Winning is Sometimes Everything

I've always loved goals.

Not the seemingly unobtainable goals (weigh less than 125 lbs., be famous, rule a kingdom). Not the goals that do not depend on me (be professionally published, be discovered as an actor).

I love the finite, fixed goals, the ones that come in all shapes and sizes, short-term and long-term. Goals like:

Finish the laundry today
Paint a picture for Christmas Cards

or, say

Write 50,000 words on a novel in November!!!

I write during National Novel Writing Month because it gives me a very specific, finite goal to accomplish, and it puts just enough pressure on me so that I make writing, for one month out of the year, a priority.

And I won! I did it! I set out, worked hard, and accomplished my goal! Yay!

But it's not over. Now I have new goals, for the month of December:

1. Write at least once per week on each blog.
2. Write a new verse each day for the advent calendar (did that last year and the year before).
3. FINISH the mermaid novel rough draft.
4. Revise my play from a 45-minute one-act to a 2-hour full-length play.

Notice how each one of these is a WRITING goal. That means, for the month of December, I will STILL keep writing a priority. And I will make sure I have writing goals set up for January, too, so that writing stays a priority all year round.

If I don't set goals, I will let the rest of my life take over, and I won't write. I can't let that happen.

What are your short-term and long-term goals? What have you won at lately?

Don't Forget NaNoWriMo--or Find Your Goal

Although I'm going through a BUNCH of unplanned stuff this year, I am also planning on participating in National Novel Writing Month (November 1-30)! And you should too!

Even if you don't write novels, sign up for it. It's FREE, and you can use the e-mails and inspirational articles from the Office of Letters and Light to use for any of your efforts--from painting to music to drawing to reading to weight loss to pretty much any goal for anything you have in mind. Just sign up, and everything comes to your e-mail… and it's more helpful than you might realize.

I have found it hard to keep going without goals, without a plan for the day, for the week, for the month, for the year. Without goals, I am unsure what to do next. With goals, I have specific tasks automatically ahead for me.

Remember, too, that we are 2 1/2 months away from the new year. Why wait until January 1 to set a goal? Why not begin that resolution soon?

My resolutions (BEFORE January 1):

1. Finish my mermaid novel.
2. Lose the weight I've needed to lose for more than a year.
3. Find a happy place with Richard's cancer treatments.
4. Sew several costumes (three planned so far--Elsa from Frozen, Queen Elizabeth I, Antebellum dress)

Not a lot, but one of these would probably keep me busy. What are YOUR resolutions before January 1?

Travel Tuesday: The Ideal Writing Spot

I will eventually get to real places... I promise. Right now, though, it's so much more fun to travel back into my brain, at least in the parts where they ugly voices aren't living right now.

(The ugly voices are living in most of the dark corners of my brain right now. You'll hear them speak for themselves tomorrow.)

For now, let's consider the ideal place to disappear to and write one's novel. NaNoWriMo is coming up in November, and I'm already making plans. Since I am holding down 8 jobs at the moment, though--yes, I said 8, and only three are volunteer--I can't quite go on vacation. Still, my little writing closet could use a fake window of sorts, one that looks out onto a blissful, almost real scene, as if I'm really on vacation there. Like this one.  

See, there is the lovely little Alpine valley, tucked into the mountains, and I'm sitting in my writing room gazing at the clouds as they float by. *sigh*

Only I'm not writing. And that's a problem.

consultoriapsiquica.blogspot.com

I need to try something else. I know. How about a beach?

Yup, this is the ticket. A sunset at the beach. For a little added depth I could buy a CD of wave sounds, complete with birds calling and wind blowing. 

Ooh, I need a margarita. Or at least a bathing suit. And sunglasses. 

But I'm still not writing. 

Perhaps the key to all of this is that I need to stop thinking of doing my writing when I'm on "vacation." When I'm on vacation, I shouldn't be writing. I should be on vacation, watching reruns of TV shows I haven't seen in 20 years (or at least five), painting my toenails, swimming, doing stupid things. Not writing. 

Writing is work. It is. It's like my other jobs--it takes some of my time, requires preparation, and sometimes I have to do it when I don't particularly want to. And when I denigrate it by filing it with my "leisure" activities, I don't get to it. And I have to. It's my job. And it's a job I love, one that deserves my time and concentration--without one of these stupid windows.

And that's what today is about for me. I had my Labor Day. I played tennis, watched TV, read, washed my car, and swam with my kids. I played. Sure, I did a little cleaning, but mostly I was on vacation. 

But now it's a Work Day. Let's see how many of my jobs I can get done today... including writing. 

NaNoWriMo Lesson #1: Stats Induce Panic

Free Digital Photos.net

So far, the writing for NaNoWriMo is going very well. I've managed at least 2,000 words per day (beginning on the 6th, when I was finally able to begin work), and I'm meeting my personal goals for this.

Even better, I really like my story. The main character is fervent, passionate, and rebellious--all things I am on the inside, even if they exhibit themselves very little on the outside. And her love interest, well, he's blisteringly handsome and as passionate about his purpose in life as she is. Did I tell you she was a mermaid? And he was a British ship's captain? And that all of this was occurring in the Caribbean during the mid-1830's? Yup, costumes, fighting, underwater stuff--it's all there.

Each day, as I finish the necessary 2,000+ words, I enter my new number diligently in the NaNoWriMo website. And there is my problem. I click on my Novel Stats, and there I get a glimpse of my progress through their meters. Sure, I'm doing fine, but the meters don't take into account my late start. After the first day or so, I was projected to finish the novel on February 14th. February 14th!! Aack!

Of course, the day after that took it to January something... and now I'm supposed to finish on December 6. And my little chart shows my word count slowly moving up to meet the line of expectation. I know, logically, why I haven't met it yet. I do. I swear I do.

I just can't quell the gut check I feel every time I see I'm not there yet, that panicky lurch in my stomach when I realize it's HALFWAY THROUGH NOVEMBER and I'M NOT HALFWAY THROUGH MY BOOK! EEK!

Why are my expectations so unreasonable?

Then again, I noticed my Municipal Liaison (the person who helps coordinate all us Georgia people who don't fit into any metropolitan area) has already written OVER 50,000 words. I congratulated him, and he replied, "I just need to finish the darn story now! That's my trouble every year."Even the successful ones--who have reached 50,000 words before the midpoint of the month, mind you--seem to expect more out of themselves.

Perhaps that's not so bad. I still ADORE writing the book. Sometimes it's been tricky fitting it into my day of chores (Damn you, laundry! Dishes again?), but I'd rather write on my novel than do pretty much anything else (Zumba excepted). And lofty goals help--without them, I wouldn't have a single novel written.

What about you? Goals? Expectations? Or do you just fly by the seat of your pants, living in the moment?

Even Numbers

I must just hate the traditional 1,667 words per day that come up for NaNoWriMo, for I've put off writing the novel for five days just so that I can finish this other short story.

But it's done, just in time for my daily word count (to be a winner) to add up to an even 2,000 words per day.

Thank God. If there's a number I hate, it's 1,667.

Now I'm off to outline, without having an unfinished short story hanging over my head.

Warning: I'm About to be Very Lame

NaNoWriMo is imminent. Yup, in just a day and a half I'm disappearing off the blogosphere.

You might wonder, in a few weeks, if I've disappeared off the face of the planet. Or died.

I haven't. Do not worry. I'm going to have to ignore most of you, though, for I know if I have an hour to check blogs and make comments, I need to use that precious hour to make my word count for the day. I only managed half my goal last year, so I really want to make it this time.

So, adieu for now. Love you all, really, but I'll probably be MIA until I put my tree up for Christmas. If I post, it will likely be a NaNo poem, rapidly written and brief. I've even written a poetic lament for it on my Not Writing blog

If YOU are participating this year, though, please let me know in the comments. Tell me your name through the NaNoWriMo website, and I'll buddy you! I'm Shakespeare824, and right now I only have two buddies, so I could use a few more.

Writing=Tiling

At long last, more than a month after I finished the &*%$(@ project, my tortured fingers have recovered from grouting long enough to write about my summer tiling experience. As with my gardening entries, I managed to find quite a few similarities between tiling and writing, and the time it took gave me a chance to mull over these nuances and, perhaps, improve my writing in the process. At least these offer me a way of perceiving the process of writing differently.

So that you can see I know what I'm doing, here's a picture of my finished tiling project:

Looks pretty fantastic, doesn't it? And I'm an amateur, too. First time tiling ever. I'd make a long, arduous blog about this (and brag a whole lot more), but that would be too much to remember (and endure), so I'll start with the first part of the tiling process, preparation:

1. Prep the space for tiling. That means tearing down the previous tile, which in this case was a glossy white bathroom tile intermixed with bright, ugly wildflowers. The eighties-inspired bathroom look was pretty awful, but I have to admit that the bare wall devoid of eighties tile looked worse. Once it was chucked off, though, I knew there was no going back.

In the same way, revising my novels (i.e., "ripping them to shreds") often takes a similar path. I create a new document, name it novel revision #2 (or #7, or #25, depending on the novel), and then paste chapters of the old document in one at a time, revising them fully before pasting in a new chapter. At some point, I realize the rest of the novel is complete crap, and I stop pasting. It is then that the old draft disappears back into my novel folder and I begin composing for real. Tearing down is really hard, and turning my back on entire chapters (or the whole second half of a book) is even harder, but sometimes it's necessary.

2. Plan out where you are putting tile. I made a template of my backsplash, especially the part above my stove (shown in the picture above), in paper so that I could fit the tile into it on the floor of my dining room before I set the stuff in thinset mortar on the real wall. I even used the little spacers to set them apart from each other properly, so that my measurements would be exact. Why? Well, it gave me a chance to see the finished product. In fact, my plan changed, for I realized the accent tiles would be set too high on my template, making them almost invisible, and I arranged them differently. I even changed the angle during the planning stage, opting for a far more graceful diamond pattern instead of block squares. Had I waited to plan until I started mortaring all the tiles, I would have two choices: Live with the inferior setting, or tear the whole thing down and start over. Neither one would have been any fun.

Sure, when one is in the throes of NaNoWriMo, one can just applaud oneself for getting the requisite 1,667 words written each day--or even throw a party when one writes twice that many. But writing off the cuff, at least for me, means shredding most of it somewhere down the line, and I will have far less work to do in revisions if I write a plot outline and plan out the characters before I really get the novel going.

3. Tiling happens in a particular order, which cannot be changed. I had to prep the space, plan out where the tile was going, cut the tile, mortar the tiles up, let them dry completely, then grout. Had I tried doing any of these things in a different order, I would have messed the whole thing up. Had I mortared the tile over the existing tile, it wouldn't have stuck. Uncut tiles would never fit together. Had I grouted before mortaring, the grout itself would have no hope of keeping those tiles up. They needed to be glued first. The order of the process matters.

That seems self-explanatory, but writing's steps also follow the same logic. If one hasn't written anything--or if the writing has fundamental problems with character or plot or content that have yet to be addressed--editing for grammar is silly. I need to prepare for the writing, write it out, revise for content, then revise for grammar, then send it out to beta readers, then revise again, and only then (at the earliest) can I call the novel finished. The steps aren't arbitrary rules created by your much-hated English teacher. They are necessary to help you create the best quality work you can. Only a supreme writing genius can avoid some of these, and I don't know one of those.

Now that the preparation is done, other elements happen. I'll cover them in another blog as soon as I can.

Countdown to NaNoWriMo

It's coming. Every year it's coming. I tried it once and failed miserably, mainly because I spent the second half of the month house hunting. But I've moved now. Nothing should be standing in my way, especially a house hunt.

And the house we bought is almost fully refinished/painted/cleaned/reorganized. Even those pesky backsplashes are completely tiled and grouted (though I still haven't posted pictures). My son's quilts are days away from completion. I do have a ton of Christmas houses to paint this year, but if I don't get them all done, who will know but I? Christmas comes EVERY year (just like NaNoWriMo).

I'm revving up my revisions on several novels, after hardly writing in July. I'm excited, I'm motivated, and I'm fully aware that my kids start school in four days. So, the countdown might just be meaningful for me this year. I'm posting it here, just in case.

Do I really want to do it? Not sure. Last year I realized at the halfway point that I was way off base with the novel, and I haven't done anything but research it since. Will the novel eventually turn into something? Probably, knowing how willing I am to revise (i.e., shred). But you can bet I won't be sending any piece-of-crap novel out December 1.

What about you? Will you write for NaNoWriMo? Are you already churning out a book? Do you act like it's NaNoWriMo every single month? Does NaNoWriMo make you yawn?

Tiling Sort of Equals Writing

The tiles are up (though not grouted), and I am likely going to have to pick up the project in a few weeks, after my father-in-law flies back out of the state, but despite its woes, tiling has offered me some insight into my writing. (If you've never seen me metaphorize before, see previous blog entries on gardening.)

So here is a partial list, since my tiling work is partial:

1. Talking about tiling is far less work than doing the tiling, but talking about it accomplishes nothing. I've been telling friends and family my plans to tile for over a month, but actually doing the task involves cutting hundreds of tiles, measuring, splatting mortar on every tile, pressing hard, putting in spacers, etc. It takes hours. No, DAYS. And it hurts one's back and fills one's fingernails with mortar and often makes every inch of one ACHE. And one doesn't feel like talking about it anymore. One is too tired to talk, too tired from actually doing it. Same thing with writing. I can talk about it easily, but I need to do more than talk about it. I need to write. And write. And that is called work. It's not easy. It takes a lot of thought and daily dedication. I have to actually do the writing, not just talk about it.

2. Though more fun, talking accomplishes nothing. I spent a month talking, and not a tile was laid. I spend a week working hard on it, every day, and I have a backsplash up in the kitchen. Can I tell you how rewarding it feels to see the whole thing up? Same thing with writing. Talking about writing isn't nearly so wonderful as holding a completed manuscript in my hands, or watching a play (that I wrote) performed, or getting feedback from a reader about how "hilarious" something I finished is. Having a finished product beats out talking any day for me.

3. The more complex the design, the harder it's going to be to finish. Sure, I could have just selected the little bitty tile, cut absolutely nothing, and finished in 1/10th the time. But I didn't make that choice. Instead, I created a design that required I cut EVERY SINGLE TILE EXCEPT FOR 4 TILES!!!! ACK!!! Do I regret my decision? Nope. It's what I wanted, and now that it's up, it looks great. But it was a TON of work. Same thing with writing. Some projects are just harder than others, and the more complex your character and plot systems are, the harder you'll have to work on them to get them all right. The more complex the machinery, the more likely glitches will show up. But that doesn't mean you should stick to the simple ones, just because they are simple. Write what you want--but be prepared to put the work into it.

4. Tiling takes LOTS of prep. I had to measure everything, figure out how much I'd need of each kind of tile (overestimating, of course), teach myself how to use a wet saw (messy, messy, messy), make a template of my over-the-stove backsplash, where I would center the design, and plan everything out, before I ever cut a tile. And then I had to cut and cut and cut tiles. I had to lay things out dry before I started mortaring them in place. I had to buy the right supplies, and run back to get more when I ran out. None of these elements got the tiles up, but they were imperative if I was going to get the job done. Same with writing. NaNoWriMo is a fun exercise, but without planning, revision, and a ton more work, the novel that comes out of a writing frenzy like that one won't be worth publishing. Plan out the novel. Work out who the characters are. Build the world they live in. Write a plot outline--with an ending. Sure, none of this prep is actually writing on the novel, but it's necessary. It will make the novel writing easier. Even more importantly, it will make the novel itself better.

So there it is. I'm sure I'll come up with more kernels of tiling/writing wisdom when I grout everything, but I am grateful that I don't have to return to the project for a few weeks. Now I can get back to my writing! (This is why I'm a writer, and not a tiler.)

No Failure

National Novel Writing Month is over. A whole bunch of people wrote 50,000 words, some of them completing the challenge in ten days or less. One blogger commenting on another person's page said he'd written over 100,000 words. (wow!)

I did not win. I did manage over 24,000 words, but I didn't win. I didn't even get quite halfway.

But that doesn't mean I failed. It means I spent over a week finding and obtaining a house for the move to Georgia. It means my students didn't drop off the face of the earth and stop turning in papers. It means my kids still needed help with homework instructions, still had swimming lessons, still went to karate and ballet, still needed help with items with school, still needed to eat. It also means my husband needed a partner to help with the transition.

It means I've been sick for the last two weeks, and will likely go to the doctor tomorrow morning to see if I have now developed a sinus infection (sure feels like it).

But it doesn't mean I've failed. It means I'm now, at the beginning of December, nearly halfway through writing a novel I'd been wanting to start for at least a year. I'm not sure when I'll get the first draft done, or how long it will take to revise it, but I'm farther along with it than I would have been without the NaNoWriMo challenge.

And that means I've won. And I'm proud, and I'm going to end this post and go pat myself on the back. And then I'm going to keep on writing, not until some arbitrary deadline, but until I'm dead. (Then, I guess I'll be out of time. Darn it!)

Now it's your task. Forget what deadlines you haven't met, what tasks still loom on the horizon. What have you DONE this last month? What did you begin? What progress have you made? Let me know, and I'll give you a pat on the back, too!

Falling Behind, Getting Ahead

I'm leaving my calendar up (on the right, in case the red dots lining across this week haven't already caught your attention), even though its colors are rather depressing.

I was surviving through NaNoWriMo. But then I had papers. And more papers, and I was flying out of town on Wednesday, so I needed to get all of those papers back. And pack. And make lists of houses to see in Georgia. And set up appointments for dentists and doctors and optometrists right after Thanksgiving so the kids were all set before we moved.

And I got a cold. (Of COURSE I got a cold! How could I possibly NOT get a cold? I've hardly slept since the semester began.)

But now I'm sitting in my hotel room, with nothing to do except write (and cough and sniffle). And I visit my NaNoWriMo page, knowing it's bad, knowing I haven't written in several days, and I was already behind.

Only it's worse. I'm behind by more that 11,000 words, and at this rate, the stats tell me, I'll finish on December 17. Yikes!

Now what do I do? Give up? Go down to the lobby and eat a bunch of free cookies? Walk out to the highway and get myself hit by a trucker? Go over to the Wal-Mart and apply to be a people greeter, since my writing career is obviously not going to happen?

Nope. I'm going to write. Deadlines, schmeadlines, I've got to write. And write and write and write. Not to keep the red from showing up, but because I'm a writer. Yup, I'm not a people greeter, I'm a writer. And writer's write.

See you December 17! (Just kidding. I'm sure I'll be done by the 15th at least!)

One Day at a Time

As you can probably see from my calendar to the right, my NaNoWriMo effort has not been perfect so far. Some days it feels like I can barely get out 600 words, especially between all the other stuff going on in my life.

But I am actually meeting my goal: to write every day. Even if it means my eyes are crossing and I go to bed later than I would like, I write. I'm making it a habit, and I'm making time for it no matter what.

It's also helping me in other ways, especially in relieving stress. In the last few days I've had all sorts of things going on, some bad, some good--but all stressful.

For one thing, I had to rush my son in to the emergency room Sunday night. He couldn't breathe very well, and it turns out he has allergy-induced asthma. By the time he saw a doctor (which was actually pretty quick--way to go, ER!) his lungs were audibly squeaking. Now he is doing much better, and I know that the coughs he'd been having over the past year were actually less severe asthma attacks (nothing like guilt to add to my stress level). For a few years, at least, he will need to keep an inhaler handy, although one doctor said he could eventually grow out of it.

Better--though still stressful--news is that my husband, just this morning, signed on to be the president of a college down South. And that means we're MOVING... by JANUARY! Wow! Fantastic news, but for the next two months I'll be in a maelstrom of activity, packing, planning, and moving--and smiling, of course!

And in the meantime, while my kids and my classes are turning me in all sorts of directions, I'll also be writing. Every day. Without fail. No matter what.

At least something in my life needs to be predictable.

My Favorite Day

I bet y'all thought today must be my birthday! You know it isn't Christmas, nor is it (American) Thanksgiving. No gifts will be exchanged, no parties planned, no cakes made (thank goodness!).

No, it's just my favorite day in the world, the one day of the year I get an extra hour to work on stuff. I've said about a million times before (on this very blog) that I wish I had a Timeturner (and if you don't know what that is, you need to read the Harry Potter books--or at least the third one). This is the one day when time is turned back for me.

Sure, it's only one hour. But that hour is one of the most precious things I have to use, and I have so much I can do with that one hour:

1. Read more to my kids.

2. Give them their piano lessons this week (unlike last week).

3. Go to zumba.

4. Write my day's installment of my NaNo novel.

5. Assess the 101 essays (okay, this will likely take two hours--but I can get half of it done).

6. Revise 3-4 pages of my Thomas novel.

7. Make and enjoy a gourmet, made-from-scratch dinner or cheesecake.

8. Cut out a dress or blouse to sew.

9. Finish reading The City of Ember.

10. Go through my daughter's clothing (or son's clothing, or my own clothing).

I have a much longer list of possibilities, but these are the most likely. What will you do with this blessed extra hour? Sleep? Whine? Watch the boob tube? Don't do that! Make the hour count for something!

Now I'm all done bossing. I don't want to waste anymore time, for that extra hour is awaiting me, needing all my energy and drive. Make your own hour count! I know I will!

A Little Update

I didn't make my word count yesterday, though I did manage enough to change the day from red to yellow (you can see it in the calendar today). I'm pretty happy, still, for I wrote until my eyes were crossing last night, just to get something in, and I'm in a pretty exciting place in the novel--not sure which way it's going to go.

Unfortunately, given my tendency to be plot driven, I'm going to spend the next few days mapping out an outline of sorts, just to make sure I know the overall sweep of the novel I'm trying to write in a month. I hate it when nothing happens, when characters sit around and talk (or in my case, since it's about a mermaid, swim around and talk), so I have some planning to do.

I wish you luck on all that you are working on. Use your weekend wisely! (I intend to.)

What's Your Motivation?

Sure, my title is an acting question--I remember the times in college, when even actors with no lines had to figure out their motivation as we worked on a play. The truth is, though, we are all motivated differently, and my students show varied kinds of motivations, some of which I share.

Now, I do have a few students who lack motivation. I'll admit that right off. I just don't see these students very often, since they aren't motivated enough to come to class (or even motivated enough to drop the class so that they don't fail it). All the rest of my students are inspired by some form of motivation:

1. Judgment

This particular motivator is people-centered. Either students go to class because they know their mom will wonder why they are at home when class is happening (and they don't want to upset her) or they want to get good grades so the parents (or girlfriend, etc.) are proud (instead of disappointed), or they may even fear what their teacher thinks of them. I was a member of the latter, although I do understand that what a stranger thinks shouldn't really matter. The point is that these people are working hard, not because they really think it's important, but because other people do, and they want to be judged favorably by those people.

2. Competition

I can't say this is a motivating factor for me--the Navajo blood in me is too strong--but it certainly is for my students. Some of them want to know what everybody else's grade is--tests, quizzes, papers, everything. Envy is the name of the game here. These students might not care that much about what grade they receive, as long as it's the best grade I dish out. However, since I dislike this particular tendency, I never tell them anything. (Other students' grades are none of their damn business.)

3. Grade

For these students, the grade is a sign of whether or not they will make it to heaven. An "A" is average for these people (although a "C" is supposed to be the average), and anything less means they failed. Call them overachievers--I know I do--or perfectionists--I call them that, too--but they are also very hard workers, for they aren't competing against other students in class but against the perfection they imagine themselves capable of. The only problem with this motivation is that it causes students unnecessary stress, and it's stress on the GRADE, not on the LEARNING. Which leads to the (next to) last motivation.

4. Desire to Learn

This is my favorite, but it's not that common. Most students are in my classes because they have to be. They need so many English credits to get an associates or earn their certificate in welding, so they enroll because they have to. But the rare student comes in, takes a course, and then returns for another one which he doesn't need, just because the course will teach him something. I knew a class once--taught by an adjunct instructor--that was told three weeks before the end of the class that, to give them a break, the teacher was canceling the last few weeks and dropping the final research project. They walked, en masse, straight out of her classroom and to the Dean's office to report her. They were furious that she had robbed them of three weeks of learning. Such an event is rare, yet I do see small signs of this nearly every day, when students express frustration that they get a good grade in some class yet feel like the course itself didn't cover anything important. One student recently commented on a religion course, saying, "You know, I took the class because I wanted to learn about different religions--because it interested me--and I haven't learned anything. It's a complete waste of time."

Now I'm looking over at my little NaNoWriMo calendar, and I am glad I posted in my sidebar. I was unable to write on the novel until late last night, but seeing a red mark on day three was highly motivating. Is it because that calendar is public, and all of you might see it? Nope. Is it because my mom might check out the page? Nope. Am I competing with another NoWri? Nope. Is there a grade involved? Nope.

My drive comes from another source, one I haven't discussed, but one that drives nearly all of us, except for those rare students who never show up for class. It isn't what others think of us, but what we think of ourselves that matters most. I don't want to see my calendar filled with red marks. I care about what I think. That is my ultimate motivation.

My First Time

I don't have the time...

I am too stressed from this limbo land of my husband landing his first huge job...

My kids demand too much of my energy in the afternoons...

I need a nap...

I have three mounds of papers to grade by tomorrow...

I haven't eaten dinner...

My daughter's fundraiser needs a cake made...

My back is hurting...

I haven't watched Glee in three weeks...

I'd really rather eat some of the Halloween candy...

But I haven't finished my Thomas novel revision yet...

My classes are really heating up, and class doesn't end until December 8!

Whew! I'm glad that's over! I got all my excuses out (for now), leaving me ready and willing to take on this year's NaNoWriMo! Hurray for me! Hurray for everyone else taking the plunge, too, pledging to write 50,000 words by November 30!

I thought I would just work on my Thomas novel, missing my opportunity to participate in the National Novel Writing Month yet again. But I've decided against that. I'll work on the Thomas novel in addition to my new one, and I'll make this November my most productive month yet. I've never felt so official in my life.

Anyone else taking the plunge?