As Nano kicks off the IWSG ponders a deep and meaningful publishing question for all the writers out there

Today is November 1st. There's a lot of things that happen in November. For one, we've officially entered the holiday season. This year is the first one in which I'm putting up my own tree and decorating (a little bit) for Christmas. For Halloween, I just put a bunch of pumpkins on my porch, so it'll be a little more effort than that to dress the house up for the holidays. Second, it's the start of Nanowrimo for many people out there, and this event also has to do with the Insecure Writer's Support Group monthly question which is talked about below. Third, it's the first full month in which the iPhone X is going to be available. It's been a few years since I upgraded, so I think it's the one I'm going to jump to once its widely available (there's currently a production bottleneck). My current iPhone is barely useable. It's battery lasts about an hour if I don't use it at all and fifteen minutes otherwise. And the lag it experiences is significant. When I type a text message, there's usually a one second delay now before the letters appear on the screen. Yeah...it's pretty awful.

So this month's Insecure Writer's Support Group question is: "Win or not, do you usually finish your NaNo project? Have any of them gone on to be published?"

I actually have never participated in the NaNo project, so I guess that's easy. However, if you dig into what the question is really asking it's this: have you ever just binge typed a novel into completion in thirty days. The answer is still no, although I did type out one novel in about sixty days once. And no, that book was never published.

Right now, I'm collaborating on a fun project with my friend Jake. It's been really interesting, as he's come up with a fascinating story and loaded it into google docs, and I take on the persona of one or two characters that he doesn't want to deal with and respond in character to situations that he's put them into. The fun thing is, he can actually see my words appear on the screen in the google docs program as I type them. I never realized writing could be a shared experience, and it's a lot of fun. As for the story it's kinda meh. It currently has no plot really, but we are certainly getting to know the characters rather well. I guess that's something. I imagine we are cranking out enough words to qualify for NaNo. But I've got enough publishing experience under my belt to know that this is a thing that should never be published because it's kinda bad lol. Bad can still be fun though. It's true. And in the least, it's showing me that it's actually quite easy for two people to work on a project at the same time (and weave together their writing styles). I think it'd be fun to take this experience and apply it to a more serious context in the future.