Nano: Day 30... oh crap.

After slogging through 30 days of writing, thinking about writing, dreaming about writing, talking about writing and complaining about writing, the month is finally drawing to a close. Where did all that time go?

I managed to annoy my wife to no end, use up all my vacation at work (no Christmas time off now), and piss off my children by ignoring them. Hell, I'm pretty sure my dog is mad at me (I got her a rawhide last night, I think we're cool now). Was it worth it? Check this out:

I'm pretty sure my family would agree. It's awesome, and therefore I am awesome.

In case anyone is interested it the boring details: I think I've made it known so much in the past here that it does no good to bother repeating it, but I love science fiction. So when I start to write I always will have a science fiction(ish) story to tell. I don't think I'm capable of anything else.

A quick synopsis of this years Nano novel: A guy has no idea what is happening, but things just seem mysterious. So he wonders around the city commenting to himself about how mysteriously creepy everything is. Then aliens, zombies and sociopaths just start crawling out of the woodwork. He then proceeds to defeat them.

I know what you must be thinking. Wow. But believe me, if it were really as awesome as it sounds I would be living in a tropical paradise drinking the fruity alcohol of the natives and smoking cigars that were lit with my discarded one-hundred dollar bills.

I'm being written out of your novel? 

If my previous attempts at revising a novel hold true then by the time I'm through with a second draft the story will be about a homosexual alcoholic that moves to a country town and battles prejudice, all while mending his relationship with his estranged father.

Then, before it's over, the main character will become a 9 year-old girl who gets lost at the circus and befriends a chimpanzee. Together they track down a pair of jewel thieves and decide to open a detective agency.

The point being that in order to make this disaster I have in my hands now into a real story I still have a lot of work to do. I love writing a first draft. That part is fun. I can do whatever I want and not worry about it making sense, it's the 7 year-old in me that gets to come out and play.

I'll maintain my excitement for a few weeks and then I'll start that ugly process of trying to mold it into a real story. It'll sap my will to live and I'll give up.

But I don't want to give up this time. That stack of manuscripts in my closest has gotten big enough. Maybe it's time I finish something.