Well, tonight marks the end of my writing sabbatical. In some ways, my first try at a writing event went well. In some ways, I was a little disappointed. So, let me break it down for you:

Good

• Managed to write something each day.
• Two new chapters have been added.
• The end is in sight.
• The blogging, microblagging, and irc chatroom all worked well, and I enjoyed keeping the world updated while I wrote.

Well...not so good

• I didn't finish the book.
• I was the only participant in the event.
• I failed to write for a solid 8 hours each day.

Overall, though, I'm really happy with the progress on Elixir, and I have definite hope of finishing it fairly soonish. Also, in some ways I'm glad I was the only one to participate this year--it gave me a chance to test out the site (especially the forums), and I've already discovered a few bugs I need to squash. It's good to be able to squash these bugs now before a bunch of other people start using the site (which I still hope will eventually happen).

I'm going to leave the Elixir Snippets up in the forum for a few weeks, until all the new material gets published to the site. You can already read one of the new chapters on the Elixir page.

As always, go and enjoy...comment...critique...and have fun!

Well, once again writing was slower than I thought. I wanted to finish 2 chapters today, but really I only finished 1. And, on top of that, I've decided to merge today's chapter with yesterday's to make one long chapter. So, really, I've only done 1 chapter in my 2 days of writing. Ugh.

The good news, though, is that I feel like I've gotten through a rather tedious section. I have one more semi-tedious section to go, and then I'll reach some action that I'm looking forward to writing.

So, in summary: Day 1 - Preparations; Day 2 - 0.5 chapter; Day 3 - 0.5 chapter; Day 4 - expected tedium; Day 5 - Fun!

I don't think I'm going to reach my goal of finishing the book, but even so, I'll have gotten farther than before, and I'll be that much closer.