Farewell Nanowrimo

I have decided to dedicate this entry to nanowrimo, or National Novel Writing Month. I don’t remember exactly when I started participating, but i can tell you it was around the early 2000’s. As with all my writing, i wrote a whole bunch, short stories, 1st draft novels, nano, then took a break for college and lost everything before starting up again. For nano, they must have redone their website sometime during my break, for when I came back all my information was gone.

When nano shut down their site earlier this year, i had about 12 years of participation saved on the site. Nano was the one constant in my writing during my rougher years. Every year i could set aside my problems (maybe I’ll write about these later) and push my writing count higher, even if I hadn't written anything all year.

In the later years of nano, I had a pretty good plan for how to utilize it for a productive year. I could get a pretty good first draft, anywhere between 20k and 40k (I never won nano) and spend the rest of the year editing and pulling it together. That was my intention anyway. My job is very time consuming and I enjoy writing short stories which definitely pulls my attention away from novels for much longer than it should. As a result, I currently have about 4 first drafts ready to move on.

Although I considered doing nano even though it’s officially over, I ultimately decided not to. It would have been a side project interrupting my rewrite on Virulent Venus. It was a hard habit to break but I said goodbye to a 12 year streak on nano. November will always hold a special place in my heart when it comes to writing.

Another tradition I have is a reading challenge every year. This is just a fun way of keeping track of how many and which books I’ve read and I’ve really enjoyed it. This year is the tenth year and i’m starting to make my own challenges. Last year was a Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet themed challenge. Read 4 books with specific prompts and get one of the gems. Collect all 6 gems to control infinity. I know, I'm a comic book nerd. This year’s challenge will be themed on the original Age of Apocalypse storyline from the 90’s. I did try one based on Super Mario Bros, but it didn’t work out too well. I’m toying with the idea of sending a copy of these challenges out with my mailing list, so sign up now to encourage me to get that thing started.

I’ll end this entry with a writing update. I’ve been very good at sticking with VV. I think I mentioned in my last entry that VV is now split into 3 parts. Part one is complete at 40k words, although I've had to add so much that its like a first draft all over again. I’ve got to write the other 2 parts and match timelines before doing some hard core detail editing, but hopefully they go pretty fast because I already have stuff written for them. This is technically the third draft after all.

Other than that, I just received a denial on a short story I've been waiting to hear back from for 7 months. I have one submitted to Writers of the Future and one submitted to Analog. I think I’m going to shelf Astral Web for now. This is a horror story with supernatural elements and I’m not sure if that’s the kind of stuff I want to be known for. On an unrelated note, one of the short stories I’m very excited about is a raunchy horror story.

Until next time, reader friends!