Let’s recap, chilluns. This month, I:

* Finished primary revisions on Lost Things and handed it off for mastication.
* Read a couple big books.
* Designed and released two different training courses, including training both courses to the final trainers.
* Tiled my bathroom and installed a new shower pan. (With Jackie)
* Tiled the kitchen. (With Jackie)
* Ran my normal allotment of games
* Did not skip any of the shows I normally watch
* Went to a couple of movies
* Got Justin from football practice and went to his games.
* Blew two days doing tech support for a laptop that doesn’t work right.

Those last four things are important for me to mention, because of this one other thing:

The story is called Spindle. It’s a fairy tale about a boy in third grade who lost his mom, and a drama about a girl from a magical kingdom caught in an abusive relationship.

(And no, you can’t read it yet — it’s probably less than half done, even now. I’m thirty-five thousand words into a FLASHBACK at this point. Someone slap me.)

Now, yeah, I’ve already done NaNoWriMo before, so let’s qualify why this one is particularly sweet to me:

* I didn’t disrupt my life.
* I didn’t disrupt the lives of my friends and family (I didn’t even MENTION doing NaNoWriMo, not ONCE.)
* I didn’t START until NOVEMBER EIGHTH (once I handed off Lost Things to De), which means I had to average an extra five hundred words every day, and in fact had more 3000+word-days than I ever have before.

For those of you who’ve opined that it is impossible for a person to do NaNoWriMo without turning your life upside down and making it the ONLY thing that was going on in November… well, you’re flat out wrong. Very sorry, but you’re wrong.

If it sounds like I’m tooting my own horn a bit… well, yeah, I am, cuz this is an accomplishment. Hard, yes, but not impossible.

My goal, to put it simply, wasn’t to prove that I could do it, it was to prove that I could do it without constant reader feedback, without fanfare, and without a big hullabulloo, and most importantly without a lot of concessions from my “real life” to make it happen.

To do it matter-of-factly, like it was my work, maintaining the word count I had to have, while still ENJOYING what I was writing about.

I did that. I’m really damn happy. I’m going to enjoy wearing this year’s t-shirt.

Now, I’m going to sleep. December never looked so sweet. I’ve got a good story started.

One admission of guilt: I haven't been to the gym all month. Not once. That goes back to normal immediately.

Wow. Dude. Good job. Impressive and inspiring. Man, I feel like a lazy bastard now.

Congrats, Doyce!

Awesome!!!

When do I get to read it. :)

And yes I read the part about "No, you can't read it..." I just never pay attention to your silly rules. :)

This one is going to be big, I think. Quite big. Considering most of the stuff I've done is in the 50k range... those nice, thin, Princess of Mars-style things, this one is more ... doorstoppy.

We'll see. Due to how fast I had to work, I'm fully aware that this one will also need a lot more revision before it's passable, including air-lifting some sections to entirely different areas and so forth -- I wrote whatever scene seemed to be foremost in my brain at the moment, even it didn't at all seem to be the next scene.

Lizard-Writer-Brain: Let's do the scene where Bobby meets Keven and she finally gets to explain why she has a boy's name.

Me: But... Keven's still... umm... no disrespect or anything... but, she's still kinda trapped in the castle, she doesn't have the Thousand-skin cloak yet -- heck, it hasn't been mentioned yet, we don't know what's in that pouch she's all paranoid about. I mean, there's at least another two chapters of stuff until they're even in the Anything Forest at the same time, and we don't even know if they meet then.

Lizard-Writer-Brain: Mmm-hm, yeah. All good points. Let's write the scene where they meet NOW.

Woo Hoo!!!