Thinking about November

November 2012, that is.  Having won Nanowrimo last year, and for the seventh or eighth time, I decided it was time for me to take advantage of one of the real prizes. Yes, getting to the finish line with a fifty-thousand-word story has been prize enough. Until now.  I just got tired of telling my friends that I am writing and, No, the novel(s) aren't finished yet.

So, I decided that I would, this time, take Create Space up on their generous offer to print me a book.  With my name on it.  And my stories inside. 

It's been an exciting, and affirming, process putting this together.  No, it's not a novel. It is, however, a fifty-thousand-plus-word collection of stories based in the worlds that have been fueling my Nano writing for the last couple of years.  You may sit down on October 31 and get started writing, but I don't.  I write all year long.  Not novel-length writing.  I write lots and lots of shorter things.  Some of them are actual stories, according to the people who know such things. Some are just strings of words put together quite nicely.

So, what will I be doing with this lovely, if plain, tome?  Putting one copy on my bookshelf just to annoy myself with the plain cover.  Yes, it's my sketching, but couldn't I have been a little more decorative?  With the lettering, at least?
Another copy goes to the person who got me started on this writing path, and who is responsible, in part, for the multiple Nanowrimo wins.  He tells the most wonderful stories of his own, and wanted to hear mine.  My brother will get one to put on the shelf next to our grandfather's book. And my sister will get one to keep my grandmother's poetry company.  The last one will be a secret.

Meanwhile, I'll be sending out some of the stories to see if anyone else wants to read them.  That is, after I get the volumes in my grubby, little hands and drool over them a bit.

Who inspires you, in your life? And what would you do to honor them?