Inspiration: flashes, black holes and your cat

Inspiration is a funny thing. I laugh at it all the time.

No, not really. Inspiration is actually a thing that rather worries me, which is how I've spent a whole month convincing myself I had nothing to say on the subject. Meanwhile I created an entire world, wrote 35,000 words on a brand-new first draft and even attempted a 48-hour novel challenge. I made it to 5,000 words on that one - an attempt at reviving a character I created when I was either thirteen or fourteen.

Anyway, this is supposed to be my January post for the WriYe Blogging Circle. On with the questions before February advances much further:

NaNoFiMo 2012 winner goodies

NaNoFiMo 2012 winner and participant certificates:

Congratulations! You won NaNoFiMo!

Participated but didn't win? Congratulations anyway!

If you'd like to use the certificate as a web badge, just right-click and save the images above. To view the larger version, left-click.

So long, 2012

I think I just want 2012 to be over already, which fortunately happens in another couple of hours. Clean slate, coming right up. Before that, though, I have to write one last blog post to say goodbye to 2012.

NaNoWriMo 2012: a month in review

Words written on my novel: 81,685

Words written on other things: 19,508

Okay, that's the boring numbery part. Now I'll go on to the actual reviewing of the month.

NaNoFiMo: National Novel Finishing Month

National Novel Finishing Month (NaNoFiMo) is exactly what it says on the tin: a month-long "finish the novel" challenge. It's been running for a number of years, but various events led to the challenge moving to NaNoFiMo.proboards.com in 2011 and me ending up as assistant Admin. This year I'm once again more or less running the site, so I figure a blog post telling everyone how awesome the challenge is might be in order.

Blog Hop: The Next Big Thing

Earlier this month I was tagged by Nicole Tan, who is currently writing Trails of Destiny: The Elm Tree. The challenge? Answer ten questions about my current work-in-progress.

On the 21st of November.

Well, I'm only a couple of days late. I'll plead a combination of migraines and NaNoWriMo and go for it anyway.

NaNoWriMo Day 20: Parental guidance

So, this evening Dad told me he had nothing to read at the moment and wanted to know if I had anything with an ending lying around. He may have phrased it a little more kindly than that, but close enough. Then Mum commented that she'd been reading stuff on my old laptop and she remembered me saying that I had a complete version of Dark Star. I was left with nowhere to hide, so now my parents are going to read the first complete draft of a book I've been working on since 2002.