Go buy Scrivener

This is going to be a short post. Most of my posts over the next month will probably be pretty short. I am still going to try to keep up the at-least weekly posting, but I will be focusing on attempting to get a novel written between November 1st and November 30th.

As I stated in an earlier post, I'm competing in NaNoWriMo this year. I was scared pretty much shitless by the idea when I signed up, but as the start date approaches, I am feeling pretty confident. In large part, that is due to the fact that I downloaded a trial version of the program Scrivener. If you happen to be a writer of pretty much any style or genre, I highly recommend you give it a shot. It has helped me organize and plan my novel in a way that has made this insane task I'm undertaking much more manageable and clear. I now have a general plot arc with summaries of each chapter, character dossiers, and plenty of other background research-type information at my fingertips. It has helped me realize that I have a lot more ideas than I thought I had, which was certainly a welcome surprise. Scrivener's user interface is simple, neat, and fun to use - something that is probably likely to help me stay motivated on days when I just don't feel like writing in November.

On a related note, I went to my first official NaNoWriMo event on Sunday evening. It was a kickoff party at Capital Ale House, and I really enjoyed myself. The people there were strange; many of them were even weirder than me. I guess a contest like this attracts its own unique set of participants, most of whom were a lot of fun. It was strange seeing the people who have done this for a few years, and how confident they felt when other newbies like myself seemed so terrified. The organizers provided notebooks for everyone, and we went around and wrote encouragements or ideas in each other's books. It was fun talking to such a varied group of people and hearing the ideas that all of them had. I expected there to be a lot of young people there, and I was surprised that it seemed like most of the participants were baby-boomer aged. I don't know why, but it kind of made me hopeful to see that creativity doesn't die in older folks - apparently, it's more alive there than anywhere else.

That's it for now. I suppose all that's left is to actually write the damned book. Piece of cake.