I’m just now starting to come out of the foggy haze that washed over me last week — a low fever, chills, and not much else to show for it all. I felt bad enough to notice but not enough to take off of work. My coworkers kept offering me various cold medicines, despite my insistence that it does very,very bad things to my personality. It took me a few days to realize they want to see how bad “very, very bad” actually is.

I’m feeling much better now, thanks.

It’s November which means it’s National Novel Writing Month. Regrettably, I haven’t been participating in NaNoWriMo as it didn’t really line up with my work on Pantheon. Maybe next year I can take the time to get to one of the other stories from the Matters of Mortology cycle. There’s certainly more from that world I want to explore and a month should be the perfect amount of time for a little side trip through one of them.

So, no NaNoWriMo for me this year. I am writing but it’s not going to be done in a month. Optimistically, it will likely take another four months before I’ve got the current project to a point where it feels like a solid first draft. Realistically, it could be six months or more. As I learned on Assam & Darjeeling, real life has a tendency to get in the way of real writing.

I’ve enjoyed cheering on everyone else at Plurk and Twitter who are battling their way through NaNoWriMo, though.

It’s a really terrific idea, setting aside a month to push through something towards completion. Too often, writers (myself included) get a little discouraged or distracted by what we’re working on, going back over the same passages again and again without actually moving through to the end. A commitment to NaNoWriMo is a great antidote for that tendency.

(And that’s the last time I’ll use the acronym NaNoWriMo on this site until December — no, wait…)

I’ve written about it before, I know, but I’ve found that writing out a first draft in longhand — and sometimes the second as well — is a perfect way to protect myself from going back and trying to edit and re-edit what I’m writing. I’m not anti-technology at all, of course. But I’ve found that (for me) there’s something very gratifying about having the pages pile up in real time, line by line. And you end up with a very interesting artifact that has heft and weight beyond the amount of space it takes up on the hard drive. The four notebooks in which I wrote the first draft of Assam & Darjeeling are some of my most treasured possessions. If the house ever goes up in flames, I’m diving out the window with them and the family photos.

Another reason that NaNoWriMo (sorry) works is that it forces a writer to stay connected to their own continuity. The past few weeks have been a rough time for me, thanks to unforeseen wrinkles in my schedule and fighting off being sick. And so, when I (for instance) left a dapper little prick named Trip heading down Swift’s Row to teach “Saint” Stephen Murphy a lesson… well, unfortunately I’d forgotten what exactly Trip’s lesson was to be, once I got back to him.

And thus we build our little palaces along the shores of our mind… and then we can only stand and watch as the waves roll in.

I’m sure I’ll think of something sooner or later. If not, I can always count on Trip to come up with it. He is shaping up to be a bright fellow. He’s going to have to be, if this story is still headed where I think it’s headed.

It was just November, and now it’s nearly gone. Thanksgiving next week but there’s already snow falling around the state. I work out near Lake Michigan and we got 2-4 inches earlier in the week. Back in town though, it was sunny. People kept asking where I’d come from, with all that ice and snow on my car. No one got my Niflheimr joke, which was a disappointment.

But I have bigger problems to contend with. Winter is here and the gods apparently decided I don’t really need a functioning heater or defroster in my car. Which is… problematic when the temperature is dropping daily. We’re averaging in the 30′s right now, with 20′s and below overnight. It’s only going to go lower as the world tilts and that long cold shadow slides across us. And ice should not form on the inside of the windshield. So let’s get that fixed this week, yes?

The Winter Chap has sold a handful of copies, which is nice to see. You could even get one for yourself. And it’s seasonal; there’s a Christmas story in there that I’m particularly proud of. Consider it your donation to my personal battle against the Frost Giants.

And next comes Christmas. I don’t have a lot of good ideas for gifts this year, so I’m considering just buying myself some of these to replace the family and friends I’m sure to lose.