NaNoWriMo - Day 0.5

On this beginning of Nov. 1st, I decided I would give a half-day progress report.

So, I attended the Denver NaNo kickoff party. I went in hopes of getting to know some people. As it turns out, it wasn't as organized as Austin's kickoff party used to be. I arrived at the designated coffee shop, walked in, looked around to see if anyone was in charge. No one approached me. The first person to actually talk to me was handing out "grab bags". She told me "welcome". Aside from some brief interaction of a practical nature with two other people, that was it as far as "getting to know" anyone. Rather, I noticed I was the only older guy there. Most of the people came into the shop, sat with friends, and talked for two hours until midnight. Aside from a brief announcement by whoever was in charge and the countdown to midnight, I could have been alone at home doing the same thing.

I'm not knocking the group. I'm sure it tends to be more of a college thing, and so has gravitated to what it currently is. I'm an intruder to that group. I had expectations, I suppose, that it would be like Austin where I knew different folks and all and there were a lot of college age folks, but there were also a lot of older people like me. So, chalk up one to knowing better next time.

On a positive note, however, I got around 1200 words written in 1.5 hours. Not great, but not bad for a PD patient on DBS. I can type faster but still not quite as fast as I did before PD. At least I can make a good run at getting 50K in a month now. Before it would have been very difficult to pull off.

So I wrote until around 1:20 am, then packed it up and went home. Today's schedule is to go do a Zumba class, then I'll return home, probably take a nap, then see how much I can get written before the day ends. I'll report tomorrow on how well I did today. Until then, see you later!

It Is Finally NaNo Time Again!

After a four year break in any attempts at doing National Novel Writing Month, I'm now taking another stab at it.

For those who don't know, National Novel Writing Month, otherwise shortened to NaNoWriMo, or its even shorter version, NaNo, is when writers from all over the world get together online to encourage each other to write a novel in a month of at least 50K words.

"Nay, nay," I can hear someone saying. "You can't write a novel in a  month! At least not a publishable novel."

"Nay, nay," I say, most of my published novels were originally written during NaNo. The only exceptions to that is Reality's Dawn, and two that are recently done but not published yet, Reality Game and Rebellion. And all of those the bulk of them were written in around a month or less. Professional writers write even faster than that.

What takes me so long is editing!

Anyway, I'm going to write my third novel this year, come November. Except, this one will be special. It is my Parkinson's novel. I plan upon publishing it, to have most, if not all, of the proceeds go to Parkinson's research. I'll probably donate it to the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

It is called "Deep Brain Invasion," and obvious spin on Deep Brain Stimulation, otherwise known as DBS. DBS is a procedure I went through last September where two leads are planted into one's brain, where electrical impulses from a battery pack, also implanted, block the erroneous signals from the brain that cause the tremors and problems with other muscle movements. It isn't a cure, but does help people like me live a "normal" life for a while longer. Hopefully, for years. Prior to this, around every four hours I would take a dose of my medication that would result in about an hour of feeling "normal." The other three hours, using my left hand wasn't easy.

Anyway, due to that, I not only can type more freely, I also have a story for my Parkinson's novel. I came up with the idea shortly after the surgery, and wrote out a short story that will end up being my first chapter. I've written one other chapter. Now I simply need to write another 50k words this coming month to hopefully finish it out.

So this is special for several reasons. The last time I finished a novel for NaNo was in 2012, Virtual Game which is currently out for sale. That was the 4th year I had ever won NaNo. It was to be my last . . . until now, that is. I fully expect to finish this year, and hopefully for years to come.

Anyway, I wanted to let my readers know that I'll be posting my progress and other related things, hopefully each day of November. If you want to follow my progress, subscribe. If you don't want to be bombarded with daily or near daily posts of my progress during November, then unsubscribe, at least for November.

You have been warned!

But seriously, I hope you'll stick around and cheer me on to the finish line.