'NaNoWriMovember' OR: 'How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the 'Stache'

Well, the dog days are over...or, in this case, the razorless days. Movember is done, and although I didn't manage to raise as much money as I'd hoped, I had quite a few people tell me that the 'stache suits me. I'll let you judge for yourself:

Rave reviews or no, it's gone after the Movember wrap-up party tomorrow. In any case, this blog is supposed to be about writing, not my facial hair! So on to more important things.

NaNoWriMo wasn't quite the same for me this year as it has been in previous years. Back when Vicious Writers was around, I was writing to compete. Competition can be a great motivating factor, and it certainly was for me. I produced my first novel out of it, and a great science fiction novella last year (needs work, but I loved writing it, sleep deprivation and all). This year, however, I didn't even set myself on the official NaNoWriMo website. I was writing for myself, using the 50,000 words a month goal to get a jump-start on my sequel.

Although I only produced about half of the words that I was hoping for, November was a busy month in many other ways, so I don't feel that the time was wasted at all. I have a prologue and three chapters for the sequel to Hearts, plus a framework full of ideas that I fell in love with. As soon as I started writing it, all of the POV characters were whispering in my ear, clamouring to tell their stories.

Now that it's December, I can turn my attention back to Hearts. The edits are technically, mostly finished. I'm giving the manuscript one last read-through over the next couple of days and then it goes back to Genie and Jim. From there...publication will follow! I'll be sharing details here as they develop.

I did a bit of non-novel writing during November, and a good deal of planning. More prologues for my 'Unfinished' story will be coming up, as well as a new cross-genre idea that I've been tossing around.

I've also been messing around with poetry. Now I've never considered myself to be particularly good at poetry, and I usually don't like expressing myself with structured rhyme schemes, so most of what I wrote came out very free-form, and most of it is not for this blog. However, my friend Matt is putting together a music portfolio and asked me for some spoken word that he could use for a song, so I came up with this:

Vista

Daybreak rises behind me

Sky dappled in cherry and persimmon

Over my forest in spring

I, vagabond, view the valley

Through a verdant vista

The path I follow widens

Reaches a crux

Avenues beckon like open doors

As I survey the lanes

I hear a distant rhythm calling

Calling

Calling to me

And I know that I have already chosen

Budding young leaves

Like hands draw me onward as the beat grows stronger

A rhythm I know like the beating of my own heart

The path ends in a lake

The source

And even on the shore I am awash in sound

I sit amongst the pebbles and listen

But it is not long before I want to swim

Naked and free, I plunge into the depths of the source

The lake

The music

With the sun at its zenith I crawl onto the shore

Like some proto-amphibian

Taking its first breath as something new

Something undiscovered

The path is calling

And though my source is here

I must continue

I slake my thirst before I go

And the music continues to pulse

Inside of me

Ahead the sun is setting

Sky dappled in fire and crimson

Over a hot summer night

The moon rises like a cold eye

Leaves clutch and grab

Shadows dance and whisper, obscuring the path

I, vagabond, vie vehemence

Fear is only a vista

And I have brought my own light

My music

My source

...feel free to tear my poetry apart. I like to. Well, happy December, everyone! You'll hear from me when I'm done re-reading Hearts...or maybe once I decide on a title.