*camera zooms into the back of Emkay’s head; she turns around gracefully like she’s in a 60s sitcom opening*

Oh, hey. What’s that? Oh, nothing. I just have this:

If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, it’s an acronym for National Novel Writing Month. (Personally, I like to say na-no-ree-mo instead of na-no-rye-mo, but then again, I do pronounce it as ree-ting instead of rye-ting.* I’m from Colorado and just learned that I have a Colorado accent.) That is, you write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. (Other than the fifth, that is, which is devoted to vivacious violence and Agent Smith Hugo Weaving. And the 18th, which is devoted to MY BIRTHDAY.) You don’t really get anything, other than sweet badges Boy Scout-style, but it really forces you to sit down and write a lot every day (or, in my case, in sporadic bursts of 6000+ words every Tuesday) and doesn’t allow you to overthink or edit as you go. Which is, really, what I needed.

See, my dear readers, I suffer as a SOB. Whoopsie. I mean, SOP: self-oriented perfectionist. It used to be really bad, but now, I’m actually kind of lazy. But this means that everything must be perfect from the moment it flows from my fingertips and is indelibly inked into the very fabric of my computer. Which is MK code for 30 words every 30 minutes. Or, a sentence that takes an hour, if not longer. It’s exhausting and I get a paragraph done and then feel as if I’ve climbed Everest.

So, NaNoWriMo was an exercise in two things for me:
1.) Writing every single fracking day. Or, at least, every few days. Which is more than I’ve been doing lately.
2.) Writing something new. Which is crazy, because I’ve been writing Gwennie’s story for 10 plus years now.

That’s right. A new novel. About vampires something other than vampires.** It’s science fiction, has the tentative title of “Roam” and stars a crazy Russian girl — dubbed the Main Character — and a cute American boy — dubbed the Love Interest — and their adventures*** thereof. “Adventures” being MK code for messed-up Joss Whedon-like doomed romance, a subplot involving Death herself, communism, a man with a mustache, and people in fedoras. Oh, how I love fedoras.

So, I wasn’t boycotting the Internet again. I wasn’t watching Casper Van “I-Have-Something-In-My-Teeth-Oh-It’s-Just-My-Chin” Dien. I was writing. Legitimately. Film at 9.

*Sarcasm is hard on the Interwebz.+

**Dammit.

***Mathematical! This week, for the make-your-facebook-profile-a-cartoon-character-from-your-childhood-week-for-the-fighting-of-the-child-abuse, I chose Lumpy Space Princess. I contend that I still watch cartoons and therefore am still a child, even though I turned 24 also in November.

+Which is maybe, probably sarcastic in its own right.