How's Nanowrimo going?

It's good. I'm nowhere near where I should be at this point in the month, but I've written a little over 15000 words so far and that's waaay more than I would've without the motivation of a word count graph.

I like to use Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) as a way to get a good chunk of a first draft done. I think it's most productive for me that way. I could obviously write tons more words if all I did was write dribble on and on and on and on. Like if I just kept adding more and more and more words to this sentence or this paragraph or this blog post just because there is such a thing as a conjunction and its function is to combine clauses and so theoretically you could have a sentence that just keeps going forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and has like a bajillion words in, including some words that aren't even real words, like "bajillion." See?

I could do that. But all it would mean is a bigger mess for me to clean up later during the revision process.

Instead I prefer to keep the pace of my drafting firmly fixed between "faster than my normal rate" and "so fast that none of this will be salvageable later."

Anyway, like I said, the writing is going well. But I do miss this blog. So I decided to post a couple little bits of actual news that I thought might interest you readers. (All three of you.)

1. My sister is having a baby like right now.

Super exciting. I can't wait to meet my first niece!

2. Tiny Talks volume 15 is now for sale!

It arrived in our warehouse last week so it should've had time to make it onto bookstore shelves by now. If you live near an LDS bookstore, you can probably find it there. If not, there's always the internet. 

Or maybe you pre-ordered it from Amazon and you're already holding it in your hands. If that's the case, thank you! I hope you enjoy it. The nice thing about this book is that even if the words on the page don't live up to your expectations, the illustrations are guaranteed to be awesome. Go Corey!

3. You can come see me tomorrow night at our Cedar Fort Nanowrimo write in!

There will be snacks and I'm going to stand up and talk for a few minutes (but you don't have to listen to that part) and basically it will be a rockin good time. Just imagine how cool it will be to hang out at a real publishing company in a room full of real writers all tapping away on keyboards and not talking to each other. It's an introvert's dream party!

4. I finally read The Fault in Our Stars.

Quite good. Yes, I did cry. And I'm listening to Freakonomics. And I'm reading Delirium by Lauren Oliver. So far it's good, but I have to say there's a big part of me that's just hopping jealous of the fact that per her acknowledgments page Lauren basically spent an entire summer lounging around in Maine doing "research" for this book. I would LOVE to be able to do that. In Maine. Someday I will be that cool of an author. Someday.

5. I'll be thirty years old in less than three weeks.

Maybe this doesn't qualify as real news. I think I ran out of that after #3. But the list just looked so short. I had to keep going.

5. I'm going to Palm Springs in less than a month!

So much sunshine. So close to beaches. The colder it gets here, the more this place sounds like paradise to me. Last time we went there as a family, we spent a good portion of our time eating chocolate covered raisins, watching Lark Rise to Candleford, and doing a puzzle. All good things.

6. Okay now I really am out of news.

And probably I should get back to writing. I hope you're all enjoying November! 

National Novel Writing Month is a great excuse to just write more in general. You could celebrate by writing a journal entry. Or writing an email to someone. Or writing a list of all the things you need to buy at the grocery store. Whatever. Just write. It's good for your brain and really, really fun. And you might learn something about yourself from reading your own words.

As some quote on a poster in my junior AP English class told me: "How will I know what I think until I see what I wrote?" I'm sure someone famous said that, but I can't be expected to find out who it was while I'm in drafting mode. That's what's so fun about it. You get an excuse to procrastinate all the boring research-y stuff in favor of putting more words on the page.

So write, write, write. 

Right? 

Right.