Yesterday was the first day of November, which means it was also the first day of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for the uninitiated).

A few years ago (I think it might have been 2015, which seems ridiculous now) I took part in this most holy of months and produced a novel called Stargirl. I’m actually really proud of it, and you should definitely go read it and tell me what you think. Writing has always been something I’ve really loved doing – perhaps the thing I love doing the most, even, and I always hoped that one day it would be the thing I’d be spending my life doing and making a living from and all that good stuff. And, hey, I actually did manage to write a novel. But I’ve not done anything with it. I sent some stuff round to a few publishers, but I didn’t know what I was doing there, so that didn’t go fantastically. I’ve barely written any fiction since (although I have delved into a couple of writing prompts thanks to Luna at GamersUnitedGG), and I think there are a few reasons for that:

• I don’t know if the next thing I write will be something I can be as proud of as I am of Stargirl
• I haven’t managed to do anything with Stargirl and I don’t much fancy writing another thing that ends up having nothing done with it, even though I know I really should be writing just for the fun of it
• I’ve been focusing on blogging as a way of making sure that I am doing writing, so fiction’s taken a back seat

And all these other crappy excuses. Now it’s another November, and another year that I’m doing bugger all in the way of writing the stuff I really want to be writing (not that I don’t really love doing this ol’ blog thing, of course). Since I’m not doing NaNoWriMo, I’m going to be trying pretty hard to make sure that I keep writing blog content at a reasonable rate for the month, and indeed beyond – I think sometime in December will mark the one-year anniversary of Overthinker Y, so I’ll have to do something for that!

On a more positive note, some stuff that’s been going on or will be going on:

• I had a chat with Dan at Couch Petito about my enduring love of Kingdom Hearts
• A project in a similar vein to NekoJonez’ Zelda Project is currently in the works, co-orchestrated by myself and the Well-Red Mage – expect more news about that near the beginning of December
• Jonez and I had a pretty fun Musical Mayhem, and the next one’s lined up to be with Ian from Adventure Rules (yup, he who hosted the Blogger Blitz)!

So that’s good stuff. I also have a couple of games in the pipeline for Roughly an Hour Reviews, including some early access ones with very cool developers who’ve kindly given me keys to their games, which is exciting.

In short: I should probably be doing more of different kinds of writing, but I’m still enjoying what I am doing, so… swings and roundabouts? I’m definitely planning to stick around here for a while yet, anyway. Thanks to all the cool people I’ve met in this first bit-less-than-a-year of blogging, who’ve made it super fun and worth doing!