Welcome to December

I finished my novel yesterday, and I'm glad I did.

I somehow lost interest in the second half of November, both in writing at all and also in the NaNoWrimo experience. I guess I'm a slow learner and never noticed all the groups before, but I felt very much alone this year and not part of the community at all. I was, and am, very much a privateer, and it felt as if everyone else competing this year is a member of a writing group (Forward Motion, NERD, Piker Press, etc etc etc). They all know each other, all have their own histories and dogma, and I just kept seeing them all verifying their own beliefs and pimping for their causes.

Not what I wanted from NaNo at all.

I also felt very old. I found a few kindered spirits, but I had little to offer against the hordes and pretty much dropped out of posting on the boards. The advice is usually the same, anyway, and I've not much to add that others don't say better.

So, between an aversion to the boards and real life letting me know that I've been neglecting it, writing felt more like a useless diversion than an enjoyment, but I kept at it when I could and managed to get my novel written.

I was invited to go to the San Francisco Home Office TGIO party, but the journey's been cancelled.

If I had November over again to re-do, I don't know what I'd do differently. NaNo may have changed too much, and not to my liking, but I still need and treasure it for what it makes me do. I need to re-do the Big Train Show page for my site, and maybe in a few weeks look over the novel. I've run it through a spell checker, changed the *words* to italics, and discovered in the process characters I'd introduced and forgotten! I just love that kind of thing, the beauty of a NaNo novel!

In spite of my efforts to push everyone away, many of them understood. Thanks.