Is it October already? Man, this year is flying by! Not too long ago I was looking forward to summer and remedying a severe case of cabin fever. Later this month I'll see whether or not a promising job opportunity will eventuate and if it does, we'll have to start worrying about moving to Michigan and Carrie finding a new job. I'm thinking we've got a busy few months ahead of us!

I see lots of people on Journalscape talking about Michael Jasper's novel dare for the month of October. This is meant as an opportunity for writers to band together and support each other as they work on their individual novels. I've been sorely tempted by this, but I think I'd be biting off more than I can chew by participating. Still, I have thought about getting back to working on my novel. It seems like a good time, before all the hectic stuff later this month, and I have fond memories of my productivity back when I was working on it earlier this year. While I was cranking out the words for Claustrophobia, I seemed to get far more done on my short story projects, so maybe it has something to do with keeping the momentum going? Tomorrow I'll revisit the novel, refresh my memory and see if I can pick up where I left off :)

Speaking of novel dares, I see they've updated the NaNoWriMo web page today. In case you haven't heard of it before, this stands for National Novel Writing Month, although in recent years the phenomenon has spread worldwide. What is it? Basically a huge month-long event where writers try to write a complete novel in one month! To the average person this may sound insane, but if you consider a short novel length of 50,000 words (the minimum target), that's only a commitment of 1,667 words a day! The hard part is meeting or exceeding the quota and making up for those inevitable off days. I haven't ever participated in this event, but I'm giving it serious consideration this year. I guess the sticking point will be whether November pans out to be as insanely busy as I think it will be - moving states and starting a new job (and possibly house-hunting) is certainly not trivial!

Today I was busily researching the new short story. As I see it, the tricky part will be getting from the beginning to the end I have in mind. Usually I have trouble with endings, but I think I've got this one nutted-out fairly well. This story will be more of a comedic effort with fantasy elements - quite apart from the horror stuff I've done lately!
I've also printed out the latest draft of A New Breed of Golfer in an attempt to juggle the structural elements on paper rather than on the laptop. The goal with this one is to trim it from an excessive 10k words down to something more reasonable - say 6k to 7k. Such a large reduction cannot be accomplished by line-editing alone, so I'm going to look at it scene by scene, trying to figure out what needs to be shifted and what needs to be removed entirely. All part of the fun of editing :)

In other news, I read the graphic novel Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street today and was most impressed. This volume includes issues #1 to #3 of the original comic presentation, which introduces the protagonist, Spider Jerusalem - a rough and cynical journalist in a futuristic urban environment. This is tough, gritty stuff with plenty of dark humour, stark images and colourful language. It also manages to tackle some interesting issues in a cunningly subversive manner. Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson have really done a tremendous job with this series, and I'm looking forward to checking out future instalments! Highly recommended for those not normally into the artform.