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Two weeks without a computer. That’s exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of when I built two extra weeks into the season schedule. Of course, I expected the time to be used for sickness or sudden travel, but being without a computer works, too. Or doesn’t. QED.

I haven’t talked about NaNoWriMo in a while (this is where I’d link to some posts on the old Forum discussing various NaNo issues; that is, had I not entirely borked the Forum while setting up this current website). It’s interesting to note that the year I started doing these videos was the same year I quit NaNo, probably for good. Before that, I had participated successfully for three years. What I found in year four was that I had learned everything I needed to know from NaNo — I had taught myself how to self-impose deadlines for personal projects, how to reach certain difficult goals in an unreasonable amount of time, and how to be creative despite feeling not at all in the mood to be creative.

Which is to say, the Jigsaw Video Thing is a direct descendant of my time with National Novel Writing Month. Strange but true. To be sure, I got halfway through my fourth NaNo and realized I just didn’t want to write anymore… partly because I already had what I thought was a pretty good first draft of a novel (from a previous NaNo), and felt that if I were going to spend a bunch of time working on a novel, I should probably spend the time on that as opposed to writing something new. And partly… NaNo was taking time away from the things I was actually working on. I discovered that, because of the way NaNo had made me think about fitting in creative time into a busy schedule, I was essentially doing weird versions of NaNoWriMo all year round. I didn’t really need it anymore, because I had absorbed it.

So no, this isn’t an autobiographical entry; I don’t know that I even know a single person still participating this year (feel free to correct this misapprehension in the comments). But I do still have utmost respect for the experience, and am happy to give Baty and the rest another plug, such as it is.

Plus it was a nice segue into next week’s episode, which I also filmed today. It will be posted on Thanksgiving, but it has nothing to do with turkey. Or Turkey. But more words on 316 when 316 is realized.

And because I like to show off, this is one of those episodes I’ll remind you that I did the whole thing with only two hands. Wire is your friend.