I am so swamped with email, and I'm not spending as much time on the computer since I'm writing this new book by hand. I have revisions already on the first 20 pages of Smoke. I'm DREADING next week.

I got the rankings of Gateway, and my two paranormals fell about the middle. As usual, Ghost Hunters got two high scores and a low. Vamp Hunters had all about the same. I also saw I'm a TOUGH judge. One entry finalled only after dropping my score, and I gave the lowest score on 2 other entries. No more contests for me for awhile.

Last year I had the most fun doing Nano. After a year of revisions, I let loose on a new story, one I’d done no preplanning on. I didn’t even have a hero in mind. The second day of November, I was still looking for him.

Two days later, I had him, and he was the villain.

This story would wake me up in the morning. I always had an idea to write (though not always in the order I wanted to write it) and I finished the book on November 27, with 50001 words.

During that time, I even had my folks here from Minnesota, and I’d let my house go, so had to spend a weekend cleaning.

I learned that counting words written gave me more of a sense of accomplishment than counting pages.

Did you Nano last year? What did you learn? Do you plan to do it this year?