It's a full life, if a trifle banal

Right, so I've hit halfway. All downhill from here! The aim for NaNo this year was to complete a very rough first draft of a girls-with-guns-in-space thingie that I've been working on intermittently since I was in the States. And I'm almost there! Obviously I'm going to have to pitch most of the text, but it's fascinating thrashing out the shape of the whole thing, and not having to bother about making it all consistent, just trying out all my various ideas.

Now if I could only get rid of this blasted cough. I seem to have embarked on a new cold without entirely shaking off the one I had in Wales. Stupid winter. If only there was some new Doctor Who to make up for it...

*flails excitedly*

Right, I wasn't going to bore you with regular NaNo updates, but today I can't resist, because, not only:

!!!11!!

But also: as those of you unlucky enough to be on my whinging filters might be aware, for most of the past three years (i.e. since I burnt myself out doing a PhD and two novels) I have been suffering from SWS or "Shit Writing Syndrome", chief symptoms of which seem to be: reduced attention span, bad temper, alienation from self and/or product of one's labour, and, most of all, SHIT WRITING.

Producing SHIT WRITING is a misery, because you can't respect either it or yourself, and it just makes you feel rubbish to keep slogging and slogging and to be aware all the time as you're hacking away at whatever paltry reserves of thought and emotion remain available to you that the end result of all your efforts is BAD.

But today, for the first time in what feels like ages, that special magic returned, and my whole body became part of the process, and I remembered once again why it is that I love to write. And this whole feeling might not last past this afternoon, and tomorrow I might be reverting back to learned shittiness, so let us enjoy this moment while it lasts.

So November looms once again, and with it comes the age-old question: shall I do NaNoWriMo this year?

I am currently in pretty good writing mode, so there's no need to kickstart myself like there was last year, and I don't particularly want to stop the project I'm working on right now to start up another one. On the other hand - who can resist the challenge? Stern words or egging-on to comments, plz.

[Poll #1065348]

Damn, that feels good. Downhill from here! All over by, er, Christmas...