This month I have been quiet because I undertook to do NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. The goal was to write a 50,000 (or more) word novel entirely in the month of November. On Monday I submitted my novel to the NaNobots and they confirmed that I had 50,131 words.

I WON! My first year of doing NaNoWriMo and I won! I must say I’m pretty proud of myself, especially given that I wasn’t even a writer in any real sense a year ago. It seems like it was so long ago that I left my full time corporate slavery and decided to be more purposeful in my life.

I’ve had some ups and downs along the way, and I thank you all for being there for my through those. I think that achieving my goal of winning NaNoWriMo in my first year really does go to show how far I’ve come. I feel like I can truly call myself a writer now, or at least a novelist.

When I got up this morning I thought that I was going to edit the novel immediately, to try to get it into some sort of shape while it was fresh in my mind. I even printed it out so that I could make manual edits on a real manuscript. But then I went to a NaNoWriMo drinks session with other Melbourne writers and I was chatting with a woman who advised letting it settle for a while before trying to tackle the monstrous edit. It was her third year so I felt like I could trust her judgement. There is also a part of my that doesn’t want to look at what I’ve done yet. A part of my that is still recovering from the ordeal. I think deep inside my brain is processing, bubbling away under the surface, a whole bunch of stuff from that story and I won’t be able to do a proper edit until that processing has finished. I think I’ll just file it under pending and wait until I’m really enthusiastic about going through it.

In other update news have purchased two new lenses for my DSLR camera; a Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens and a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto lens. I hope that since I’ve finished purging my novel that I will be able to do some more photo essays and what not in the coming weeks.

Also, here is a picture of my friends Jonathan and Gabrielle as zombies at a gallery opening I went to last week. The picture in the background was done by Jonathan and is for sale, so if you want it let me know, and this was taken with the new wide angle lens.

 

Yep, life is pretty sweet at the moment.