So, NaNoWriMo 2011 is far, far over.

Before the NaNo kicked in, I recommended people to check out org-mode and look at my ramblings on my endless struggles with other writing software packages.

That ramble was a little bit premature because I hadn’t actually completed a major writing project with Emacs. I’ve written a lot of short stories over the last year or so, but due to my increasing self-critique I’ve not actually gotten anything out. And, of course, the fact that I kept switching software probably didn’t help much either. =)

But NaNoWriMo is now done, and bashing out 51,757 words probably counts as some sort of an achievement that gives a little bit of an indicator of how Emacs works as a prose writing tool.

I told people it would work, and dammit, it did. Except for a few small snags.

It’s sad that I haven’t had found the time to comment on my NaNoWriMo progress on my blogs at all. This NaNoWriMo seemed to be a bit more bleak than the last year’s incredibly fun journey, mostly because some of the people I followed last year weren’t writing and I didn’t even get a chance to follow some other people. Also, NaNoWriMo website’s tools were not as fun this year around.

But overall, it was still an incredible journey. Just with a little bit more of proverbial taste of blood in the mouth. I’d say I survived through NaNo this time, not really finished it.

I’ll probably release my book draft later on. As in last year, I’ll release a PDF and possibly an EPUB version. Cover is already drawn, and shown on the right (click for a larger version).

I’ve also made some sort of a video journal. Once I get around to editing it (and doing the EpicDiff run to show how the text mutated over time), I’ll put it to my YouTube channel. This is also the first time I’ve ever produced anything major in Org-Mode, so I’ll also write a separate blog post on my experiences with Emacs as an authoring environment. (Summary: it’s probably the best environment I’ve tried so far, but there are a few snags that I really wish were fixed easier.)

Anyway - the following is basically just a copy-paste of my /r/nanowrimo posts, with some minor tweaks. Hope it’s interesting enough.