November wrap-up
Well, it seems I've just been getting more and more LJ-shy with each passing month.  I'm not sure why, though I have a theory or two.  Anyhow, I'll start by mentioning that I succeeding in reaching 50,000 words in my 2008 National Novel Writing Month endeavor:



Being a 'winner' just means I met the wordcount goal of 50,000 in a month, not that what i wrote was anything special.  But it was!  It's an interactive novel, same as the classic Choose Your Own Adventures or Endless Quest books, to name a couple.  Written in the second person, where you choose which section to turn to whenever a choice arises.  Only I'm jampacking mine with all the goodies I always wanted one of these to have.  A combat system.  Secret bonus branches.  Cryptic numerology.  LIttle snippets of doggerel at the end of each branch.  No, it's not done yet.  I still have the tables to design and about forty branches to flesh out.  I'm hoping to take advantage of an offer for NaNo participants with a print-on-demand site.

This was my sixth year doing NaNoWriMo and my fourth 'win'.  It was also my second year doing it with a laptop computer, which meant being able to go to write-ins at coffeeshops and such.  I went to four events: a so-called 'pitch meeting' where local participants advised each other on where they could take their stories; two stops on a 28-hour writing tour; a write-in at the Loft LIterary Center, and the Thank God It's Over Party.  The two stops on the tour I made with the middle-of-the-night Perkins stop, followed by Nina's Cafe in St. Paul.  Typing in Perkins from 3-7 a.m. was probably the most striking part of the whole month for me.  The NaNo group was about fifteen strong and occupied a whole corner of the restaurant, keeping it bustling with energy and power cords and laptops everywhere.  Every so often someone would announce a timed Word War.  My notes for the novel are kind of unique: I have two pages with maps of branches, a list of numbers from 1 to 257 with most of them circled (accounetd for) and crossed out (written) with some marked with asterisks (placeholders) and some with purple circles (need to be expanded).  And notes on the combat system that I'm working out.

Aside from this, I'll just mention the other four Saturdays of November.  MN-Stf Halloween party--I didn't take much part, but it was fun and cheery.  Riverfolk performance at davidwilford and Erin McKee's--also fun and cheery, though attendance was low.  Filking, with potluck dinner--yes, it was fun and cheery, too.  Thanksgiving feast at mplsfish 's place--first a bunch of neat people I don't know, and then a bunch of neat people I do.  And yes, it was fun and cheery.