When last I used this here thingy, I told you I was embarking on the crazy scribbler’s madcap adventure known as the National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

For the uninitiated, here’s the basic deal : nutty writer types like me picked one month of the year, November, and said “Lo! We shall have a contest, and in said contest, we will try to write fifty thousand words in thirty days!”

See, we could have picked one of those 31 day months, but that wouldn’t be hardcore enough.

Anyhoo, I decided to try it this year, and so that is what I have been doing for the last month, and what do you know, I succeeded.

In fact, I finished last Friday, the 25th. That means I wrote fifty thousand words in twenty five days, or two thousand words per day. Not bad for a contest in which the majority of people don’t finish at all their first time. For me, it was not that big of a deal.

In fact, honestly, the last month has been pretty awesome. I really enjoyed writing it, for the most part. There were plenty of times I didn’t really feel like writing at that particular moment, but that is just the nature of an endevour like this, and it was just as true with the Million Word Year, and this year’s informal 750 words a day of whatever, as it was of this thing.

In further fact, compared to the Million Word Year’s 2,750 words a day, 2,000 a day is not that big a deal, but prose is much harder to write than the random commentary and such from the Million Word Year, and takes a lot more of my mental resources and creative jazz than any other kind of writing, and so it was actually more difficult on a day per day basis than anything I had ever done before.

And this turned out to be a good thing. Hell, not just good, but fantastic.

I have felt better the last month than I have felt in at least a decade. In fact, the last time I felt that good, I was probably in college.

Seems that having a goal like that, one with daily measurable results and one that was easily translatable into a daily goal (1,667 words per day), and most importantly one that absorbed so much of my overflowing energies, was just what I had needed all these years. It gave me purpose, structure, focus, and an outlet, and what was left over was a much saner, calmer, happier, and more content me.

Pretty cool, huh?

Turns out, a lot of my depression has been just plain energy overload. There’s been just plain too much going on in this five alarm fireworks factory fire of a brain of mine and it has kept me deadlocked and depressed. Once all that energy had somewhere to go, I felt so much better.

And having a purpose as well as an outlet was a big part of that, too. I have spent far too much time feeling like my life was absolutely pointless. All I did all day was fuck around on the Internet, play video games, eat, shit, and sleep. What kind of a life is that for any human being, let alone a big time creative brain like mine?

It’s like being in a cage in the zoo. One that is far too small. Just pacing back and forth all the time, (At least it has Wifi. )

And now I have a positive achievement. I tackled the big challenge, and kicked its ass. I am pretty god damned proud of that, if I do say so myself, and I do. (Because nobody else will.)

Oh. And I also have a book. That I wrote. Me. Book writer. Awesome.

So I am telling whoever I can about it in order to reinforce the positiveness in my mind, and try as hard as I can to remember that I actually can do stuff, and I am happier when I am busy, and so on.

Right now, I am struggling to keep all that going. My thought was that I would just switch to proofreading the book once I finished it and that would be the new thing. But I am finding that simply does not soak up enough of those vital mental emanations to do the trick, and I have been feeling nervous and restless and ill at ease.

Frankly, life is more boring without that big outlet, and editing just does not fill the void.

Luckily, I remembered : hey, I have that blog thingy I can write in! And just writing these simple words had ease the pressure inside somewhat.

But I have this feeling that I might just have to start writing another book in order to keep the effect going. Sounds kind of crazy, I know, but what the hell. Lots of authors have a lot on the go at once. They are writing one thing, editing another, managing submissions on a bunch of others… it’s how all those super prolific writers like Asimov worked, I would imagine.

I even find myself losing interest in video games. Boy, does that ever feel weird to type. Video games have been my central hobby for a long, long, long time. When I was a kid, I never wanted toys. I wanted books and video games. They were the only things which provided enough stimulation for my hungry brain.

And I can’t imagine I would ever eschew video games completely. They are like an organ of my mind. Plus they are just so damned interesting as an art form. (Yes, I said ART FORM. Take that, Roger Ebert!)

But I get bored playing them now. Writing a book has opened my inner eye to the point where even video games, the former holder of the title of “thing I use to absorb all my mental energies and provide the level of stimulation I need”, is now ceding the title to writing.

Writing is just plain better at the job. I can throw as much of myself as I have on hand at the moment into it, and that, as it turns out, is just what I need.

Hopefully, over the next month, I will whip the book into shape to be sent out into the world and maybe attract some kind of positive attention. (Sorry, won’t be posting it here. Copyright issues. It is probably not publishable, but I am cautious by nature. )

Proofreading is tedious. I supposed I should have known that, but I thought it would be different in this case because it would be my first time reading whatever the hell I wrote over the last month. I did this thing without an outline and only a vague idea what I wanted to do, so it should be somewhat of an adventure to read.

But the problem is, I have never liked reading books online. The Internet is just too damned stimulating and distracting! It is hard to focus on something as slow and static as a book.

Turns out, that’s true even if I wrote the damned thing!

Maybe I should print it out and read it like that. Or at least, do the proofreading on my laptop, with the Wifi shut off, so I can simulate the reading a book experience as best as I can.

Because it’s not like I have trouble reading when I am not sitting at my computer. I am as much an avid reader as I was when I was a kid. I always have a book on the go. Usually, I end up reading it before I nap and while on the toilet.

But being here on my com pew tar engenders an entirely different mindset. The Internet is so addictive for people like me because you can always have all the mental stimulation you want at the time. It is seriously like a constant all you can eat buffet of stimulation and I am a ravenous glutton with a fast metabolism when it comes to things like that.

So I will have to figure out how to make proofreading zing to my particular zang.

Ideally, I want to attract an agent. The odds against it are enormous. Agents don’t exactly snap up underpublished writers with no track record like me. And my book, while a decent read, is kind of “all over the place” in terms of overall plot, so it might not impress people that much.

But what the hell, it’s my first book, and if you don’t try, you never learn, right?

If I can’t get an agent with it, who knows, maybe some small publisher will want it. Then I get to learn what it is like to have my stuff edited by another.

And if none of that works, I will likely just make it into an eBook and put it wherever those go, and move on to the next thing.

And if all else fails, well, I can always talk at you nice people, right?