November is...

National Novel Writing Month, NaNo for those of us in the know. I was really proud of myself for finishing the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel last year. It pushed me to get up at o-dark-thirty for 30 days so I'd have uninterupted time to write. Coffee was my friend. I saw some spectacular sunrises from my office window. My Facebook friends came to dread my early morning posts. And this morning I started this year's novel.

Of course I'm still in the midst of writing my teen non-fiction on the Colorado Coalfield war. But since I NaNo before breakfast and do the non-fiction the rest of the day, there's not much of a conflict. Except for the sleep portion of my life.

So what happened to last year's novel, you ask? It is still sitting unedited and unrevised. Somewhere on my priority list is to get to that book and clean it up and rewrite it. It's my biggest failing as a writer, not enjoying the revision process as much as the initial creative process. But I will get to it, I loved writing that story.

But November is for first drafts. After all, you can't edit what you haven't written. So all you NaNo's out there, get it down. Write it out. Let it loose! And happy writing. :)