Well, November 30th has arrived, which brings me to the end of my journey for Nanowrimo. Unfortunately, I find myself coming short this year. My ending word count is above 42,000 words. I missed the goal by nearly somewhere below 8,000. I'm going to write some more on the thing after I get done with the journal post here, but oh well. I didn't make it, which is a bit of a disapointment.

Good news however is that the novel first draft is nearly finished, no small feat at all. Next cool bit of news is that now with that out of the way, I can divert a little bit of my time to Ley Crystals again, perhaps in a week or two I can get part to up and going.

So I guess the end result is both good and bad. I'll take what I can get at any rate.

The store I work at generally recieves shipments from the warehouse on Saturdays. However last week we got our shipment in a little early. I shadowed one of the managers on how to recieve the truck, something I'm rather familier with from my previous job. Well I got to meet the truck driver and everything like that, very nice guy. Anyway, we unloaded some that day, but most of the world would be done Saturday morning. So the next day we get there bright and early and work on all the freight. The truck was schedualed to leave our dock around 8am Saturday morning, but he didn't leave. We figured maybe he had new instructions or something, that happens sometimes. Well around noon another truck driver pulled up to the front of our store and asked us to move the truck at our dock. Now we were a little surprised the driver still hadn't moved. So we called his dispatch to find out what was going on. Turns out dispatch had been trying to contact the guy for something like 6 hours. So my managers get out there and bang on the door a while, and get no response. After another call to dispatch, they asked us to call the local police to get into the vehicle. So we get the police out there and they start talking to my managers about the situation. At this point my shift was over, but I found out the rest of the story the next day.

The police tried unlocking the door, but had no luck at that. So the next thing they did was to break into the truck. They got some hammer or something and broke out the glass. When they got inside, they found the driver, curled up on the floor, dead. They guessed the man died sometime Friday, which would mean that the last person to see him alive was me. The idea that someone died so close to the store is a little weird. Of course, the feeling of being the last person to see someone alive is also a little creepy as well. It was probably some sort of heart attack, or maybe a drug overdose, but I don't remember hearing anything about drugs being found in the vehicle. Who's to say though.

Weird stuff happens in retail. I gotta get out of it sooner or later. >.>

I may never in my life be able to speak clearly enough to say what I truely believe and feel. But on the issue of gay marriage, you would have this with this difference: Just change the speaker to be me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HpTBF6EfxY

Truer words have not been spoken. I am a straight man, but I support love in general.

Tomorrow is day ten of Nanowrimo. If all goes well I'll have written over 17,000 words by the end of tomorrow. Doing a full fourty hours at work, and then writing for about another two hours is just a little rough I think. Sure its not the toughest thing in the world, and I am having fun with this thing... But darn its a whole lot of typeing.

Also, I am absolutely amazed at how far the novel has come now. I'm three fourths of the way there now on this thing. Plus to make it even more interesting, the novel has changed slightly in its little details here and there. Its almost like I came up with a story, but then the characters in the story told me that I planned it wrong and did their own thing. I half write because I want to know whats going to happen next. I wonder if thats weird or not?

Now that I think about it, I'll be looking for a publisher at the start of next year, or soon after that. Thats a sorta scary thought, very exciting too. I sincerely hope its the beginning of a very long an interesting journey for me.

As a note though, I won't be doing much on Ley Crystals until after Nanowrimo is finished (12-1-08), but I'll be planning and plotting that story. Don't worry, I won't be backing down off the story, its something I still want to do. I'm just a little busy right now. Just a wee bit.

Alright, I've just started another major project here. I've started the story Ley Crystals. If I get my way, it'll be a novel length or longer story about a lot of stuff happening to the world. Hopefully it'll be some decent reading. Also hopefuly I'll be able to type up this rather often. Though with a novel in the works it might be a little slow till after I get out of my retail job.

Retail sucks your life away I'm telling you.

Alright. I did something absolutely awesome today. I started a story, and finished it all in one sitting. Thats pretty awesome I think. Sure its a tiny story, its short, its not the greatest thing I've done, but I finished it in *checks the clock* took me something like three hours to do. Thats not bad I think.

Alight now for a gripe. I have four submissions up here on FurAffinity, and each one is an absolute pain to get to display right. This site is not very friendly for writers I can tell. There are pages where I can't tell the difference from one submission from the other. Another thing, I write these in word. After I write them to word, I convert them to plain vannilla text. Then I can port it over to windows Notepad. Once there I have to change the encodeing of the text file to some unknown weird style. Then after I do that I have to go through all the story and add in lines to make the thing readable. FurAffinity, thats just plain mean. They should get some better system going on or something.

*grumbles and gets off the soap box, then smiles and waves a wing back at his growing library* Anyway, with that over, please feel free to read the latest addition to my humble library.

Well, my car died. So now I'll have to get the darn thing fixed so I can get around to start looking for a new car. And this time credit won't matter because I'll find a way to get a new car. If I have to slap down cold hard cash for it I will darn it all! I'm tired of my stupid car, bucket, dieing on me all the time. >.< Such a pain.

Alright, despite everything in my mind telling me to do otherwise, I signed up for an art exchange thing. Chances are I'll botch up whoever it is that I'll be drawing of course, but hey if I don't try I can't get better. Of course with my skills as far as drawing is conserned, if I get the pencil on the paper I'm doing pretty good. I wonder if stickfigure drawings count for this thing, definately have to look into that.

Anyway, I applologize for a lack of new material up here. I've been working very hard on the novel and making some impressive progress so far. Well, I think its impressive with having to work retail and all the driving about that I have to do to get to and from work. But I'm still toying with ideas of what I want to use for short stories, and what story ideas are novel length worthy. So much to go through though and think about, I swear I have twenty novels stuck in my head right now. No one give me any other ideas or my head will explode with it all!

I am absolutely blessed in one way, and cursed in a few others when it comes to writing. I have far too many ideas floating in my head, so writer's block is definately not a problem. I have two major problems though, one maybe you can help with. The second I doubt you can help with unless you know how to motivate me more than I've been able to motivate myself. I get distracted pretty easy, so I forget to write sometimes.

Anyway, "Poll Time!" as it were. I've got several ideas in my mind for short stories, and I figured maybe I can give you guys a chance to point me in a dirrection that you all might like. So, do we want a science fiction sort of story, and quite possibily the beginning of a series, or more. Or would you rather have a continuation of the story idea that I lightly tapped on in my PEC compound story earlier? Perhaps a more fantasy setting would interest you more though, dragons and magic and whatnot? Or shoot, if you have a better idea slap it up, you might spark even more stories than what I have already floating around up there.

Or you can just laugh and giggle, I don't mind. :P

It's pretty obvious I have no clue what I am doing, or at least it is to myself anyway. When I go into my little submissions folder here, I discover there is no way to tell the difference from one story and another until after I click on it. End result is that I click on all the stories, just to find one. So I got smart, I know things can have thumbnail images, and I made one for one of my stories. Problem is, it won't stick onto the story, and I don't know why. Maybe I'll figure it out later when I don't have to worry about going to work.

Maybe I need to submit the icon as a picture first, then it will work. Maybe I need to just set it up that way the first time I make the submission. Maybe I should get someone who knows art to do the icons for me, because my icons are terrible. Almost embarassing really.

Alright! This is a great day! I managed to finish another short story. Its not often that I do that you know? These things take a lot of time. Anyway, I am actually pleased with the outcome of my latest work, it might be a little rough, but I think its still ok. I am just glad I got it done. Now I can start fiddleing with my next little short story project.

I figure maybe six people will see the page, and maybe four will read the whole thing in the end, but oh well, thats what happens. Maybe thats all I'll ever get, I don't know. If it is, at least someone read it anyway.

I've got a new job. Finally I can turn away from the politics and bickering at my old job. I just hope I'm not jumping from the frying pot and into the fire. If I am, this is a terrible move, because it involves a pay cut too.

This new job is also supposed to be full time, meaning I may have to slow the submissions down slightly. I'll have to learn a new system of when I can write and how to get it done I guess. I won't stop writing though!

Well, I origionally thought that I could get by with one story a month. Thats a bit slow though. I think I can manage one every half month. So with that being the case, I've put up the next story already. I think its much better than my previous one.

I hope to have the next story up around the 30th of this month. Its practically finished at this point already though, but its taken far too long to complete it. I am way to easy to distract. Terrible isn't it?

Well, here we go. I figure if I'm going to write I better share it all as well. The current plan is to do a short story per month, though this could change in the future depending on how things go. Hopefully it changes so I have more submissions a month, rather than more time between submissions. We'll just have to wait and see. This is all a big experiment for me. Good to be here at least.