I know that I was going to stay on task with my own novels, and edit them to death (read as make them so that people liked reading them), but with NaNoWriMo going on I had to start a whole new project. That was just what I didn't need. Now I have even more characters talking in my head. To make it even worse some of the people at work discovered Nano, and so they have been tossing ideas at me. I'm running out of polite ways to tell them I make my own stories. It takes ten times as much effort to try and think in someone else's story and make it work for me. It's one thing to edit a story for a friend and make it work for them, but to make a story mine from some idea tossed at me just doesn't work the same. The next time it happens they will probably be dodging pencils and post-it pads as I tell them to write it themselves.

The first get together for the NaNoWriMo group was great! Even thought there was a bit of a change at the last minute, everyone was thrilled to be there. We even had a few people that only found out about it from the mass email that warned of the change in venue. I'm looking forward to working with this group. Every one of them has a great idea for their novels, and I still don't have one for me. If I can't think of one in the week then I'll have to be a rebel and work on old ones that need editing.
I'm still chugging through the re-write for Katana. Slowly.

November is coming fast. I've volunteered to act as Municipal Liaison for NaNoWriMo and somehow got assigned to a group that's in the north end of the state. It's going to be busy. I have to get my own writing done as well as coordinate events and keep everyone writing.

I had a wonderful two weeks off from work and took a vacation. Wouldn't you know it, I find a hotel that hasn't heard of the twenty-first century's wonderful innovation of wi-fi. I spent a bunch of time visiting with my daughter and her husband. I even managed to squeeze in a bit of writing, though most of that was on the September Shorts Challenge. I'm getting to like the main character enough that I might just find a way to expand the story.

It's funny how you can know things, and yet the knowledge doesn't burst forth in your head when you need it to. I have been doing the work on Shimmerwings and had this nagging feeling that the Dragon's name was familiar. I had created it along the same styling as the other Dragons I included in the story, but this one felt familiar in a way I couldn't place. Name Change! No more cheese Dragon.

The re-writing of Shimmerwings is proceeding quite well. I'm focused on getting that book ready to be published in a form that I like. When I first wrote it the story was good, though not as descriptive as I'd like. Now I've been adding a bit more to the descriptions. I have made a few minor changes, but most people wouldn't see much difference.

It has been a very hectic week, and I've gotten little in the way of writing accomplished. I did manage to squeeze in some time to read a couple of books about setting up descriptive scenes, and working to make characters believable. I'm hoping this will rub off into better writing for my own books. I also worked in a bit of time for reading C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner book. Still working on that one though.

In other things, the status of Shimmerwing still bugs me. I'm spending some time filling out the rest of it. I can't recreate the missing parts, but I can fix some of the junk that's in it and finish out the story again. I've already decided to add Lapis Lazuli to the book as a bonus chapter, and now I think I might come up with another section as well.