Nanowrimo

I haven't read anything serious in months. I read half of the Brian Evenson short story collection, and then fell off the wagon and read a bunch of serial killer thriller spillers. Woops. But then I did a week long fast and cleanse and now that my brain (and colon) are clear, I plan to read more improving books. Right now I'm reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. Does that count?

Enough about reading. This post is about writing. Part of my homeschooled PhD program is to write my creative dissertation, which should be, as I see it, a novel. Ironically, during my actual time in an actual PhD program, I did already write one of these. However, naturally, I can't use some novel I wrote back in my roaring twenties and published in 2001. This PhD program that we have here at my house is so bold and so rigorous that we demand fresh output and better novels than the one I wrote back then. We also allow our student to go for months without picking up any book she didn't find at the grocery store, and let's not even mention the lack of Spanish language study. But we do have child care.

The point is that I'm going to be doing National Novel Writing Month and I'm going to blog here about my experiences. Anyone want to do it with me? I did it last year and wrote 50,000 words of a young adult fantasy novel. It's pretty cool, but I didn't finish it, because after I hit 50,000 words I slammed my hand down on the DONE button and quit. This year I'm going to get to the end of the book in my 50,000 words, even if I have to skip around a bit. And I'm going to be writing a more serious book. I may post excerpts here, and I'm definitely going to post links and information for my own self so when I switchyswitch around different computers I can always see my same notes.