Are You Ready?

As I sit at my computer, trying to think of a topic, I find only one thought drifting into my head – I’m cold. Yeah, I know its November, but it wasn’t that long ago that we were still hitting the 80s here in Alabama. Then all of a sudden – BOOM – 35 degrees. I think my office building is still pumping the A/C. I have two sweaters and a blanket in here, but it’s so cold, I’ve farmed out the items to less prepared co-workers. The only warm place is my car where I can crank up the heat so high my skin starts to sizzle.

And it’s only going to get worse. It’s breezy today, but at least it’s sunny. Cold, damp, foggy days are ahead of us. We get to look forward to the weird southern winter that ices roads and chills to the bone without nary a snowflake, except the occasional freak storm.

But I’m ready for it. Once Halloween comes and goes, it’s a race through to the holiday finish line. Tuesday night, I set out all my carved pumpkins and watched Charlie Brown and Garfield while handing out candy. Now I’ve got my eye on turkey and Christmas shopping (which I’m almost done with, by the way). Gift wrapping, carols on the radio, making cookies and candy, decorating the tree... I'm definitely ready.

I would like to say that I was as prepared for National Novel Writing Month . 50,000 words in 30 days. Uh, make that 28 days. 27 if you figure that nothing will get done on Thanksgiving. I’m going on a scrapbook retreat for three days, so you can cut those out too. Ok – that leaves 24 days at 8-9 pages a day. That’s doable, I guess.You can actually go online and track your word count with them. Its one thing for me to blabber about it to you all. Not sure I want to do it there. I guess in the spirit of it, I’ll start posting my Zokutou word meter again with my new book. My goal is 90k, so this will take me through November to the end of the year but I’ve been piddling with my outline for a while so I guess I just need to sit down and start writing. I’ve been procrastinating. As I’ve mentioned, this book is supposed to be single title, so it’s different from the category style. I’ve got more time, more freedom. An intricate plot. More characters. It’s a lot to get my arms around. But I love these characters and this story so much I’m willing to fight for them.

Any of you doing NaNoWrMo? If not, what have you been procrastinating about lately? A book? A chore? A mammogram? :) Remember to comment today and one lucky blogger will get to select a book of their choice from my massive collection. There’s some great stuff, so come clean about what you’ve been avoiding and you can continue to do so by reading the book you won instead of doing it.

SP

Well, darnit. Looks like Zokutou didn't pay their webhosting bill and got shut down. Phooey. OK - this isn't quite as pretty, but : 9250/90000 (10.3% complete)