hallow's eve

Hey guys! I'm sorry about the radio silence. I've been so busy writing and getting things ready for my friend's visit next week that I haven't had much of interest to talk about these last few weeks. That and I kept forgetting it was Thursday until it was Friday.

I've still got a nice list of things to do before Monday but last night I checked off cleaning my shower which took a good two hours. I cannot fully express how much I hate having hard water. I'm going to start dreaming about water softeners pretty soon.

So, tomorrow is Halloween! I've had everything for my work costume for a few weeks now and I was just waiting on the necklace I'd ordered at the end of September. That turned into a whole fiasco with it getting lost in the mail and many phone calls to USPS. Thankfully, I was working with a very understanding seller who refunded my purchase and sent me another necklace which arrived last week! Hopefully I'll have a picture to share next week.

I'm going to be taking the first week of November off from NaNoWriMo and I probably wont post either but I'm excited for a new month, though I still can't believe October's disappeared on me. I've figured some important plot and character points out this month that will be big helps as I move forward. When I first committed to writing this whole thing out, back in August, I gave myself the liberty of skipping sections that I wasn't prepared to write just yet with the plan of going back. I have yet to do that but I'm trying now to write everything out as I go, no skipping. This has been a bit frustrating at times and I go through pages that I'm not in love with but getting through to the other side is rather rewarding.

Okay, my brain is being a bit spazzy right now so I'll leave you with this video my husband shared with me this morning. I cannot get over the giant's expression at the end :]

nanowrimo - do you dare?

Hello! It's been a pleasant fall week here so far. It smells like leaves outside and the trees on the mountains are taking on fall colors in earnest. On my way home from work on Tuesday there were only those wispy clouds in the sky but some of them must have lined up just right with the sun because there was one spot of rainbow in the sky. I'm adding that to my list of funky weather/light happenings I've seen along with the moon-bow I saw once. [I've dubbed moon-bows the unicorns of rainbows]

Apples out here are ridiculously expensive and always the most costly part of making pies or apple-crisp. I wanted to make some of the latter this week so I jumped on a produce bag sale my grocery store was having [fill the bag with certain produce for $10 total] and good heavens I'm glad they had that because the apples I got were originally $2/lb and I ended up getting at least 4lbs plus bell peppers, cantaloupe, and carrots. I would buy apples way more often just to have for lunch and things if seeing the prices didn't make me want to faint every time. I miss the ease and value of getting apples on the east coast.

If you're a writer or you know someone who writes you've probably heard of NaNoWriMo or started to see the promotional things that are coming out now. For those who are unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month which is an event that takes place over the course of November every year. The challenge is to write an entire novel [just the first draft, mind]/50,000 words in one month. It's a daunting task but one most veterans laud as a wonderful way to just bust your way through a first draft or just as a general exercise in time and task management as you have to write the equivalent of just over 1,667 words a day to meet the goal. [it is an option to set up your own word goal if you don't feel up to 50,000 words or you know you can't dedicate that amount of time]. There's an official website where you can sign up, create and track your goals, get advice and ideas, and become a part of the writer community that participates [currently over 700,000 writers]. They also have shirts and other fun things you can buy but my favorite thing in their store is the 2GB USB bracelet:

I don't write on a computer but I think this is a super cool idea, especially for NaNoWriMo, to be able to have your story with you all the time - to keep track of it and be able to work on it whenever you can.

I've heard about NaNoWriMo since high school but I've never tried it, being the queen of cop-outs and rationalization. Setting and completing goals has always been a tricky hit-or-miss thing for me so I hesitate to commit to something that just seems so vast. This morning though, I was toying with the idea of trying it this year. The initial obstacle is that I write long-hand so there's no convenient word counter at the bottom of my page as I work. So I took some time to get a rough estimate of how many words per page I typically crank out [230]. The other excuse is that I have a friend coming to stay with us for the first week of the month so I don't think I'll be using that time to write which would push the word count due from those days onto the rest of the month. Also, Thanksgiving. See? I'm good at finding excuses.

But I did the math, subtracting a whole week for good measure, and, if I base reaching 50,000 words on a page count [because, let's be honest, I'm not going to spend an hour every day going back and counting each word] I'll have to write about five pages a day [front and back. because it sounds less intimidating than saying ten pages a day]. Maybe I'm just feeling overly optimistic today, but that sounds feasible to me. It will be more than I've ever written before as a daily pace but I have the time and I think it'll really help me bang out my current project.

Committing to do this will mean starting work now so I'm as prepared as I can be when it starts. Which means I'll probably spend most of this month working up a chapter outline as well as my regular writing. I've never really done an outline before because I usually change my mind so often but, as with learning to be okay with an imperfect first draft, I suppose it's high time for me to learn how to use an outline as a guide without feeling like it's set in stone. I have a feeling there's a lot of learning coming my way this November.

thank goodness for fall

I cannot tell you how happy I am that it's October! I've never had a particular connection with this month aside from the season it's associated with here in the northern hemisphere but I'm developing a growing appreciation. Mostly because it's not September.

This September harked back to the same time last year in a bad way. Last September was the first time in 17 years that I wasn't going back to school and I had yet to find a job. I think life shortly after graduation is something that throws most people for a loop. For me, that loop took the form of a month of depression. Up until I started at my current job I was not in a good place and I had no idea what to do. Getting a job in October pulled me out of it and got me to feeling more like myself again. I've been looking back on that month as one of the most confusing and difficult times of my life that I would make every effort to avoid in the future. I suppose some decisions aren't ours to make.

This last month felt almost like a mirror image of last year, except that I had a job, and I couldn't figure out why. I'm still not sure what caused the sudden onset of melancholy and the struggle to care about or act on anything. In a sense it felt like life just stopped, but only for me. It didn't make sense. I've been out of school for over a year, I have a job, I have my writing projects and other things to focus on. So what's the problem? My husband's suggestion is the only thing that makes any sense, though I don't have a formal diagnosis - seasonal depression.

I'm an east coast girl through and through so living in Utah can be a struggle for me at times. I do love it here - there is breathtaking beauty in all parts of the world - but the winters can feel unbearable and this year I felt dread instead of my usual joy when people started talking about the coming autumn. Because it meant that winter was coming too.

I suppose it's ironic then, that this week has seen the coldest temperatures we've had since spring and I love it. As September ended I've been feeling better and I'm trying to hold onto the two weeks of fall we get here for as long as I can. I'm feeling excited about my writing again and my energy is coming back so hopefully I'll be more regular here with more to share.

A silver lining about having times like these is that I seem to par my priorities down to a very basic level and what I'm left with helps me to reorient and reorganize parts of me and my life that need it when the sky starts to clear. Sometimes we learn what's valuable in our lives when something comes in and suddenly changes it. Other times, we learn what we need through its absence, even if its brief, and its return will only cement that surety.

So I don't know about you, but I'm glad fall is here. The next three months will probably be insanity with holidays, having a friend to visit, and other family events unfolding but I'm looking forward to it.