November 2005
Well, November passed quickly. It was touch and go with the nanowrimo, but I managed to pass the finish line a day early. I wasn't going to do it, but I'm glad I did, since now Viral Coat is well on its way to being a first draft. I'm pretty excited about how it's turning out--which is rather different than I originally envisioned, but hey, that's the fun part of noveling. When I tried to follow the Marshall Plan, I got so bored with the story that I quit after 10,000 words. I guess I'm the kind of writer who does best by getting to know the characters well and plotting a bare skeleton of a story. That way I can put the characters in bad situations and let them figure their own way out.
I had a bit of tendonitis flair up at the beginning of the contest, so that slowed me down. To compensate, I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 (which just came out). It works much better than the version 4 that I used back in grad school, and I managed to get pretty quick with it. I'm not quite as fast as typing when my hands don't hurt, but that is mainly because I'm still training my brain to compose while speaking. I've composed while typing forever, and I guess speaking and typing don't use the same parts of the brain.
It will be worth it in then end, since it's a Good Thing to be able to think while you are speaking...
--Todd