Rachael

Wishing all the writers well! This is my favorite time of year. Happy sigh.

Bethany and I are GOING TO THE NIGHT OF WRITING DANGEROUSLY!

Thank you to all who donated. We know you, and we adore you. We can give you hugs and thank you in person.

But there is one person we DON'T know, and that person was instrumental in sending us last year, too. L.R., we'd love to thank you, if you'd let us. You've blown our minds AGAIN with your generosity, and I woke Bethany up this morning (she was quite hungover, from her annual Halloween bash) to tell her the awesome news. We'd adore it if we could send you a little Nano token of thanks. If you'd prefer to remain quietly anonymous, we'd understand, but if you change your mind, please contact me. You've made our month. Also, you've given us the motivation to WRITE OUR LITTLE FINGERS OFF, starting tomorrow. So thank you, so very, very much.

And speaking of Halloween, Lala and I went to Beth's party as Harry Crane and Joan Holloway from Mad Men. What do you think?

I've been looking back at last year's post at this time. Did you know that last year I thought that I had my Nanowrimo novel plotted out? From beginning to end?

DO YOU KNOW THAT BOOK ALMOST KILLED ME?

Good lord. I am so naive.

This year, though. I totally have Nano dialed. Dialed, baby. I've been plotting in dispatch with my coworkers, and it's been a total blast to plot with people who aren't normally writers but who are going to be for the month of November (I've corralled them into the Nano madness — YIPPEE!). They're GOOD at it, too. I love to watch people's faces as they sit around saying "Well, what if this happened? And then what if there was a plane crash? Or if she was pregnant? And then there was a fire? And NINJAS?"

I love this kind of excitement. Remember, no matter what, if you're writing Nano with us, or if you're writing a short story, or if you're just idly thinking about writing something someday, it doesn't have to be good. At all. It can suck. It probably will and should suck. But then you have something to work with, right?

(As I was sitting at my desk this morning, at four am, wondering what in the bleeding hell I was doing sitting there at all (it was one of those mornings), trying to write a sex scene set ON THE BEACH FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, I was telling myself that. It's okay for a scene to just be the worst thing ever. It's all fix-up-able. Later.)

Meanwhile, in Nano-news, my sister Bethany is fundraising again for the 2009 Write-a-Thon Fundraiser, and I'd sure appreciate it if you considered sponsoring her. HER LINK IS HERE.

All the money goes to the Office of Letters of Light, the machine behind Nano and the Young Writers Program, which is all about promoting writing for writing's sake, anywhere, everywhere, all the time. They are seriously rad and we love them and they do so much.

(If she raises two hundred, she gets to go. If she raises three hundred, she TAKES ME WITH HER as her guest. Ahem. I really, really want to go. So with all our hearts, thank you.)

 
Bethany as really cool sailor, ready to write. I'm holding on tight so as not to drown if the boat goes down. Not kidding.

With two guest appearances:

The winner (J.A.) has been notified by email, and what I didn't say in the video (I was just so surprised!) was that she was in my very first ever critique group, back in undergrad days, almost fifteen years ago. She was one of the very first to ever, ever read my work. It's so . . . fitting. (But I also wanted it to be you.)

That was really fun. I think I'll like this giving things away gig a lot.

Kisses. And a growl from Digit, because that means love in his language. (Really, it does.)

Last chance! For romance! No, not really. There's always more time for that. It's just time for you to sign up to be on my mailing list! I won't spam you, sell your list to ANYONE and every month I'll give a little something away to someone on that list, just for fun, because I think that would be fun.

And TONIGHT, I'll draw the winner of the How To Knit a Love Song ARC! In the meantime, you can sign up right here (if you haven't already):

Name:

E-mail:

Okay, come back later! I'll tell you who won! (I'll email the winner, never you fear. I hope it's YOU!)

Ahhh. It's getting closer. Can you feel it? The rumble of Nanowrimo, growing closer and closer, with every passing day.

That would have been a more effective sentence, had I not typoed at first the "fumble" of Nanowrimo, growing closer and closer.

And fumble might be closer to the truth.

I'm trying to get okay with the fact that I might not win this year. Since I first started this crazy Write a Novel in a Month thing, and this will be my fourth year attempting it, I've won every year (winning is writing 50,000 words, no matter if the book is done or not, which in my case it never is).

But this year? Ack.

I'm writing Book Three in the Cypress Hollow Yarn series, and I'm loving it, which is kind of weird. It's hard, naturally, because I find first drafts difficult. First drafts are like knitting really, really long sleeves. I don't like them. They are unwieldy and unnatural. Edits (and backs and fronts of sweaters) are where it's at.

I plan on hitting 50,000 words in Book Three this week (and I only started it 6 weeks ago! Woot! Cruising! See? And it's super fun.)

But to throw another novel on top of that one? AM I INSANE?

One word: Yes.

I heart Nanowrimo.

I love the energy of it. I love the craziness. I love the out of control optimism that is COMPLETELY gone by the middle of week two but comes galloping back by end of week three. I love Chris Baty and his tallness and I love the Office of Letters and Light and all the people that work there and make the world a better place. I love the refusal to believe by so many that it can't be done. Because it can.

I love that there will be people who will have won by the second or third DAY. Put THAT in your writing hookah and smoke it.

So this year: It's a Young Adult paranormal for me. IN FIRST PERSON PRESENT TENSE. I know. The form voted most annoying at her novel prom, right? (Second person wasn't even invited, so we can't talk smack about her, no matter how much we want to.) I'm so excited I could just spit. It's such a break for me, so far away from anything I've ever written, and I sometimes can't sleep for thinking about it. I'm going to write at night, and I'm going to write fast and hard, and not let it take away from my "real" writing which I do in the morning. But I know that there are a couple of really scary things this November to think about:

1. If writing the YA affects my voice in Book Three, I'll have to stop writing it. Period. (But it'll just put it off for a while. It will happen.)

2. If I don't have time, I don't have time. I've never tried working full time, twelve hour shifts (and plenty o'overtime as well), writing 2000 words a day on an ongoing project, and 2000 words a day on a new project. That's a lot of words. It might not pan out.

See me making preemptive excuses? That's not like me. I HATE to lose at anything. You might have already noticed. But I don't want to do what I normally do, which is to hurl myself at something so hard I end up breaking myself into little upset pieces. I'm going to have fun, that's all. If I'm not having fun, that's another good reason not to do it.

But I'm gonna give it my best damn shot. And I get my aim from my mama, friends.

Funny aside: I was emailing Erika and she mentioned she thought I should enter a challenge where the goal was to do nothing. After the screaming inside my head died down, I figured out the name of this challenge: Nono. HAAAAAAAAAAAA!