This update is simply to note that I haven’t written any NaNoWriMo blog entries in a great while. Also, I haven’t worked on the novel since November. It’s stewing. Yeah, that’s it: it’s stewing in my subconscious.

New political developments threaten daily to make the novel obsolete, a problem I will have to tackle when I return to writing.

It also occurs to me that November is a terrible month in which to attempt to write an entire novel. The first and most obvious strike against November is that it only contains 30 days. Second, it contains Thanksgiving—many people travel for Thanksgiving. At the very least, they’re probably spending several hours on Thursday dealing with a large meal, family, friends, or even all three. Third, the beginning of November is almost always the craziest time of year for anyone who participates (beyond simply voting) in this country’s system of electing its representative officials. Even if that represents only a small percentage of the population, it’s still quite significant to them. In contrast, January beats November hands-down for all of the above reasons. It’s 31 days long—the maximum. It doesn’t typically feature an election. Best, it usually contains two holidays (New Year’s Day and Martin Luther King Day) that don’t feature quite as much travel as Thanksgiving. (This is not to minimize the importance of Martin Luther King Day, of course.)

[Note: a form of this blog entry originally appeared in my November 2002 NaNoWriMo blog, "Notes on the Text." I've now moved all of those entries into the "Imagine a Novel Weblog" category of this blog.]