I still haven’t decided whether I will start National Novel Writing Month this weekend, but — since I hit my 50,000-word NaNoWriMo target in 2007, I was recently offered the chance to get a free proof copy of last year’s novella from CreateSpace, an Amazon-owned publish-on-demand company.

I like parts of last year’s novel very much, and I assumed for the longest time that I would be able to fix the rest of it with some judicious editing. But I’ve hit a wall; I don’t know what to do, or where to go from here. My former college professor who offered to look at the manuscript earlier this year never did. I don’t want to ask family or close friends to look at it, because I don’t want to put them in the position of not liking it.

So I was all prepared to just let this novel die on the hard drive until this CreateSpace thing came along. It would be fun to have a nice, professionally printed and bound copy of the novel. And, even if it’s not “The Grapes of Wrath,” I could put a link to it here on the blog and maybe sell a few here or there. Maybe the novel — which is fiction inspired by my short-term foreign missions experiences — might even pique someone’s interest about a short-term trip. It doesn’t cost me anything unless I decide to buy a few extra copies for my own use. And I still own the rights, if I do get a chance to rework or revise the novel in the future.

Is that crazy?