Sc0ut, I'm not doing the NaNo, not enough time and an erratic schedule not completely under my own control (as in, I may find myself suddenly at any time having to hare off to the Mid-North to stand in for somebody else who has had his own schedule disrupted - I'm sure you know the saying about life being what happens while you are making other plans). However, I wanted to weigh in on the discussion about writing.
As I've probably mentioned, most of what I have ever had actually published or broadcast has been poetry, how-to articles, or technical articles, plus some science-fiction short stories which were more about the ideas than the characters. While I have written a lot, I didn't actually write much fiction at all until I discovered this comic, the Minnions, and by extension, fanfiction, which provides a medium within the limitations of which stories may be constructed. The best advice I ever had on writing was that you should write what you must: when characters, or a tale, turn up in your head and demand to be written, then you have something worth doing. The other piece of excellent advice was: the way to become a writer is to write. It doesn't matter what you write, just that you practice and develop the writing skill. Words are your tools with which to practise the art of storytelling. You may even find that fanfiction is a good intermediate stage - it gives practice without having to first create characters from the whole cloth.
Finally, a bit of advice of my own: when you write something, leave it for a few days, then come back to it. Mistakes and infelicities will be more obvious after the gap. Also, read it aloud. That way you can spot flaws in storytelling technique and bits of dialogue that don't flow naturally. And if your writing turns out anywhere near as good as your art, we will all be the richer for it.
