How do I still have the energy to post this? Another rant about all the writing I'm doing.

Ooooof.

Sorry about the lack of updates, but November has been a crazy busy month for me. It's great being busy with something again. I stopped being productive for a couple of weeks there, and the laziness monster was eating at my brain.

First there was Paheeba Day over at Pajiba, which was fantastic fun to write for, as well as freakishly satisfying and one hell of an ego booster. My obsessions do come in handy sometimes.

Then there is NaNoWriMO (National Novel Writing Month, for the uninitiated), where basically you sit your ass down and attempt to write a 50,000 word novel from scratch. I've done it two times in the past, both times reaching the word count but not finishing my stories. Can you imagine how long-winded those things are?

Anyway, the first one I did was in 2005, and it was a very fun story about brothers and sisters and love and romance (of course) that I stopped in the middle of nowhere after November had ended. I hadn't even looked at it in two years, but I opened it last month and gave it a read, pleasantly surprised with the result. While it needs a loooot of editing and chopping up of useless scenes, I am really happy with the story and some of the stuff I wrote.

The second time I did it, in 2006, it was a completely different story, that of course I never finished. I liked my writing on that a little better but the story isn't so hot. It was a bit more "modern" (set in real time as opposed to Ye Olden Unspecified Days like the other one) and it just sunk into my making up shit about places I had never been to and a story that relied too heavily on 'the Matchmaker' for inspiration for me to feel very happy with it. I loved my characters, but they deserve a better story around them, so maybe I'll go back to it someday.

I did nothing last year as work was driving me completely insane (I was teaching 12 groups of middle school kids--that's 260 13-15 year olds-- giving 30 hours of class a week and frankly going out of my mind with stress) and I was too tired to do much outside of that.

Now that I am unemployed and being mostly useless (though I keep myself busy with productive stuff...sometimes) I figured, why the hell not try it again?

I started out writing a new story on November 1st, but I really wasn't feeling that one and ditched it when I was 3000 words in. I then pondered taking up my very first NaNo and finally finishing the damned thing and DING DING DING, I opened it up and lo and behold, word vomit ensued! And I have been going crazy over it since.

I am loving it, you guys. My writing feels smoother and less...terrified of itself than it's ever been, and I am so very excited over how it's turning out. It's still scary of course, but I am loving my story and going back to the characters I made. Not to jinx myself, but this could really be good.

I might just get over my crippling shyness when it comes to you know, actually having people READ what I write and I MIGHT post some of it here. Maybe. I'm really freakin' shy about it. No one has ever seen more than a few paragraphs. But I think I feel confident enough about it now to actually unlock the vault. Maybe.

So that's where I'm at.

Oh, I am also working on my second book for the Cannonball Read, and I'm almost done with that. Oh boy...I'm gonna have to write a review for that. I don't think my fingers will be working by the end of November.

Anyway, it's really fun and exciting and Christmas is almost here and there are more good things happening soon.

Check back tomorrow when I may or may not post a scene from my NaNo.