As promised, this post is a post-mortem on my participation in National Novel Writing Month. There's not much to say that hasn't been said by others who have completed the event. It was certainly an experience, and something was created -- though I'm not sure if it's of any value. As I go over what I've written, it's somewhat derivative of Max Brooks and Zack Parsons. For the event, I wrote a story suggested in John Hodgman's The Areas of my Expertise: the elemental battle between all animals and all humans. The story is told through snippets of documents and from the point of view of various characters. It's basically a science fiction road story.

Editing it is going to be slow. I'm not sure if I'll finish it. The point of the event, after all, isn't to make something good. It's to make something. I feel much more proud of some of my scientific efforts than I do of this work. But those efforts have had the benefit of editing and review. Maybe that's the point, too. Giving the manuscript the time it needs to turn into something good might be meaningful.

So, perhaps it'll find its way onto the site sometime in the future. For now, I'm happy to have successfully participated, and to have learned that writing creatively is very different from writing journals and chapters.