Thanksgiving was, well... the usual. You know, go off to relative's house that you never see except on certain holidays, sit off to the side as some of them cheer for their favorite sports team, acting as though they had a personal hand in it when the score is favorable, and screaming at the idiots when they blunder. The most interesting thing to do is to play cards with the three year old because you weren't able to bring your laptop. I did manage to make progress on the re-write though. Scrivner has been a great help in keeping the sections notated so that I can go back to find what I need to change.

My NaNoWriMo novel is done! And I hate it. I'll keep it so that I can validate at the end of the month, but afterwards it goes into the future project pile as a re-write. Eventually I'll give it a second chance. If I still hate it, then it will meet the delete key.In the meantime, I've gone back to Ion, and doing a complete re-write/edit. Ion is a good story, and the start of a series that will go on for some time. It's just one of those stories that I went back and said YUCK! Did I really write this badly? I've already completed the first chapter on Ion 417: Raiju, and midway through chapter two. It will definitely be headed to an editor by the end of the year.

Second NaNoWriMo write in went well. It was quieter, so more words got dumped into the stories, but we still had a good time. Note to self: BRING NOTEPAD NEXT TIME. In the rush to get everything ready for the write in I left my power cord sitting on the bed. I got in an hour and a half on my NaNo story before it died with barely enough warning for me to save my progress. I then sat there wishing for the notepad sitting on my desk as frolicking plot bunnies danced around telling me all sort of ideas.
An hour of that and I got my antique laptop back from the borrower, and so I could work on getting other stories edited. My new stuff is too new for the antique to understand, so I rely on the simple versions that I kept on memory sticks.

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.