This Halloween was a bit of a bust, as far as getting rid of some chocolate and popcorn. I reckon we're going to be eating this stuff for months!

I left work on time, drove home, and did some last minute prep for the "trick or treaters," including putting on some "scary" sound-effects, setting up the fog machine, and putting our sound-activated ghost out on the deck. Carrie got home as I was working on the latter, just in time to help out feeding the costumed hordes.

Well, curfew was 7pm, which only gave us an hour of dishing out treats. It was dark, drizzling, and overcast, so I imagine both kids and parents were keen to finish the rounds in a hurry. In total we had 9 kids come to the door, which is a far cry from the 50-odd we had last year!

We kept the light on a bit past 7, and then settled in to watch the remake of Dawn of the Dead on TV. That was pretty good, as far as zombie movies go :) Tomorrow we'll catch the Ghosthunters Halloween special (currently being TiVoed), and perhaps they might actually catch something on film or audio this time ;)

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I've noticed a few people posting about NaNoWriMo, where everyone and his/her dog commits to write a novel (albeit a rather short one, 50K words long) during the month of November. I have considered attempting this insane feat myself over the past few years, but always chicken out at the last minute.

So, the question is, will I write a novel this year? Probably not :) That's one of my crazy New Year's resolutions, but I'm beginning to think those things are a bit of a waste of time. There's stuff I'll do whether I have a resolution or not, and then there's other stuff I'll procrastinate on all year, at which point I'll make those things resolutions for the following year. See how that works? ;)

What I will do for the month of November at least, and hopefully well beyond, is to write at least 100 words a day. Not much you might think, but if you've been following this journal lately, you might've noticed I've been doing considerably more than that each day since mid-October.

This approach seems to work pretty well, and I'd hate to go into another writing slump by overextending myself. Besides, I've written over 8000 words in the past two weeks, which translates into a solid 192,000 words a year if I can keep it up. That's more than I've written in the past three and a half years combined!

For now I'll stick with writing short stories, but if a novel idea clobbers me over the head, then I suppose I'll have to write one. There has been that one I've been thinking about for 3 years, but I need to do quite a bit of research first...

Is that the time? I'd better get the evening's writing done. I'll post a progress report later!