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October 30: I shanghaied a good friend of mine into writing a novel this month as well.  My method was roughly as follows:

“C’mon! Write a book. You’d write a good book! You should write a book!”

Eventually he agreed. I’m sure his book will be better than mine.  That accomplished, I next set out to perform the most perilous part of writing a novel: choosing a novel writing program.  This is no small feat.¹  There are so many good choices, like StoryMill, Scrivener, Pages, Mellel, WriteRoom, most of which I er, already owned.  So I decided to go with Scrivener, based on its amazing flexibility, stability, ease of use, and  the fact that I would then have an excuse to purchase a license.  So far I have been glad about that choice.

October 31: Fear set in: What if I lose my novel to a random and spontaneous hard drive failure?  I spent four hours setting up an SVN repository and making sure that I have copies of my novel on all three macs, my iDisk, and of course checked into SVN.  There. My ideas are safe.  Now I just need to actually have some ideas.

November 1, 1:27 AM: Gripped by insomnia, I get up and write around 500 words.  Later that morning I go back and change all of them.  “Don’t write under the influence of insomnia” becomes my new motto.

November 2: I start to get really sick, and notice that I may not be doing well when writing about my main character undergoing surgery nearly makes me lose my breakfast.  I lie down on the couch and write the next few pages on my laptop.

November 3: I am unable to go to work because of the Martian Death Flu that I have contracted.  I write about 2000 words on the third, most of them pretty good.  I eat roughly two bites of food this entire day.

November 4: Home sick again.  Worried about dehydration (one of the characters in my book suffers from it) I send my wife out for “eleven million bottles of Power Aid”  She returns with two, which is more than sufficient. Thus re-hydrated, I go back to writing.

November 5: I go back to work. My writing suffers, as I am still somewhat sick and not all that able to keep code and novel straight in my brain this day.  My comments in the code I’m writing start shaping up into a pretty interesting story featuring a guy named API and his girlfriend, Ruby.

November 6: Due to a sporting event at the university where I work I am unable to write more than about 20 words this day.  Not that I cared all that much about the sporting event; but I was required to do tech support during the event, and a crowded football stadium is not the best venue for writing about Americans recuperating in the Philippines. Fortunately, I have the next five days off of work.

November 7: I am back on track, novel-wise.  I have a pretty good writing day, and also buy a Coldplay album, a Jack Johnson Album, and an EP by The Flaming Lips.  Two of the three are good music for writing.  Guess which one isn’t.

November 8: I write the day’s 1667 words and realize I’m still about 3000 words below my goal for this point in the month.  I sit back down, and with Jack Johnson blasting through my headphones, fall asleep on the desk.  I wake up, switch albums, and get back to work.  By evenfall I’ve closed the gap to 1500 words, which I should be able to make up in the next few days.

So that’s where we stand.  There are all sorts of interesting things going on the world, and if I get caught up with the novel I plan to write about a few of them, like the AT&T dude’s predicitons about what iPhone 3.0 will be able to do for you.((“It’ll start your car. It’ll do your taxes! It’ll translate conversations you’re having with Japanese people on the fly, provided you don’t mind saying things like, “I would like to super-fun the racoons twice mostly” when you meant, “I’ll fax the contract this afternoon.”))  Thanks again for your patience!

1. Size 11… oh right, feat, not feet.  Sorry [↩]