During November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo. I was not the only insane one participating in this, but instead I was part of thousands of people who wanted to give this challenge a try. This was my third Nanowrimo that I've participated in, and participating with me was my roommate Acturi. We wrote many many words, had some ups and downs, but we eventually got through it, gleefully showing at least 50,000 words before the end of November 30th!
The novel, for those who are curious, is mostly about go. There are other things that happen besides go, such as sex, fighting, backstabbing, and coffee. The game of go, however, is something that my four main characters all have in common, and it brings some people together, and tears others apart. I also had many different themes in this book, such as looking at the game of go as a model of the universe (and playing accordingly), and looking at the universe as a model for go (and also playing that accordingly).
When writing this novel, I would sometimes log onto KGS and play a game or two, and surprisingly, I jumped up dramatically in rank, from a solid 28k to an unstable 20k?. From my games, I'd wager that I may be a 22k or 21k though, but that will stabilize in time. When people have asked what I've done to have a sudden rank change, I tell them "err.. nothing?", and this is mainly the truth. Occasionally I will look at some tsumego while on my lunch break, and twice in November, I dinked around on goproblems and did some 30k and 25k time trials.
The leading cause of my sudden jump has now been deduced to "your subconscious has digested the information that you've been exposed to, and now you can finally use it!"
December has unofficially been declared my go playing/studying month. I'm not sure how well I'll fare with this, since this weekend I'll hopefully be up in a cabin in the Colorado Rocky Mountains with some friends. Rest assured, I am bringing some books and my ghetto goban, and one of my friends that is coming also plays go. It'll be a nice start to a hectic month, where holidays may try and triumph over playing go. Oh well, either way I'll be happy. :)
