Skulls in the Stars

I just had to write a brief post to celebrate: I finally, finally finished writing my NaNoWriMo project!  For those who have been reading me for a while, you know that I officially completed NaNoWriMo’s 50k words by the 28th of November.  However, I still had two chapters to write to actually complete the book.  Those two damn chapters took me another two months to write!  (This is a good demonstration of why having a strict writing deadline is important.)  Now, at last, I’m finished: the final novel word count was 61.5k.  Maybe I can get back to writing my textbook, now…

I’m in San Antonio this week for work, and a bit bored. Drawing inspiration from Blake Stacey’s writing of “found poetry”, I hereby present my own brief poem (Found poetry is the practice of taking phrases from other sources, in this case search terms people used to find my blog, and making a poem out of them):

• tell about a the book the nightmare man
• keyboard in your mouth
• twenty is the number of heads on the hydra
• looming alien invasion
• Nicolaus Copernicus prove bible wrong
• What is a Wave?
• roddy macdowell alive or dead
• pond ripples

No need to applaud, thank you, thank you…

P.S.  If someone hasn’t made this idea a blog meme yet, they should…

Well, I made the deadline!  I officially made 50268 words at 1:20 am on November 28.  My winner’s image:

Which I display with pride.  This takes care of the paperwork, but the irony is that the novel isn’t finished!  I’ve got a few more nights of work to wrap up the storyline.  Just like the last time I did a novel-in-a-month, the plot took on a life of its own and I’ve spent the past 10K words trying to put on the brakes!

I’m gunning to completely finish the story by the last day in November.  Wish me luck!

Well, yesterday marked the halfway point of November, and I managed to make and pass my NaNoWriMo goal of 25,000 words total by the end of the day, and even go past it.  I was a little behind during the week, but rallied well.  Amusingly, I misread the date on Monday and assumed I needed to write much more than I actually did, which meant that I actually caught myself up to the appropriate point on Tuesday.

The writing is finally getting easier, as the characters are starting to practically tell their own stories.  I’m pretty confident that I’ll finish the 50,000 words by the end of the month, though of course things could change at any moment…

Well, National Novel Writing Month began today, and I decided to do it!  For those who are interested, you can keep track of my word count at this link.  I may publish some excerpts of the book as I go along, but for now I’m afraid that subjecting it to scrutiny will only slow me down (like many writers, I’m temperamental.)

No, I’m not referring to some sort of act which would get you arrested in the South. I’m referring to National Novel Writing Month, which is coming up in November. “Personal Demon” reminded me of its impending arrival.

The idea, for those not familiar, is to vow to write a 50,000 word novella within the confines of the month of November. This means you’d have to write a lot of words (2000/day) over an extended period of time, and the quality won’t be the best. But quality isn’t the point: the point is to force you to sit down and actually write a novel, and not just talk about it (hence the post title).

I’m still deciding whether to do it or not this year. I wrote a novel last March at PD’s suggestion, and managed to finish something I was quite happy with (even though I later noticed that I managed to use the word “funds” three times in the first paragraph, and used the phrase “on foot” twice in the second sentence). If I do it, I may just post the daily results on this blog, for kicks. I’ll let people know what I decide…

Well, I’m back home for a couple more hours, then I head off to another meeting in California for a few more days. In the meantime, I thought I’d quickly comment on one of the best horror novels I’ve read this year: Dan Simmons’ The Terror.

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Two men sat at a table working on a large jigsaw puzzle. After some effort, they succeeded in putting together a small collection of pieces into the image of an eye.

“From the shape of the eye,” said the first man, “It looks like the puzzle might be of a dinosaur.”

“Nonsense,” said the second man, “The eye is clearly that of a bird.”

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