Ahlschwede Blog

Novel, Complete!

I succeeded in my goal and wrote 50,189 words in one month, completing my first novel, The End of Man. (That's 189 bonus words!)

When I started out I told John, "I'm doing a SciFi story.... some might call it... a SciFi epic." I'm not sure if it quite hits the mark of epic, but I'm happy with my story.

Only around 15% of participants complete the task each year, and this year I was the only one of  my writing buddies to hit the mark. I hope that all of them try again next year! Updating my wordcount so they could see it really kept me going. (Not that I know that they ever checked...)

As far as writing contests go, I'm looking forward to next April when the same group is running  Script Frenzy!, a similar contest to write a 100 page play or screenplay in a month.

Can't Talk; Noveling

This widget shows an up-to-date wordcount for me and my writing buddies (spookybarn, Johann, and TRM) and  as we write 50,000 word novels during the month of November. It's continually updated by the NaNoWriMo server, so keep checking back. It's been a  difficult undertaking, but as I post this I'm about 30% done!

Peer Pressured

If TR, John, and Aaron all think writing a novel in a month is a good idea it must be! Count me in and brace yourself for the awesomeness that ensues when the guy who can't even keep his blog up to date and his emails answered in a timely manner tries to write a whole novel in Just. One. Month.

Children's Stories

We just made the rest of the 9th Annual Reading Rainbow Young Writers & Illustrators Contest stories live! There are now somewhere around 115 stories from this year's contest online. Personal favorites from this batch of stories (we put the winning stories online a month or so ago) include How I Got My Robot (it has a giant Moon robot! ), Cortni and The Magical Golf Cart (for its surrealistic vision), and The Elf and the Mermaid: Poems from Land and Sea (written by a little girl in Maine, featuring the Door of imagination™).

There were more than 40,000 entries this year, and there are literally hundreds of people who did a lot of work to run the Contest from start to finish. Great work everyone!

Super Cool Library Tool

Questia is an online library - with all that that implies. They have electronic versions of 45,000 books (fiction and non-fiction), 90,000 journal articles, 100,000 magazine articles, and 115,000 newspaper articles. But that's not the impressive stuff. The impressive stuff is how it allows you to search and work with the books in their collection.

Watch the demo (swf) to get an idea of just how cool this could be. It looks like an excellent companion service for a tablet PC. (I'm going to need to get that wireless connection installed!) $10 a month if you sign up for a year. [via Zeldman]