Well, since I haven’t been around here much lately, I thought it only fair that I let you in on what I’m up to these days, since it’s taking up so much of my time. We’re nearly a third of the way through NaNoWriMo, and I have to say things are going much more smoothly than they did last year. In fact, I think this is the best attempt at a novel I’ve made since my first novel back in 2002.

The idea for this year’s story came from a key (pictured above) that I found on the floor of the room I stayed in at the Vipassana Retreat That Went Horribly Wrong. I thought it was a cool-looking key, so I stuck it in my bag, and then promptly forgot about it. I came across it when I was unpacking after I got back from the trip, and since I had been in plot-storming mode in anticipation of NaNo, I came up with this idea: what if a girl found a key that she thought was no big deal, but it ended up changing everything? I took that idea and ran with it. I’m still not exactly sure which direction I’m running or where the finish line is, but that’s half the fun of NaNoWriMo. My current word count is 13363, so I’m right on target.

As I finish chapters I’ve been uploading them on my Vox, which also has an RSS feed. Obviously the posts on Vox display in reverse chronological order, with the most recent first, so if you want to read from the beginning you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom.

NaNo is about quantity rather than quality— the idea is to get the damned thing written in November, and save the editing for December. So please don’t write to me about my typos or misspellings or awkward word choices or the fact that my plot doesn’t make any sense. I have put the chapters up as-is for now because people asked for them, and therefore they’re all first drafts. The repairs and rewrites will come later, I promise. The important thing right now is to have fun and be a word factory.

If anyone else is NaNoing, please post links to your novels in the comments, and by all means do add me at the NaNoWriMo site.