Taking a look at my word count, I'm quite far behind. The average daily word count should be 1,667 (50,000 in a month, divided by 30 days) meaning I should have 11,669 words. I'm definitely not discouraged though; 7,165 words is more writing than I've ever done in a week, I think. I'm hoping to be caught up to 15,003 by Sunday night, which will take a couple of hours at least. My average speed, if I can keep focus, is 450-500 words per 15 minutes.

The story is developing at a quick pace, and it truly is very exciting. I can't wait to finish it off and start editing it. We'll have to see where it goes from here.

For some reason, my status badge on the left isn't updating. I didn't get a chance to update my word count on Saturday, though, because the NaNo website was so damn slow. And it still is, actually, though at least it's usable now.

My word count as of now is 3067. My goal is to break the 11,000 ceiling by next Monday. I think that's an ambitious yet realistic goal. I'm doing much better here than I did with the 3 Day Novel, so that's very encouraging.

Halloween was this past weekend. It was my first halloween living in a house -- I've never handed out candy before. Being the geek that I am, I got really into decorating and went all out. I think I spent almost $150 on decorations -- strobe light, red flood light, hanging skeleton dude, spiderwebs, scary music, etc. It was great! I even had people taking pictures of my house like it was a tourist attraction or something, and the kids seemed to enjoy it. Next year it'll be bigger and better. Pics to come!

I've begun taking my laptop with me on the commute to and from work today, and I realized that, as a full-size laptop, its far too heavy and awkwardly large to use well. So I'm going to sell it, and put the money for the sale toward an Asus Eee PC or an Acer Aspire One. These are subnotebooks/netbooks which are smaller and lighter, thus more conducive to writing on the go. Updates to come about how that pans out!

The countdown to NaNoWriMo begins! It officially kicks off tonight at midnight. 15 hours and 30 minutes remaining. I'm excited! This is my first NaNo, and I'm pumped for it.

I'm contemplating starting right at midnight and getting in 2000 words or so right off the bat. It'd definitely be a good motivator. The goal is 50,000 words, which I think is very realistic -- that's about 1600 words per day. I plan to attend a number of Toronto NaNo writing sessions over the course of the month. Sitting with other writers pounding out the words will be a great experience.

Check back often -- the status image on on the left side of the page will be updated daily!

Over the last couple of days, I've been writing out a solid outline for Blind Utopia, right up to the end. I've found that this makes the entire story much more concrete and less overwhelming because I have a good idea where its headed.

Episode 2 will be posted by the end of October. I plan on using NaNoWriMo to write up a first draft of the entire story, from Episode 3 right to the end. Then, starting in mid-December, I'll begin posting episodes at a faster pace.

Keep an eye on blind utopia for more updates!

So, November is fast approaching, and I'm revving up for National Novel Writing Month. You can see the status image on the left side for that -- it'll be updated daily. The goal is 50,000 words in 1 month. I hope I can do it!

I just started on the next draft of Blind Utopia. I've been working overtime at work, so I haven't had as much time as I'd like, but my goal is to have it posted by the end of the month. I've added a new subscription feature to blind utopia, so you can now subscribe and get updated when a new episode is posted. So subscribe today!