The Write Stuff, 2006

It's almost time for National Novel Writing Month again. That means it's almost time for me to try to write something slightly longer than my average bad movie review.

The goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Last year, I got all the way up to a measly 6,428.

So if nothing else, I'd like to at least beat that total. The trick so far is coming up with something to write about. I don't want to try anything similar to what I did last year, because those stories tend to trip me up a little when it comes to things like progress.

I have a few ideas, but none are really spinning the old cheese wheel, if you know what I mean.

To some extent, I believe the old saw, "Write what you know." Now obviously, none of us have lived on another planet, but we can use our life experiences and imagination to extrapolate what it might be like.

The problem comes when you are slightly deficient in the life experience department, which happens if you are an exceptionally boring person who managed to avoid doing much of anything growing up.

I'm told.