I like to keep both of my fans informed of my work, so here’s what I’m doing. This month I have been working on revising my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel, and it hasn’t been going very well. I finished close to half of a second draft, wherein I rewrote a lot from scratch, but I had to stop when I sensed a rather major flaw. I like the characters and I particularly like the character relationships, but there is unfortunately a startling lack of plot around them. (298 words.)

I’m suffering from a major case of post-nanowrimo depression right now, which I would assume is pretty similar to post-partum depression. Or drug withdrawals. It’s pretty simple really. The act of creation is so thrilling and stimulating and awesome that when it’s over, there’s nothing left inside but a black empty void of nothingness. For me, it generally manifests as a fervent desire to stare at the walls and feel useless all day. (196 words.)

I just finished Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, which I read because it was supposed to be an example of the “fantasy steampunk” genre, although it turned out to be more in the “Lovecraftian horror” genre. Mieville’s writing is incredibly detailed and imaginative, and he’s pretty creative with his vocabulary, too. In other words, I was using the Kindle’s dictionary feature quite a lot. It wasn’t quite pretentious, but it seemed a tad unnecessary at times. (195 words.)

What is the backstory of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? Why is his name the same as my name? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Jingleheimer_Schmidt (19 words.)

It’s odd that so many web sites discussing literary archetypes use the characters from the movie Star Wars as their examples. Aren’t there ANY other movies that have classic archetypes? Or is Star Wars such a cultural touchstone that literally everyone on the planet recognizes it? (46 words.)