The halfway point: by the end of today you should have 25,000 words. How are you doing? Are you ahead? Behind? Are you completely and utterly delighted by the exciting world of writing, and you want to do it more and more every day for the rest of your life? Me too.

Also: we are pleased to announce the existence of the (fan created) Reading Excuses forum, a message board designed for you to meet and coordinate with other writers, to share your work, and to give comments. We (Brandon, Dan, and Howard) are not going to police this, it’s purely a sandbox for your guys to play in. Enjoy!

We’ve had just over a week of work: how’s it going? Week two is a lot harder than week 1, and might actually be the hardest of all, because the fun stuff is over and the work has begun, and you’re still thousands of words away from finishing. Tell us all about your victories, your setbacks, and your grandiose plans for the coming days of writing.

Writing Excuses has donated an ad to the Whitney Awards, a program designed to recognize and support Mormon writers. That ad is now for sale on ebay: the winner will get an ad in an upcoming podcast heard by fives of thousands of people. If you want to advertise your book/website/podcast/etc., while helping out a good cause, this is a great way to do it.

November 1 is the first day of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The basic idea is to write an entire novel of 50,000 words or more completely during the month of November. It’s a fantastic program, a great way to get yourself writing, and comes with a vast, ready-made support group. How many of you are doing NaNoWriMo this year? What are you writing about? How can the rest of our Writing Excuses community help?

Writing Excuses is undergoing a complicated technical overhaul on the back end (by which we mean that Jordo, our techmonkey, is moving to a new house and has very patchy computer and Internet access). This is slowing us down, but we promise that there will be an episode available tonight. Sorry. It will all be cleared up soon, and we shouldn’t have many more problems in the future.

Thanks for your understanding.

August 6-10, all three of your favorite writing excusers will be at WorldCon in Denver, Colorado. In addition to seeing us on panels and signings and in the massive dealer’s room, you can also join us for a number of podcasts that we will be recording live, right there, with an audience and some really awesome guest speakers. It will be, without hyperbole, the highlight of your entire life. Offerings of bacon are welcome, but not required.

For those of you unable to join us, rest assured that the traditional schedule of podcast postings will continue apace. Huzzah!

Our podcast today will be available this evening, and we are very sorry for the delay. This is a prime example of “doing the unpopular,” but since we don’t have a good reason it’s also a prime example of “doing the unpopular in such a way that it doesn’t work at all.” So, you know, it’s an object lesson? We’re only trying to help? We’ll get it posted this evening, and all will be right again.