Proud to be an American
Wow. Just wow. I'm still so excited and proud and relieved about the results of the presidential election. Disappointed in the outcome of some local races, but I have a good feeling that things will work out for the best.
I want to hold on to this hope and enthusiasm and do Something. I'm about as far from the White House as most of us, but I think we can all find some little way to Be Nice, Live the Hope and try to make our communities and our country and our world a better place.
For me, this starts small, helping out a little more at the kids' school, on the philosophy that every little thing we can do to make the whole school better helps all of the kids. I'm also investigating volunteer opportunities at the local library.
What thing, small or large, can you do to help us all live in a better world?
A Month of Literary Abandon
In other news, we are in day six of
NaNoWriMo. For those of you who don't know, this is a crazy, month-long, writing extravaganza, in which people from all over the world try to write a novel in one month. The goal is to write 50,000 new words during the month of November. And this year is the tenth anniversary. More than 120,000 writers from all over the world, many of them just regular schmoes like us who might never have written a thing in their lives before right now are whipping out blank sheets of paper or opening up text files and starting to pound out stories.
There are writing forums, a procrastination station, a very cool word-counting widget that lets you mark your progress,
weekly encouragement newsletters from writers un-famous, famous and infamous. Last year Neil Gaiman put in his good cheer, among others. Brian Jacques, Meg Cabot, and Philip Pullman are among the list of notable Pep Talkers this year. And at the end of the month, if you've written more than 50,000 words, you can verify your word count with the word counter robots and you get a lovely certificate and badges for your blog or web page, as well as the satisfaction of know that you did a hard thing.
Participation in NaNo is free, but
The Office of Letters and Light, the non-profit organization that runs both NaNo in November and ScriptFrenzy in June, takes donations to cover their overhead costs as well as in support of the
Young Writers Program. YWP seeks to provide materials and support to get young people involved in writing as a valuable form of self-expression. Their motto: "We believe in ambitious acts of the imagination." The goal this year, in honor of the tenth anniversary of NaNo, is to get donations, big or small, from at least ten percent of participants. They're up to 3.6 percent at last count.
In my personal novelling quest, I have achieved 8500 words so far. My goal is to write 2000 words per day. I missed goal on the first, which was a planning and mapping day for me. I also missed goal on Tuesday (the election was just too distracting and exciting), but managed to make up a little ground yesterday. The tickle of sinus congestion promises to be a challenge today, but I'm hoping to hit 11,000 before I go to bed tonight.
If you've ever thought that there might be a novel knocking around in the back of your mind, this is a fun and butt-kicking opportunity to start to capture that idea and get it down on paper. It's totally not too late to start. I try to write in 15 minute bursts here and there throughout the day (though mostly during afternoon naptime and after the kids go to bed), and on a good day I can spit out 300-400 words in each 15-minute stretch. If you can manage to get a friend writing at the same time, it can be very motivational to have 10- or 15-minute Word Wars, races to see who can write the most in a short burst of time. (Go ahead, suggest another metaphor for me to throw in that messy mix)
I'm
eglentyne on the NaNo site. Send me an email to eglentyne at gmail and I'll add you as a buddy.
Writing with a friend--or 120,000 friends--or writing with a deadline can make the writing fun and really get the words flowing.
Give it a shot. At least drop by the site. And leave a fiver in the jar as you pass through.
I am Dani Smith, sometimes known as Eglentyne. This blog is one of my hobbies. I also knit, sew, run, parent, cook, eat, read, and write fiction. I have too many hobbies and don't sleep enough.;)
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 10:04AM 
