NaNoWriMo

Yep. I finally did it. Signed up as an official participant. There's still time to join us. Go to http://www.nanowrimo.org to sign up, though you shouldn't be surprised if the servers are having trouble keeping up today. The Australians got a head start on the rest of us, of course, and there are always those who joined the parties here in the US last night and stayed up all night writing and got that extra hour of writing time from the time warp called the Daylight Savings Time shift.

Having grown up in Indiana, I think the whole daylight savings time gambit is a hoax of some sort perpetuated by a conspiracy of unknown people who profit from the foolishness in some way. But as you can see, I don't have the characters OR the plot fully fleshed out for THAT story, so I usually let it pass without comment other than -- oh hell, I have to figure out how to reset the braille watch without shutting it off. This used to be a much more difficult problem when I drove, since I often wouldn't or couldn't figure out how to reset the clock in the car until it was almost time to switch back, by which time I was used to subtracting an hour every time I looked at the thing, and so then when I DID get it changed, I'd start having those panicky moments of horror whenever I'd glance at the damned thing all over again soooo . . . Needless to say, it's one of the many anxieties that I gave up when I decided the vision was too low and I needed to quit trying to drive, legal or not. And, funny thing, since I quit driving and now rely on paratransit, I'm either early, on-time, or I don't come at all. An interesting mix of circumstances which lends itself to perpetual knitting projects and a snicker or two at the people who were always irritated when I was perpetually late due to my seemingly congenital inability to leave the house without doing JUST ONE MORE THING! I can now leave the house without doing "just one more thing," but still feel the pinch each time I go out the door. I don't think it will scar, though. The "one more thing I absolutely MUST do, however, is correctly fasten the crate door on the Husky's house, since Kala herself is STILL completely unable to resist eating my books when I'm gone if left free to munch any paper she chooses. She's excellent about resisting the books when I'm home, but the smell of binding glue is too tempting when left on her own for more time than it takes to walk one of the other two dogs.

Now, having procrastinated my morning writing for as long as I can justify, and having refilled my coffee cup, it's time to see about my preparations for this month. Caffeine, check. Left-over Halloween candy, check. Plenty of soups and instant meals, check. Plenty of cat food and kibble to allow the rest of the household to bide? Check. Cheerleading team? Check. Blatant self-promotion on Facebook to shame me into finishing? Check. New Blind-girl accessible netbook? Fully functioning and primed with outlines for all three acts of the novel and character descriptions, not to mention brainstorming sessions. All legal jump-starts. Fifty thousand words? Holy Crap! (grin) Okay. So, not so scary after the 100-page master's thesis, but still. Very different. Sad to say, I wrote most of the thesis in a month, too, after about four to six months of preparation. But I DID revise the thesis. Not revising this until December might actually break something inside me, some teacher-perfectionist function I might need again later. But then again, I might NOT need it again later, either.

I'm willing to risk it. I kind of feel in the mood to break a few things for the fun of it, and wine-glasses in the fireplace just aren't as thrilling as they were when I was nineteen. My own "little critic" voice is so well entrenched that I'm pretty secure in the fact that a bit of breakage won't permanently damage anything essential. She'll still be there to keep me from anything too drastic, maybe. (grin) Reconnecting with high school and college friends in the lasts year has really undermined MANY of my more grown up tendencies. I'm still paying bills, and eating vegetables, and doing laundry, mind you, but a bit of recklessness and unconstrained energy seems much more in order these days. Hence the official participation in NaNoWriMo. Are you SURE you won't join in?