Today being the last day of November, I thought I'd say something about NaNo.

I was unwell for the first half of November, which put me far enough behind that I didn't finish my novel on time. That said, I've got several thousand words' worth of work finished, and I hope to finish within the next month or two. I decided to write up my pet project, Kenabelle Wright's IC book, and I like the direction it's going, though it needs editing of course.

Then will come entering everything into the wiki...

My 12th grade Creative Writing teacher used the title of this blog as her mantra. I believe now that she was merely trying to convince me to stop writing war stories. After all, what does a 17year old pimple-faced geek know about war? Only what he reads in history books, magazines and comics. Today, I realize that you don't need to experience something to write about it; you can always research the topic, but her words motivated me.

At age 17, I wrote a list of goals that I wanted to accomplish in my life. My list included acquiring a Bachelor's degree, receiving a commission in the military, buying my own home before I was 30 years old, getting married sometime after age 30 and finding a lucrative career in a field I enjoy. I have achieved four of those goals. I was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army (Reserve) at age 23; I received a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science at age 25, I bought a house when I was 29 and I was married at age 39.

Ms. Adler's words in 1982 sent me packing into the United States Army at age 18. My military career spanned three years on active duty and 18 in the Massachusetts Army National Guard. You can read about one of my experiences as a Platoon Leader in Canada on Gunther Zimmerman's blog. I've been in numerous fire fights with blank ammunition and provided gallons of blood, sweat and tears while in uniform.

Besides serving as Platoon Leader, I was a Company Executive Officer, Company Commander, Battalion Personnel Officer, Battalion Supply and Logistics Officer, Battalion Signal Officer, Brigade assistant Supply Officer, Brigade Operations Officer and Division Battle Captain (G3 - Current Operations). It was a lot of fun. It was hard work. I gained invaluable experience and I would never trade it for anything in the world. My experiences in the military are some of the best in my life.

In the civilian world, I spent roughly 12 years as a Reserve Police Officer; I worked three years in financial Services, I spent...

[ Continued ]

Hi! I found Mizahar on Google, as my friend had recommended role playing online to me because I LOVE fiction and fantasy books; I read ALL the time! I'm not going to tell my real name right now, so you can call me Natalie! I could really use some help getting started, and would someone PLEASE explain the twenty different races to me?!

So, I was neglecting the slides for my PhD defense 5 days from now as I yielded to my curiosity. I decided to practice my database querying skills to find out the highest word counts in the community and find out just how much we have written so far. I think the results are mostly unsurprising.

Username	Word count
Gossamer	216415
Nya Winters	198703
Abashai	99342
Gillar	78470
Tarot	77297
Kavala	61913
Akuaysun	59148
Colombina	49853
Chaelnomyl	49586
Cayenne	45779
Malia	38401
Stitch	38011
Sorian	34559
Terminus Norin	34508
Leo Varniak	33983
Liminal	33206
Kadarus	30954
Voreasos Alisier	30771
Zaira	30590
Alistair deGrey	26221
Kamalia Timandre	26167
Arabella Sintos	24444
Gromhir	22609
Devandre	21407
Evarette Karmine	21081
Alice	20920
Niall Raghnall	20668
Trista	19104
Ialari Pythone	19000
Sondra	17852

For the sake of becoming immersed in the world of Mizahar, I instinctively have urges to talk about what I'm describing as if it were part of my own world and that I am experiencing the realities of that world in the present- or perhaps I'm attempting to integrate myself in the miz world itself. As I build Endrykas description I feel this urge for present tense the most. It excites me to write like this because I get an amazing rush of having experienced it as much as my character themselves would experience it being there. The best part about enjoying creative writing for me has been knowing that this will someday be the inspirational soil that other player characters will sprout from to create their own unique branches of stories and miz world events.

<3