It feels so strange not to be writing this year. Something feels missing not having every evening, every thought, and every moment of the month of November consumed by writing. Not devoting all my time to creative writing just feels weird.

I’m, of course, better for not doing it. I’m not the nicest person when I’m consumed by 30 days of writing.

So to feel some sort of accomplishment, and to satiate the desire to write, I’ll link to the first drafts of the previous two novels of years past.

Rusted Halo (a revenge story)

Bag of Snow (a love story)

Yay!

It ends on a cliffhanger, so I still have at least 2 more chapters to write. Hopefully I’ll get to those in the middle of December.

As of this post, I’ve finally caught up with the necessary daily word count since the start of the ‘competition’. So far about 22000 words, almost half way.

If you’d like, you can read the story in progress via the link below.

Bag of Snow

I almost didn’t write tonight, but with a newspaper article about the event and the fact that the word count graph is now online I decided to make a go. I decided to forego a bit of sleep so that I could get a couple of words down.

Not too shabby to be starting in the middle of the night.

Start reading Bag of Snow.

Anyway, I’ve gone ahead and set up a new side blog for this year’s NaNoWriMo challenge. This year I hope to write a happier, more uplifting story. It is still in the same universe as Rusted Halo, but a much different tone. I’m looking forward to writing it, but I don’t have a solid roadmap for the plot like I did last year…

I still plan on adding a “real” blog. Too bad work, life, and especially video games get in the way.

It is also too bad that you have to have regular visitors in order to want to update, and you need updates in order to have regular visitors.

I didn’t just want to hit that magical 50k mark, but I also wanted to have a complete story.

That is what I ended up with late on November 30th.

Now all that is left is to edit the beast, and get a few copies of it printed. If you are interested in a print copy, please feel free to let me know.

Amazing that this huge weight is now off of my shoulders. I’m not done yet thought, I have to write the climax yet.

Of course with the writing, I have been neglecting my poor video games. Halo 2 goes completely unplayed, whereas Half Life 2 has only received about 10 minutes of my time. Sorry guys. I’ll get to you eventually.

In other news, I bought a old art nouveau poster for my home office. It’s the standard Le Chat Noir by Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen. It makes the room look so much bigger, the ceiling is vaulted, and I can see getting more poster prints mounted along side of it in the future.