October Stuff

Words: 27,412 = 12 pts.
Submissions: 2 = 2 pts.
TOTAL = 14 pts.



Awesome writing this month, and hopefully I'll do better for NaNo. [crossed fingers] Twice as many subs as last month [cough] but still waiting on several slow markets.

One more new thing that happened just today (okay, yesterday -- pre-midnight) was that Google forced the Google Reader (which I use to read RSS feeds) into their new format. Which is fine, I like the old look better but whatever, except that you can't just "like" a post now. You have to "+1" it via that Google+ thing, which attaches your real name to it. :/ And like an idiot, I actually put my real name when I created the account, way back when only you saw your account information. I don't particularly want my legal name to be attached to everything I do online -- I write under my pen name for a reason -- so I can't help promote people's web posts anymore without outing myself. Lovely.

I followed the brangling over Google's refusal to allow pseudonyms a few months back when they started up Google+, but it was academic at the time. I agreed that Google's making a huge mistake (and a distastefully self-righteous mistake at that) but since I had no interest in using Google+, it didn't affect me. Well, now it does. Wow, thanks Google. :/

On the writing front, I'm doing NaNo this month, for the first time since 2008. In '09 and '10 I was working on large projects in November that had less than 50K words left to go and I didn't want to derail them to break off and do NaNo, maybe losing momentum, so I just skipped. This year, I'm this close to finishing the second Sentinels novel, like maybe two more chapters after the one I'm on, and I've been in a great writing groove, so I figured I can do both. That is, my NaNo book this year will be the third Sentinels novel, which I'll be starting as soon as I'm done here, but I'll be finishing the second one at the same time. I figure it shouldn't take more than a week or maybe two [crossed fingers] even working around my 1667/day on Book Three.

I'm thinking this should work well because:

1) I'm used to switching back and forth between projects; that's how I keep writing when I'm blocked on a project but not on writing all together
2) The books are related, taking place in the same verse, and with some overlap characters
3) They're even mostly concurrent, since most of the gang heads up to Seattle a few chapters into Book Two while Manny (the protag of Book Three) stays home to hold the fort and has an adventure of his own.

So it's almost like writing one book anyway, right? We'll see. :D

Anyone else doing NaNo this year?

Angie