Day 29

I won! Okay, along with thousands of others, so it is not a competitive win, but WooHoo!

Now, I just have to keep plugging away until I finish the actual novel. I seem to be about half way through the outline, which sounds about right: first draft is likely 100,000, then up from there as I add bit more description etc, then down as I cut redundant scenes etc. -- first novels pretty much have to be under 100,000 to sell. I'll spend today and tomorrow still writing, having budgeted November to this task, but then I will have to go back to real life. Specifically I promised to spend the first couple of days of December cleaning house, then there is a long vacation with family, then the new year and a ton of research work waiting. But I will try to squeeze in some novelling time too. I do not wish to lose momentum on this novel, and I have at least 12 more in the files awaiting similar treatment. Well, time will tell.

Big thank you to Line Noise for comments and encouragement throughout the process (I've based about half the character of Crane on him as a result); to M.D. Benoit for giving me the final push to go for NaNoWriMo this year; and above all to my wife for putting up with it while I abandoned other responsibilities to take this on.

My wife has mentioned several times this month that she can't remember seeing me so engaged and happy before. And I'm a guy who loves his day job... Still, Dave Duncan was exactly my age when he quit his day job to write, and he's now up to, what, 42 published novels? Makes a person think!