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Last year, I blogged a fair bit about my attempt at writing a novel in a month. You might think that writing the equivalent of a 5-page paper each day for a month is a little on the excessive side, but I have to say - it is a lot of fun to just let go and let your writing run amok. I was ecstatic to finish last year - it was a great accomplishment for me.

I am planning on participating again this year.

This year, I'm leveraging a tool that, hopefully will help me organize some of the basic elements of my story, to keep my characters separate and distinct as well as to keep me on task. One of my problems last year is I had to make a decision between making the word count goal or finishing very early. This is due, in large part, to the fact I didn't have enough planned to know where the story...

I'm doing some fairly extensive house cleaning - something which will continue for the rest of the month. During this process, I'm sure to find things that I thought were either long gone or that I didn't have in the first place.

Last night, I found some of these lost items. Particularly, I found a whole binder filled with some of my writing from over a decade ago. In there included a novel (complete but in need of major revisions), 2 editorial articles (one of which was published in 1997 in a local newspaper), 4 short stories in varied states of completion and about 50 poems I had written. The poetry was interesting to me because I thought I had given up writing poetry in high school - but I found samples in there from my Sophomore year of college. Not all of the writing is good - in fact

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I've been really trying to sit down and write for the past couple of weeks. The problem is right there of course - trying to sit down. In all of my past writing, when I was actively doing so, I would sit down and write. I either set aside a time of the day to write or I would just devote myself to it and get on with it. I haven't yet been able to get myself devoted to it again lately. There's a lot of things going on in my life right now - things that will never make it into this blog - that really take up my attention, but I will get back to writing. Its been too long and I feel like I am less of a person because of it.

Reading on the other hand is thankfully making a comeback. It is so easy for me to spend most of my waking hours (when I'm not working or playing with my kids or spending

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Well, I had a couple of goals last night after the kids were off to bed:

1. Investigate some freelance writing opportunities
2. Run the Core Coliseum Pairings (10pm my time)
3. Exercise (more than 60 crunches, more than 18 push-ups)
4. Write something (anything...)

The first two went fine. Pairings are only taking about 10 minutes these days - but hopefully membership will increase soon to keep the roster filled out. Anyone interested in trying out tactical PvP D&D should check it out - I'm always looking for more players. As for the freelance writing opportunities - I'm still getting my head about it - but I sent a couple (or rather... one) inquiries last night. I haven't heard back yet though.

Exercise went well enough. I pushed myself up to 75 crunches and 20 push-ups. In the stretching I did afterwards,

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