird, but it was great. I guess you probably had to be there.

Also, Pa showed us a Gee Haw Whimmy Diddle, which I thought was wonderful. I even figured out the magic trick of getting it to spin both ways. (Kind of, I wasn't very good at it.) I need to make myself one of those.

Writing Time

One of the big things about NaNoWriMo is dealing with time. It seems as though evenings after work are both incredibly short and incredibly long when you know you have to write 1700+ words before you go to sleep. It's weird.

Also, I'm at around 35,000 words right now, and I still don't know if I'm going to run out of stuff early, or stall too long and have trouble wrapping it up in time. I'm not precisely sure how it's all going to work out, even now. (Think it's suspenseful for a reader? It's even worse from over here in the author's seat.)

Musical Interludes

Whenever I finish an audio book, I spend a few days listening to music on my commute instead. The various "favorites" playlists on my iPod are very heavily weighted towards things I like to sing along with, so it also tends to be a very singing sort of time as well.

I noticed this last time around that in addition to matching notes as I sing along (still not always a guarantee) it's also fun to try to match voices. I find myself changing timbre, enunciation, etc., depending on whether I'm singing along with John Linnell, or Andy M. Stewart, or Weird Al Yankovic, or Sebastian the Crab, or anyone else. And then there are songs that switch it all up in the middle, like Swingerhead's "Trying to Cut Back," which has about six or so distinct personalities singing the different verses, each with the singer doing a different voice. Or Robin Williams singing "Never Had a Friend Like Me," with all his silly genie voices. It's fun trying to keep up with it all.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that.

Serial Sleuthing

So, in the November spirit of serialized fiction, check out Stanford's Discovering Sherlock Holmes project:

In 2006, we will rerelease a collection of Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of Sherlock Holmes, just as they were originally printed and illustrated in The Strand Magazine.

It's free, and you can get it sent to you in hard copy or electronically. Sounds like fun to me.

Notes from the Week

So yeah, I'm not blogging so much these days. Here's some stuff, though.

Dancing things are being inconvenient this month. There are new salsa classes and tango classes, both of which I would have considered taking if I weren't already skipping swing to write a novel. Ragtime Ball tickets sold out in the blink of an eye, which is kind of a mixed blessing -- again, more writing time, but no Ragtime for me.

I got kind of sick yesterday, which definitely impaired both productivity and enjoyment for the weekend. Blah. But I think I'm getting better, so I'll probably be okay tomorrow.

The novel (still untitled) is going decently well. It's been pretty fun so far, though the process is painfully slow at times. I barely kept up yesterday, but today was more prolific.

I finally got a chance to finish reading The Basic Eight. As I may have mentioned before, Daniel Handler is a fantastic writer. And when I reached the end of this book I realized that I now have to read the entire thing over again because it will all be different, knowing what I know now. Very cool, though a bit frustrating as well, since I don't really have the time to be reading books twice. Later, maybe.

The Beginning

Here we are at Day One, and the new novel has begun. Read along if you like at NanoGraham (site feed).