I’d planned to write a huge blog for Halloween, seeing as its my favorite holiday (free candy and dressing like monsters. Monsters who gorge on free candy.) but that came and went in a sugar coma, and I find myself in the middle of November wondering where the hell the rest of the month went. The trees have finally shed most of their leaves, and a thick morning fog winds through the mountains. It’s a nice, cozy scene to wake up to, one I that find stokes my creativity. As I knew it would. As much as I love early autumn, with its explosion of colors, sweet woodland smells, and Halloween itself, I think it just overstimulates my mind. I need the cold November nights (hah, you thought I was going to say rain, didn’t you?) to give me a chance to filter everything through.

And with that comes good news. The 350 page novel I trashed may be salvageable. I’ve given it another looky-loo, and I think I can rework it into something I can finish. It requires killing a bunch of subplots, axing several of my favorite characters, and worst of all, throwing out my favorite conversation between two certain characters, but all in all, I think I can make it work. It’s worth another shot, definitely, so I’m cutting everything that needs to go away and saving it in a file that I might go back to later. I’m sure I could rework a lot of it into later stories, so I’m going to hang onto it. Just in case.

I’m also writing a story for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month to those who think I just passed out and mashed various keys on the keyboard with my forehead. It’s a neat thing to do, writing a 50,000 word novel in a month. I’ve competed in it for the last three years, but only finished it once. But still, it’s fun and I usually end up with something I can work on later. I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to try writing a novel. You can just dive in without worrying about whether the novel is good or great literature, or what have you. The goal is the word count, and it can be a liberating thing for someone who gets hung up on getting it right, as opposed to getting it down. You can always make it better, but you can’t improve on something you never write. I can’t tell you how many times I had to tell myself that. Still have to tell myself that, actually, though not as much as I used to.

Well, I’m heading back to work. Gotta get those words down.