Done.

It ended up being just over 53,000 words, once I ran the NaNoWriMo word count verification widget:  about 43,000 typed, plus another 10,000 handwritten.  That was quite an adventure, and fittingly, I closed out the month by handwriting my final 1,000 words.  While the book is far from finished (as in, not even halfway there), this was a great way to get started, and I'd definitely consider participating again next year.  Now, to get back to some pen-and-ink blogging, here's a shot of my last set of tools.   

Staples sugarcane paper composition book and a Franklin-Christoph Pocket 66 eyedroppered with Iroshizuku Tsuki-Yo.

I really enjoyed taking a break from the blog to write some fiction, but now I'll probably take a short break from further work on the book to let the ideas percolate for a while and get caught up on other projects.  This was definitely one of the harder things I've ever done, in terms of daily commitment and discipline.  I'm not sure 1500-2000 words of anything on a daily basis is sustainable for me, especially if I want to maintain the standard of quality I shoot for in my writing.  While NaNoWriMo is a great vehicle for getting as much down on paper as you possibly can, I often felt that I was pushing quantity over quality, and that I had to keep going past the point where "the well was dry" for the day.  

Anyway, thanks to all of you who reached out with words of encouragement.  It made a real difference.  I thought about hanging up on this challenge at least twice, but always managed to wake up the next day and get back on the horse. 

Happy writing, and to those of you still finishing up NaNoWriMo today, write on!   

This Pretty Much Sums It Up

Sorry, folks.  I know it's been sparse around here lately.   I've turned the corner on NaNoWriMo, crossing the 35000 word threshold today. Unfortunately, some family health issues and work travel conspired to steal three or four of my writing days, so I've had to play catch up. While I'm going to do my best to finish this thing, priorities do exist. 

Since I had to spend a bit of time in a place where it wasn't easy to write on the computer, I switched over to handwriting my novel. I discovered that I'm not that much slower writing by hand than I am typing. Bonus: I was able to empty half-a-dozen fountain pens in three days. Some of those had been filled since the DC Pen Show (yikes). Now I actually have the capacity to load up some new inks, and review some pens I've had in the queue. PenBoutique was kind enough to send me a bottle of Emerald of Chivor to review, so at least a portion of my remaining NaNoWriMo challenge will be spent with that ink loaded into my Newton Shinobi.  Thomas Hall was also kind enough to loan me his Zebra Sharbo X multi pen to try out, and I've got a review in progress there. Lots of good stuff to come (including woodcase pencil goodness). But for tonight, I'm inclined to enjoy this beer and wait for my hand to stop cramping. (Seriously people, this brings me back to college finals...)

Anyone else making the final NaNoWriMo push?  Anyone else finding that they are having to take an "internet holiday" to get the writing in?  

What's in Your NaNoWriMo Toolkit?

NaNoWriMo--or National Novel Writing Month--is upon us once again, and this year, I'm participating for real, which is why you might be hearing from me a bit less frequently this month.  For those of you unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it's pretty simple:  you commit to writing a "novel" during the month of November, and if you do it, you win!  For purposes of the challenge, a "novel" is defined as 50,000 words or more.  I'm currently at 12,200 words, which puts me more or less on pace to get to 50,000 by the end of November.  50,000 words won't be enough to complete the book I've been working on for the past couple years, but it's going to go a long way towards getting the entire story out of my head and onto paper. (Link here to my author profile if you want to follow along on my progress.)  

Last year I tried to commit to NaNoWriMo, writing entirely by hand.  It didn't work. In order to hit the 50,000 word mark, you need to produce a daily "quota" of just under 1700 words.  If you can type even reasonably well, I've found it a heck of a lot easier to manage that much writing using a computer rather than writing longhand.  As much as I enjoy handwriting, I can type 70-80 words per minute once I get in the zone, and I don't have more than an hour or two per day to devote to this project.  That's not to say that I don't have a ready supply of pens, pencils, and paper (primarily Field Notes) at hand to make notes and work through some thorny plotting problems, but this year Scrivener and my Vortex One have been my friends.  (Story for another time, but I exchanged the Matias Tactile Pro keyboard.  The white Vortex One has the same great "classic Mac" aesthetics in a much sturdier frame, although unfortunately without the Mac-specific keyboard layout of the Matias, which I loved.)  If you end up "winning" NaNoWriMo, you qualify for some sweet discounts on writing software such as Scrivener, Storyist, and Aeon Timeline.  You can also demo the full version of Ulysses until well into December.  

Twitter is awash in NaNoWriMo status updates, so I know many of you readers are participating. What are you relying on to get your writing done this month?