Halfway through My "NaNoWriMo" Project (Patreon)

In the past I have been pretty picky about the conditions in which I like to write, preferring extremely quiet and isolated environments, but it's often hard to achieve those conditions for long enough to get much done at a time. This has been especially difficult in getting enough work done on my current book project, an Old Norse language instructional book that is intended to be used by, well, people like yourselves who might like to learn to read the language but don't have access to a classroom in which it's taught. The problem I've found is that while ten minutes of translating gets something done, ten minutes of working on something as complex and original as this book only gets me a little way into reminding myself what I wrote yesterday.

So I decided to take advantage this year of the "NaNoWriMo" (National Novel Writing Month) idea by committing to write 50,000 words in the book between November 1-November 30. And just now, at 2:00 p.m. Mountain time on November 12th, I hit my 25,000th word this month (it was sjá in case anyone is wondering). See me celebrating in my Hackett Publishing morale T-shirt above.

Partly because of this huge effort, I've cut back on inviting interviewees for you during the weekends of November (which the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday also makes more difficult). But we have at least two I'll announce for early December when we're a little closer to then, which I think will really interest you, including one with the incredible scholar (and editor of the Poetic Edda) Prof. Gísli Sigurðsson. 

But we're coming up on my longest-running (7 years in a row!) Patreon tradition: Patreon holiday cards! While I'm not asking for addresses yet (I can't begin to write them till December), just know that I am going to continue the tradition of sending real "snail-mail" Christmas cards to those of you who furnish a postal address and request one. This year I also have some fun bonus stuff to send with the cards from Hackett (at least for the first hundred or so requests). 

Anyway, I just wanted to share an update about what I'm hard at work on. I look forward to having this book much more fleshed-out by the end of the month so that you can have a real honest textbook in my signature style (whatever that is) sooner rather than later.

All the best for now, and thank you very much for your continued kindness and support during a year that I know has challenged many people's financial wherewithal.

Jackson Crawford

P.S. My Patreon messages don't work. I don't get notifications for them, and there's nothing on my home page to show me when there is or isn't a message. I can't even always see them when I check for them manually, and you won't see it if I reply! The best ways to get in touch are: a) just to comment on posts like this, b) to post in the  Community page, or c) to email my assistant Stella at [admin AT JacksonWCrawford.com]--remember the 'W' between my first and last names in that domain name.