Raven's View

Ah, fond memories of Mork and Mindy. But the reference is to NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. It's held every November, world-wide, and challenges you to complete the first draft of that dream novel. 50,000 words in 30 days, don't look back, don't stop to edit or re-arrange or re-write, don't show it to anyone. Plenty of time after for all that. This is my fifth year at it, on a variety of genre's. 2010 was my crime fiction Kirk's Landing (published). 2011 was Return to Kirk's Landing (in mid-edit), still crime, but more mythology/fantasy. 2012 was Agnes of Grimm, a fantasy with Fairy Tale folk. 2013 was Ghost in the Machine, a sci-fi. 2014 is/will be The Portal, another fantasy, about two worlds. This year took me a while to get going, since I've been doing so much editing it was hard to get out of that mindset. But - I did.

It's also been a week of distraction. Canada is still enmeshed in the whole GomeshiGate, the scandal about abuse and cover-ups. Every day there are insightful articles, and more brave women coming forth. There have been other incidents in the past few years where this mind shift should have happened, but it didn't And it is now. Hopefully we keep it up. My own distraction - trivial in comparison but equal in impact - has been a virus laden PC. Slow Internet access, redirected pages, lethargic PC. I ran some virus checkers and found it's Chrome related. Tried several installs and cleanups to no avail, so - for now - I'm an Internet Explorer guy. For NaNo I really just need Scrivener, and the occasional foray into email ot the Facebook. And here.

Status:

• Publishing- Editing is on hold.  Beta readers are still working on it, but I'm in no rush.
• Writing - NaNoWriMo.
• Reading - Our bookclub read The Light Between Oceans, and liked it.
• Other - As distractions, when not battling my PC, I watched a couple of movies about writing, Finding Neverland, and Stranger Than Fiction. Both excellent.