Taking the plunge!

Okay, so I'm home this weekend sick, taking care of kids who are no longer really sick, which only makes my job a little harder. At least when they were laying around on the couch with me, I could keep track of them :) We're supposed to be in Mobridge, SD for the annual Anderson Family Reunion & Pheasant Hunt (if it had an official title, that's what the t-shirts would say).

So possibly because I'm in a compromised mental state from fighting off some kind of virus or because I just can't bear to let my schedule have any breaks, I went ahead and registered myself at NaNoWriMo.org to state to the world that I'm going to spend my month of November writing a novel. [That's what NaNoWriMo stands for--NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth.] The goal is to write 50,000 words between Nov 1 and Nov 30. I think it should be "fun" (in the most stressful interpretation of the word), but as of right this moment, I still have no idea what kind of book it's going to be, what genre I want to tackle, who my characters will be or why anyone else in the world would want to read something I've written.

The email I received after I registered gave this piece of advice: Tell everyone you know that you're writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who've had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

So there goes.