Sorry about last week, folks. Semester ended, which threw my established schedule in the whirlybin, and there are always things I miss while it's in there. I've also decided to put the worldbuilding experiment on hold for the moment - I'm frantically trying to get my novel completed before January, and between it and the shorts I've been writing for my writer's group, the double-think is getting a bit much.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. If you haven't heard of it, it can be summed up as: a bunch of people all over the world who try to write fifty thousand words in the month of November however they can. There are extra rules, such as the piece having to be a new project, prose (not poetry or scripts), and one continuous piece, etc. Personally, I think those rules are optional. The whole thing is run on the honour policy - you say how many words you've written, no one's to stop you copy-pasting the same ten words five thousand times, and as there's no actual prize but satisfaction, (and, let's be honest, nobody cares but you) I say Nano is what you make it.

Like YA writer Elana Johnson, I'm going to break their rules, and use NaNo to finish up a project that's been dragging too long. Feel free to buddy me if you'd like to join me. The forums are also a great place for ideas, discussions, questions, whinges, exultations and anything else you feel the need to say whilst writing.

Catching up from last week, Dean Wesley Smith (of the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing) has been thinking hard about the whole self-vs-traditional question that's cropping up for new authors everywhere. He's come up with an interesting idea - self-publishing while querying. Honestly, I'm not too sure that editors and publishers would be too thrilled - first-publishing rights are still seen as the most precious of rights - but it bears thinking about.

There are a few dozen other things I wanted to share, but that might have to wait for another post - I've been too busy to read them first myself!