NaNo is not going wonderfully. I'm deleting about as much as I'm writing, and I'm just not writing very much because I'm busy trying to figure out where to take the plot, for the umpteenth time, and I'm doing a lot of cutting and pasting of old scene snippets that I've written in the past. Gah.

I reread my novella, and aside from being completely appalled by the writing (although the end was still touching, in my very biased opinion), I noticed two stylistic habits that are still present in my writing today, and that I need to cut down on. One is that I use ellipses too much...Waaaay too much. Go away, ellipses... And the other is attaching two similar-meaning words or phrases together with a comma, such as in, "'Drink,' she urged, pleaded." I guess it adds emphasis and shades of meaning, but it also stands out if overused, and that's bad, if you're trying not to stand out as the narrator.

It's NaNoWriMo month! I'm participating in my own version--50,000 net words for my work in progress is the goal for this month (net words meaning the things I delete and then write in don't count. So if my total word count for my novel at the beginning of this month is 59,365 words, I'm aiming for 109,365 words at the end of this month. Almost double what I have. If it goes well, it should be a very productive month).

Also looking into MFA programs in creative writing and MA programs in East Asian Studies. Should aim to get apps done and ready to send by the end of this month too, somehow...=_= Well, okay. Taking into account the traveling I will be doing in the latter third of the month, within the first couple days of December should be more realistic. I just need to remember things take longer to send from here.