Well, it’s been some months, I’m less busy with work, and I’m looking for an excuse to blog, so it’s no longer too early to say. Here are some thoughts for those of you who were once like me: Not trying to choose between different smartphone brands (which is another question altogether), but those who have been using a flip phone without a data plan for years, and are wondering whether those shiny iPhones your friends seem to love finally give you a reason to get a smartphone.

The short answer: probably not. But it’s still pretty cool.

To pick this apart a little more, I’d like to discuss the differences between what my smartphone (an iPhone) does well compared to what my primitive little flip phone (a free-with-contract Motorola KRZR) turned out to do just as well, or even better. I can’t actually say what other smartphones (like Blackberries and Android phones) do well because it turns out that fiddling with your friend’s phone for five minutes is completely unlike taking a phone to work for months on end, using it to field incoming calls and messages over the course of the day, and otherwise actually using it like a phone. But I’ll tell you what I know.

Battery Life: Motorola KRZR
By the end of my old Motorola’s lifespan, I had to charge it every day or two, or else it ran out of power. Mind you, this was after using it for over two years, and the phone had a removable battery I could’ve easily replaced or upgraded at any time. When I first got it, I could use it for days at a time without charging it. In comparison, I challenge you to find an iPhone user who doesn’t charge it every day. Mine nearly died on me on my commute home on the first day I took it to work, as it never occurred to me to disable call receiving and WiFi features in my 3 hours on the subway. Now, whenever I commute on public transit, I have to navigate through a couple screens and toggle “Airplane Mode” four times a day (assuming I remember to do it and don’t just accidentally leave calling disabled, which I have certainly done more than once, rendering me completely unreachable for hours on end). Even then, I still have to recharge overnight to get the phone through the whole next day—and if I played any games or used the phone to read during the day, I may even need to recharge it after work just to get it through the rest of the day. I see all this charging as a trivially acceptable sacrifice to be able to do more with my phone in general, but if it’s a deal breaker for you to have a phone that needs to be charged daily, the iPhone isn’t for you.

Reading Material: iPhone
This is an unfair comparison, in a way, since I don’t even know if I could’ve gotten RSS feeds on my old phone. If I could’ve, though, I can guarantee they’d have been so ugly as to be not worth it. Plus, my old phone could never have shown high-res videos embedded in feeds, and was barely capable of displaying photos recognizably. But that’s not to slight the iPhone in this category. In fact, I’ve learned that I actually like skimming RSS feeds on my iPhone (first with Google Reader, then with Reeder) even better than on my computer. It’s quick, clean in appearance, seamless in switching from text view to watching embedded videos, and way more attractive than using NetNewsWire or Google Reader on my laptop. (Chalk one up for iPhone over both my other commonly used devices, then.) Plus, the iPhone makes a passable PDF/ebook reader—not great for extremely long reads or for documents with wide columns, but good enough that I’ve emailed myself reading material as PDFs because I knew I’d be more likely to catch up on my reading on the train than I would back at home.

GPS: iPhone (assuming it’s your only GPS)
This is another unfair comparison, as GPS is not really an expected feature for non-smart phones. Clearly, I get more use out of Google Maps on my iPhone than I did on my other phone. If you already have a GPS unit for your car, though, the iPhone won’t replace it. It’s good in a pinch when you’re lost, but it doesn’t talk to you, and I’ve gotten some zany directions from the Maps app on more than one occasion (such as when I was driving alone and instructed to go the wrong way down a one-way street). Handy, but not the best guidance system in the world.

Web Browsing: iPhone, grudgingly
I think I was technically able to browse the web on the KRZR, but its browser was so basic that it was basically unusable for anything other than mobile-optimized pages. To my mind, the iPhone isn’t so much better that I’d actually recommend thinking of it as a web browsing device. Sites that aren’t designed to be used on a phone are simply a pain to use, like my work’s webmail client (which is the only way I’m able to check work email remotely), and sites that rely on Flash (like many restaurant sites and many web-based games) don’t run at all on the iPhone. It’s nice to be able to tap into the internet hive mind if you absolutely need to wherever you are, but it really doesn’t come up for me all that often in an average week. (As fun as it is to settle those “who starred in that movie” debates while out with friends, it’s really not a life-changer.) In short, iPhone web browsing works in a pinch, but if you really want to use the web, you’ll still be lugging your laptop (or iPad) around. Mind you, I imagine my criticisms of the iPhone browser would hold for all smartphones, but I’m talking about smartphones vs. primitive phones here.

Games: iPhone
My Motorola only had cruddy games on it, and the screen was tiny. My iPhone has more options, and some are quite pretty. As a handheld gaming device, I’ve already gotten almost as much use out of it as I ever got out of nearly a decade of owning a Nintendo GBA and DS, mostly thanks to Words With Friends. Most games for the iPhone are pretty poorly made and easily ignored (which is why I use Words With Friends and not the official Scrabble app), but the few gems out there will get you through a long commute.

Music: iPhone
The iPhone is slimmer than my (admittedly aging) iPod, and I could swear it actually has better sound quality. I’m not gonna toss the iPod, but it’s nice to be able to listen to music without putting another device in my pocket. My old phone was no good for that. I will admit, though, that there are non-smart phones that make it a lot easier to load music onto them than the iPhone. You have to “sync” your iPhone with a computer, and you aren’t able to download free, legal mp3s from the web onto your iPhone the same ay you’re able to download PDFs to iBooks. Apple should be embarrassed that it’s so hard to actually manage music on their devices.

Texting: iPhone (barely)
Everyone told me that you get used to typing on the iPhone touchscreen eventually. I improved slightly over the course of my first week, and hit a plateaued. Typing on this thing with my nubby sausage fingers is a pain. I’m constantly making typos, getting autocorrected to inane things unless I deliberately slow my typing, hitting “Enter” and “Send” when I don’t mean to, and flummoxing the spellcheck on what I thought would be obvious mistakes (e.g., two correctly spelled words side by side, when I accidentally miss the space bar). I’m also not a fan of the iPhone’s text messaging interface, with its colorful, space-inefficient word balloons. Plus, the time spent calling up a contact from those in my list of contacts and previous messages is significantly longer than it took to quickly start up a text message on my Motorola, and that old beast’s interface took something like three more clicks than it needed to as it was. All of that said, I give iPhone just a tiny bit more credit than the old KRZR, even despite the KRZR’s lack of a qwerty keyboard. They both require navigating through more clicks and screens than necessary to get a text message going, and having real buttons reduces errors and annoyances in typing—but even with the annoyances of the touch-screen keyboard, I’m able to text faster (and browse old texts more easily) than I once was. And all of that said, I love, love, love Android’s “swipe text” feature, and I wish Apple would pay whatever licensing fees they need to pay so I can use it.

Speaker Phone: Tie
I didn’t notice much of a difference.

Calling: Motorola KRZR
I get slightly worse call quality and reception on my iPhone than I did on my KRZR (such that I now I have to leave my office and walk into the hall when I get phone calls at work). Mind you, this is still pretty good quality and reception, and not many dropped calls to speak of. (Since getting a Verizon phone in 2001, I think I could count my total number of dropped calls on my fingers, unless you count those from talking to people who were using iPhones on AT&T.) Nevertheless, it is simply quicker to make a phone call on a device that is nothing but a phone. That’s what the thing is for. Calls can be answered quickly and easily by opening up the phone. Calls can be made quickly and easily by opening up the phone and pressing a button without even looking. And pressing keys to navigate call trees doesn’t require you to navigate a menu just to make a keypad magically appear.

I don’t make or get many phone calls, but I must admit that I feel slowed down every time I get one on my iPhone, and not just due to unfamiliarity. Answering calls isn’t that much more difficult, but for some reason it ends up being a slower, often two-hand process for me. Making calls is a bit more of a pain, as the touch-screen interface makes it harder to navigate a list of names by letter, and you can’t assign a “default” number for most contacts (so you must navigate the list, click the name, then click which phone to call). Speed dialing is replaced on the iPhone by looking at and touching a somewhat shorter list, but at least these skipped the step of picking which phone to call. My KRZR, meanwhile, had easy speed dials for nearly everyone and every take-out place I ever call on a regular basis, easily dialed up by hitting a single key once or twice. Add in time to gingerly remove the fragile little iPhone from my pocket as if it were a Fabergé egg, and it ends up feeling like a bit more of an involved process. (I dropped that Motorola more times than I can count, but it was durable and practically free to replace.)

I realize how whiney it sounds to be talking about seconds or fractions of a second lost to interface considerations, but you notice those things when you use a device. Those are the details that make for acceptable design versus great design, and Apple keeps getting touted for its great design. You know what’s great design when it comes to phones, though? Buttons. They give feedback through the sense you’re using to control them rather than relying on visual feedback for tactile control. They are easy to find and fast to use. As moving parts, they will eventually degrade—but the buttons on my Motorola were will working long after the charging port cover fell out, the battery cover started to pop off, and the plastic started to peel on the back. And that phone is a year and half past the time when I could’ve replaced it for free.

Customizability: Neither
Here’s the rub, I think: The iPhone looks like a computer. It performs like a (pretty, somewhat slow) little computer. But it is not customizable like a computer. It is sealed up tight, just like any other phone. I never minded this on my Motorola because you don’t expect those things to be customizable anyway, but it’s painful to know that it’s possible to trick out an iPhone and even improve the UI, but that doing so (through jailbreaking) voids your warranty and potentially creates problems when Apple updates the OS. Unless you want to risk that kind of thing (if you even feel technically competent enough to have the option at all), you are stuck with what Apple decides on for the size of icons (too small for my taste), the layout of SMS messages (too brightly colored and scattered in layout for me), the placement of toggles for WiFi and call receiving shutoff (buried in Settings), the sound for incoming text messages (which actually is customizable for just about every other phone on the planet), and so many other things that would really be nice to fiddle with. I might be willing to forgive the iPhone its failings as a phone if only it were everything I hoped for and more in a mini-computer, but it’s not.

In Summary
The iPhone is pretty. It’s a good iPod, a decent RSS reading device (and thus not a terrible ebook reader), a nifty casual gaming device, and a passable web browsing device. It’s half decent as a phone. If you rarely use your phone and only need one because our society still expects everyone to have a phone, then consider the iPhone as a cool gadget that includes a phone among its many features. If, however, you want an awesome phone that’s awesome because of its phone features, this just isn’t it. In fact, you’re probably out of luck entirely, as the mobile industry has kind of given up on that market for the most part. But you can still get a free phone with great call quality and passable usability, and it’ll cost you $30 a month less than an iPhone would. If cost is an issue and checking Google Maps wherever you are isn’t that big an issue, do what my girlfriend did: hold off and just date somebody else with a smartphone. Works like magic.

12 Number of flights taken
411 Number of bylined Macworld articles I wrote
32 Number of [books I read](http://writeology.tumblr.com/tagged/book/)
3 Number of books I read that were graphic novels
45 Number of movies I watched
37 Number of *new* movies I watched
2 Number of Dungeons & Dragons adventures completed as DM
5 Number of Xbox 360 games purchased
4 Number of above games completed (for reasonable definitions of completed)
50,574 Number of words written [for NaNoWriMo](http://doombot.com/2009/12/03/five-writes-dont-make-a-wrong/)
84,508 Number of words written in non-NaNoWriMo novel
1,089 Number of [photos taken](http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmoren/) (not including iPhone)
1 Number of [spoof movies](http://fireball-the-movie.com/) produced
10 Number of [Doomcast](http://doombot.com/category/doomcast/) episodes released
2:55:17 Length of total Doomcast episodes

It’s December 2nd, and if you’ve ever met me, you know what that means: I’m in the throes of the post-[National Novel Writing Month](http://www.nanowrimo.org) hangover, trying to find something to fill the now gaping void previously occupied by furiously concocting new ways to torture my characters.

In the preceding thirty days of November, I produced a 50,000 word piece of fiction which, I’m going to be honest, nobody will ever likely see. That’s by choice though; like a dented can of soup past its expiration date, I would not wish it on my next-to-worst enemy. Worst enemy? Totally.

I also think this will be my last year of NaNoWriMo.*

I started thinking about this blog post shortly before this year’s NaNoWriMo, when I found myself wondering *why* exactly I was planning on taking part again. I’d planned to finish [last year's project](http://doombot.com/2008/12/02/the-difference-between-write-and-wrong/), which I dubbed *Everything Is Fine Until It Isn’t, Part II: You’re A Good Man, Charlie Stokes*, mainly because I wanted to prove that I could *finish* one of these stories. (Dirty secret: The last novel I actually *finished* was the one I started for NaNoWriMo in 2005.)

Let me be clear: I’m not giving up writing. If there’s been one good thing to happen to me since I first put fingers to keyboard back in 2005, it’s that writing has become part of my life, both professionally *and* personally. I relish those days when I can slip out to the café in the early morning hours of the weekend and spend a couple hours doing nothing but immersing myself in a cup of tea and another world.

That’s good. That’s what NaNoWriMo is *supposed* to do. But having reached that point, I feel a bit like I’ve outgrown the exercise. In March of this year, I started working on a new novel, tentatively titled *Resurrection Men*. The idea for this book has been uncoiling in my head for several years now—the characters first came to me in 2001, if you can believe that, at which point they stood around impatiently waiting for the right plot to arrive.

In the seven months leading up to November, I wrote just over 70,000 words in that story—it’s funny to think that I wrote more than two thirds that amount in the last month alone. But unlike the breakneck pace of NaNoWriMo, about 10,000 words a month seems pretty reasonable.

The problem with NaNoWriMo is that it isn’t sustainable. Most professional novel writers don’t work at those speeds (and *it’s their job*). As positive an exercise as I think NaNoWriMo is, there’s a priority of quantity over quality that I’ve moved past. I couldn’t have produced 50,000 words of *Resurrection Men* in a month and maintained the level of writing that was my aim, so I did the only other thing that seemed to make sense: I set it aside for the month.

That turned out to be an incredibly frustrating and, in retrospect, foolish idea. For most of November I was *itching* to work on *Resurrection Men*, but instead found myself having to pound out my daily quota for my NaNoWriMo project. That’s not to say I didn’t do some good work in *Charlie Stokes*; there were definitely scenes and lines of dialogue here and there [that I was proud of](http://twitter.com/dmoren/status/5784137064).

But I ended up running headlong into the same problem as last year: when it came right down to it, what was the story actually *about*, other than being a sort of therapeutic quasi-autobiographical mishmash? And all the while, on my morning walk to work, my mind would spin with ideas for the story I *did* know.

Still, I felt dedicated to seeing NaNoWriMo through, even though the only person who probably would have faulted me for stopping was, well, *me*—just like you don’t want to throw in the towel on mile 16 of a marathon. I managed to sneak in one day’s work on *Resurrection Men* during the month, which was just enough to keep myself tuned in to that story. But every day I continued the slog on *Charlie Stokes* so that I could feel like I’d accomplished my goal (and, *most* importantly, get that little badge to stick at the top of this post).

But, unlike Marc Antony, I came here not to bury NaNoWriMo but to praise it. These past five years have had a huge impact on my life, and to anybody who has ever wondered if they have a novel in them, NaNoWriMo is the excuse you’ve been looking for to give it a shot. At its best, NaNoWriMo is about [cutting out the bullshit](http://www.43folders.com/2009/11/02/nanowrimo-advice) and getting to the act of writing—as such, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Me, I’ve long held the belief that the curse of talent is the ability to recognize genius. I’m just smart enough to know that I’m not a writing prodigy whose first work is going to be tearfully lauded by reviewers, readers, and every single person who so much as glances at the cover, but I *also* know that I’m good enough to produce a solid piece of fiction—if I put in the time to work on it.

That’s what [the](http://doombot.com/2005/12/01/breaking-the-embargo/) [past](http://doombot.com/2006/11/30/victory-is-mineand-a-whole-bunch-of-other-peoples-as-well/) [five](http://doombot.com/2007/11/29/write-on/) [years](http://doombot.com/2008/12/02/the-difference-between-write-and-wrong/) of NaNoWriMo have taught me.

Five years ago, I would have laughed long and hard at the idea that somebody might one day pay me to string words together—and I’m sure I did. Nevertheless, here I am. If nothing else, it makes the idea that I might someday get to tell stories for a living seem not so preposterous after all.

As we here at Doombot have long celebrated Day of the Tesla, we thought you, the readers, might enjoy partaking in some of the more time-honored festivities of this highest of holidays. As always, we perform the ceremony of failing to electrocute an elephant with alternating current (we use symbolic [plush toy elephants](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Y4DNRK3CL._SL500_AA280_.jpg), of course—this is no diabolical, hedonistic Edisonstravaganza), followed by the traditional viewing of Tesla biopic [*The Prestige*](http://doombot.com/2008/08/11/short-movie-review-the-prestige/).

Finally, the evening is concluded with a live reading of our award-winning[*](#footnote1) children’s book, *Tesla and His Pigeon: A Children’s Story of Love and Loss in the Electric Age*, based on Tesla’s [relationship with his favorite creature](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Tesla.27s_pigeon).

Afterwords, the kids are sent to bed with the reminder that the spirit of Tesla won’t appear to deposit [Serbian dinars bearing his likeness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20CSD_Coin_Tesla.jpg) unless they are fast asleep.

If this is your first time celebrating Day of the Tesla, you might also wish to partake of these classic episodes of our podcast adventures, [The Scrimshaw Meme](http://doombot.com/2009/06/30/doomcast-the-scrimshaw-meme/) and [TMYK](http://doombot.com/2009/05/19/doomcast-tmyk/), in which we pay homage to Tesla through the deepest respect of humor.

Finally, the most devoted of Tesla followers undertake—at least once in their lifetime—a trip to the laboratory of the man himself, [Wardenclyffe Tower](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower), where the prescient inventor intended to pioneer the field of wireless communication, were he not dastardly foiled by the dark lord Edison.

And so we wish you a happy Day of the Tesla, and to you and your kin, we say: may the eternal [peace ray](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Directed-energy_weapon) shine down upon you.

\* *Tesla and His Pigeon* was the recipient of the 2006 award for Most Promising New Children’s Book Involving a Historical Inventor of Serbian Descent, by the National Association of Serbian Inventors Whose Initials are “N. T.”. It was also on the short-list for the Newberry Award in the same year, though it was narrowly beat out by [*Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth:_Growing_Up_in_Hitler%27s_Shadow) ↩

This entry did not win. This entry won. To be fair, Mr. McWinnerson had a precocious child, a mushroom costume, and public shenanigans. But then I’m pretty sure that I missed the finalists selection either because I violated the rules of the contest by using images that I didn’t have rights to, or because my video was in a page linked to from an otherwise sparse and unpersuasive blog post that was probably supposed to be the heart of the entry. Or because the video itself wasn’t available until the day after the contest ended. Psh, details.

Regardless, we all win when I make a fool of myself on the internet. Except for me. I remain a big, stinky loser who isn’t going to E3, and even worse, who just ate soap because he didn’t rinse his lunch bowl out well enough.

Completed reading a book first started 15 years ago.

Visited a cafe that’s out of the way from normal walking routes.

First victory in an Ebay auction.

Ate a chicken heart at a Brazilian barbecue restaurant.

Chatted on the phone with parents multiple times in one week.

Purchased a blazer and a bag on sale.

Checked Microsoft Repair and Shipping Status online 300 times or more.

Our team, Grand Unified Theory of Love, isn’t so much about the competing side of things as we are about solving some puzzles and having a good time. We try to have a relatively small, close-knit group, and we take ample breaks for meals and sleeping compared to some teams that go 36+ hours without rest. This year our team jumped a bit in size, with about 25 people participating in person, roughly half of whom were new to the mystery hunt. I got to design a team t shirt, which was well received; sort of a sequel to Jason’s design from last year.

I personally had a great time this year even though I was sick, and I’d rate this as my favorite hunt so far (having participated the last 5 years.) This year’s hunt was themed on an interplanetary adventure in which we had to escape from Zyzzlvaria by rescuing Captain Blastoid and crew, (which could all be done by solving puzzles of course.) The puzzles were fun, and covered a wide spectrum in terms of formats. Though a few puzzles were frustrating or seemed to rely on crazy logical leaps, in general they lived up to my high expectations based on the quality of the last hunt run by the “Evil Midnight Bombers” in 2007. I also helped solve far more puzzles than I think I had ever been involved with (4-5, plus helping with interpreting clues for puzzles that had been all-but-solved.) In total our team solved about twice as many puzzles as last year which seemed pretty good given our laid-back demeanor. We unfortunately didn’t solve any of the “meta-puzzles” even when we had solved the majority of puzzles in a given round. (Meta-puzzles are puzzles that can be solved by combining solutions of grouped puzzles.)

I was really impressed with the quality of team work displayed by our group: for one event we were tasked with constructing a “spaceship” that would complete a variety of tasks, something I figured would not really come together due to the logistics of our team being so geographically isolated prior to the hunt. Not to be thwarted by geography several intrepid team members traded a flurry of emails in the days leading up to the event, each arriving with several component that were assembled Voltron-style into a spaceship capable of all the possible tasks we were asked to do.

In addition to the “here’s a picture/block of text/data set you need to interpret” style of puzzle there were several “make something” or “find something” type puzzles our team seems to really enjoy. In addition to the space ship, there was a scavenger hunt, “costume party”, “science fiction food bake-off“, and “compose a fictional national anthem” puzzles. I’m guessing the more competitive team skip or minimize the time they put into these types of puzzles but for us they were a welcome change up in pace and style from the other types of puzzles.

Our team packed it around 8pm sunday night, 56 hours after the hunt had started (though several hours short of the 63 it would run.) Hopefully fun was had by all and Grand Unified Theory of Love will be back in 2010. Congratulations to the team that won, “Beginner’s Luck”, I hope they run a great hunt next year!

Item: Set of special edition sci-fi books with cool covers

Reason I won’t get it: £5.99 a book may not sound like much, but there are eight books in that set, and they ship from the UK. Just seems like a lot to pay for paperbacks. Also, Amazon.co.uk has replaced packing peanuts with poison-tipped barbs.

Item: A PS3

Reason I won’t get it: I have pledged not to acquire this until after I get my degree. I won’t get the degree before Christmas. So there! (And anyway, I’m kind of waiting for Heavy Rain and the next game by the Ico people to come out.)

Item: Zener cards

Reason I won’t get it: I suppose I could print out my own set of black and white cards to test for ESP, but it would be nice to have a set that feels all nice and professionally made. Still, I suspect that potential givers would be concerned that this feels like a silly, cheapass gift, seeing as how it kind of is. I’m not even sure where you’d buy a set if you don’t feel like paying 18 bucks to also get a stupid book and a crystal ball. Most of all, though, I don’t think I’ll get these because I don’t even want to test for ESP; I thought I might use them for a game or something, and my loved ones are kind of sick of hearing me talk about recycling silly cards for gaming.

Item: Another game as good as Coachride to Devil’s Castle

Reason I won’t get it: I don’t know if any such game exists. Tony gave away a bunch of copies of this game (which was on last year’s Secret Christmas List), but has yet to refer to any other game as being comparably awesome.

Item: World peace

Reason I won’t get it: Ha ha! Let’s see you beat this year’s list, jerks.

I’ve started to look at the NaNoWriMo process as an exercise, a chance to try out things that I wouldn’t otherwise. By this point, I’m pretty confident in my ability to write, regardless of what month it is, so it’s an opportunity for experimentation.

Last year, I tried to write a young adult science-fiction novel about a girl who discovers that her older brother is part of a secret organization that fights aliens and deals with the powers of the occult. If that sounds a lot like [*The Middleman*](http://doombot.com/2008/07/22/short-television-review-the-middleman/)…well, it is, but I hadn’t heard about it prior to coming up with the idea. *The Middleman* had roughly the same concept as my story, but with one major difference: vastly superior execution. That’s okay; I don’t regret the experience of writing that story—but I don’t think I’m likely to finish it either.

So, what have I learned this year that I didn’t know last year? Well, I’ve learned that even though I *can* write mainstream fiction, I seem to keep coming up with better genre fiction ideas at the same time (I thought of at least two premises for good stories that I’d like to write). I’ve learned that having an *entire* plot in mind—which I didn’t this time around—really helps not only the day-to-day act of writing, but also the emotional investment in the novel and characters, and I learned that I can produce 50,000 words without breaking too much of a sweat. In many ways I felt like I put in a lot less effort this year. I went to most of the local area write-ins, and I regularly cranked out more than my allotted word count for a given day, allowing me to skip several days over the course of the month. I also learned that the first-person perspective is great, because you can just delve into long periods of wandering introspection, many of which were probably the better—or at least more amusing—parts of this book.

This year’s effort, [*Everything Is Fine Until It Isn't*](http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/62871)—and as much as I don’t want to heap on the self-adulation, I still love that title—was largely autobiographical and, let’s be honest, more than a little therapeutic. I ditched the idea of writing for therapy way back in my first or second year of college when I realized that it was basically an attempt at wish-fulfillment: creating the scenarios that I *wanted* to happen in real life. That’s ultimately unsatisfying, however, and even though I did base a lot of this year’s novel on my own life, I wanted to take a more investigatory approach to the past and present, fictionalized as they were, instead of creating a speculative future that could never exist.

In the volume department, that works out great: there’s always more material to mine from inside your head. In terms of quality, it’s a little more hit-and-miss. Despite truth often being stranger than fiction, most of the time it’s a lot more boring. The story might be interesting from a purely navel-gazing perspective, but if you just take what actually *happens*, it’s a lot of people moving around, talking, and not *doing* much of anything. Which just kind of makes it sound like the government.

However, one of the problems with the first-person narration, especially when it’s a thinly fictionalized version of oneself, is that there’s a temptation to somehow try and get your *entire being* onto the page. Not only is that impossible, but it’s usually unwise too. The act of creation is as much about what’s left out as what’s put in, and you can never recreate the thing itself—nor should you. It’s like trying to make a completely photorealistic painting.

This year’s work started out strong, mainly because that was the part that I’d mostly written in my head already, but it dropped off quickly as I realized that I wasn’t really sure what this book was *about*. I do think there’s a potential story with these characters and this premise, but I don’t think I quite hit the bull’s-eye this time around. Despite that, I think the opening to *Everything* is among my favorite things that I’ve written and it’s kind of okay if the rest of the novel doesn’t live up to it, because at least I wrote *that* part.

So, having learned my lessons, where do I go from here? Well, there’s still that pesky third novel in a trilogy to finish (and I have a couple of beta readers who have been bothering me about that recently). I’ve got four more volumes of my graphical novel to finish (despite the fact that I recently lost all my notes for it in a [horrible data catastrophe](http://www.macworld.com/article/136980/2008/11/perfect_storm.html)), and there are at least a couple more ideas that I alluded to above that I’d like to flesh out a bit—not to mention my latest, greatest idea for [an espionage cookbook](http://twitter.com/dmoren/status/1032604589).

As always, there’s plenty more to write and never enough time to do it. But NaNoWriMo does remind me that it’s possible to keep writing during the rest of the year—if not everyday—and still accomplish something.

And, seven years later, Kai still looks the most like his cartoon if you ask me. Crazy. Some day, if the four of us are ever in the same physical location again, we shall have to take a picture so we can actually see if either of these actually looks like us. And then we will burn all the evidence.