A Three-Year Engagement

November's just over a month away.  For normies, that means football, leaves changing colors (if you live in a place where they actually do that), and something about Native Americans hosting a dinner for a bunch of people who got kicked out of England for wearing buckles on their hats.  (Seriously, it's not like the buckles were holding anything up.  Stupid pretentious fashionista Pilgrims...)  For myself and thousands of other writers, it means the self-imposed stress of National Novel Writing Month.  If you're not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it's this writing challenge that takes place every November where you write a fifty-thousand page novel in thirty days and behave like some neurotic, OCD novelist while your friends and family shake their heads and call you names behind your back, provided they don't already do that, in which case, you probably won't notice.

There are no real stakes and no real enforcement of the rules, except maybe some decent discounts on writing software and similarly related products, so it's kind of hilarious how stressed out people can get over their NaNoWriMo project.  I imagine people new to the idea raising an eyebrow and asking "What's the point?  What do I get out of this thing?"

After a brisk backhand to the cheek, I imagine Yoda narrowing his eyes whilst stating "Only what you take with you," because I'm a gigantic nerd and should probably get out of my Mom's basement.  I'm joking again; I live in Southern California and nobody has a basement here.  But I digress...

This year will mark three years since my first successful Nano and holy shit, I promised to release the damn thing independently on Kindle, Nook, etc, then become rich and famous like that pervert who wrote 50 Shades of Gray.  I even used GIMP to paint a nifty cover before promptly going all lame and putting it on the back burner.

Yeah, so it's an adventure novel involving radioactive mushrooms and international espionage in an alternate diesel-punk timeline.  I've decided I'm finally going to put this thing out before November because three years is a long ass time to sit on a project that in purely technical terms is only long enough to be a "novella".  I decided that just now as I was writing.  As soon as I finish this blog entry.  Hah, I'm already procrastinating on the editing by not ending this blog because once I end this blog, it means I have to get started...  And I will.  Right.  Now.